There is a fairly sweet reason why Caillou remained bald and was never really changed, but it also seems kind of counterproductive despite the message that it sent. Samantha Faragalli Younghans of Distractify might not agree but that’s the great thing about opinion articles, we get to voice what we think and then try to back it up. The reason that Caillou was kept bald was simply that giving him hair made him unrecognizable to viewers, which seems like a very odd way to celebrate differences, even though it’s not. Yeah, there’s a lot of back and forth across the line of popular opinion with this one since keeping Caillou bald does make the case for teaching kids that everyone is different and that being comfortable with differences is important in this life so that people can get along and enjoy one another in a comforting and rational manner. The positive message is hard to miss and it’s easy to enjoy since it allows children to learn at a young age that there are many people in this world that are different than each other, and while pointing out differences isn’t a bad thing, accepting them is preferable to singling people out for their differences.
While Caillou’s show ended its run in 2010 there are still plenty of chances to watch reruns if a person knows where to go. The whole idea of him being bald however kind of feels like a dodge by the writers and the artists, even if that’s not the case. The fact that hair made him look different is in a way kind of self-defeating as it seems to make Caillou a character that was never meant to change, meaning he was designed to look the same throughout his entire run. It can be argued that throughout the run of many shows a lot of characters haven’t been made to change, no matter how long the shows have been running. I mean really if you look at a show like The Simpsons, Marge and Homer should be retired and Bart and Lisa should be well into middle-age by now and have their own families. But people don’t seem to want their cartoons to change at times, and in the case of a show like Caillou this would seem to be the case since it was obviously a kids’ show and the main character needed to be able to let the kids relate to him in a big way. But the problem here is that as kids grow, they develop, the change their appearance, and they eventually tend to look different than they did when they were younger. So in effect, Caillou was being given the same treatment that a lot of cartoon characters have been given throughout the years, a sense of immortality in which their appearance didn’t need to change since the effect might have been disorienting and eventually less lucrative when it came to the viewers.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but there’s something fulfilling about watching a cartoon character age along with the audience at times. It not only gives a sense of actual time passing, but it also seems to echo the idea that as their fans continue to grow and develop, so do the characters we started loving when we were younger. This idea might seem odd and kind of depressing or morbid to some, but the fantasy of it all can have the same effect since if you look back at the cartoons you watched as a kid, if you watched them at all, and see that not a single one of them has changed or been forced to change throughout the years, it does make you feel a bit old. There’s nothing wrong with it, life keeps rolling on even as it stops every time the show is paused or halted at the end of the credits. But to see a cartoon actually age is kind of uplifting since it reminds us that everything eventually falls under the sway of time no matter how much we try to stop or slow it down. Michael Taylor of Urbo has more to say on this.
Aging cartoons seems like an odd thing to do when you mention it to some people since a lot of cartoons are thought to be fine without the aging process. In fact the classics and the favorites never seem to age no matter how many episodes they amass, which is kind of disturbing when you think about the passage of time even in the cartoon world. From children’s shows to comics to movies, our favorite characters tend to never age as they’re allowed to remain timeless, forever kids or forever young and hearty and hale. It was a great attempt on the part of Caillou, but despite the fans’ reactions it comes off as a bit hypocritical.
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