Intro­duc­tion

Dur­ing a hol­i­day spent with my five year old nephew I reluct­antly began to become an author­ity on children’s TV char­ac­ters. Nos­tal­gic­ally I thought back to my own child­hood remem­ber­ing Post­man Pat and Fire­man Sam. It struck me how so many pop­u­lar children’s TV pro­grammes focus solely on the area of work, a theme which has con­tin­ued with Under­ground Ernie and Bob the Builder,[1] the lat­ter of which this essay will focus on.

The soci­ology of work has a rich his­tory of using the visual. Images are use­ful to us as ‘a point of access’ (Grey, 1998: 131) allow­ing us to see anew an aspect of the work­place or our atti­tudes towards work. In the case of BtB, when ana­lysed soci­olo­gic­ally, we can view the ideo­lo­gies which run deeply within it. This kind of ana­lysis has been done pre­vi­ously with the read­ing of children’s fic­tion with the claim that ‘in read­ing fic­tional rep­res­ent­a­tions, it is sug­ges­ted, we acquire an insight into organ­iz­a­tional real­it­ies.’ (ibid.). It is this same, often hid­den, insight which I wish to gain from my read­ing of BtB.

Within BtB, ideo­logy can be seen expli­citly in rep­res­ent­a­tions of co-operation, friend­ship etc. which most children’s TV pro­grams try to teach chil­dren. There are nev­er­the­less deeper ideo­lo­gies present in the ways in which work is depic­ted. Con­versely, it is import­ant to remem­ber that the trans­mis­sion of such mes­sages are much more subtle than is sug­ges­ted by writ­ing them in a stark form (Grey, 1998: 146). Within this essay I am cer­tainly not claim­ing that spe­cific ideo­logy of work has been delib­er­ately placed within ‘Bob the Builder’ to sub­vert chil­dren. BtB can, how­ever, act as an indic­ator for how we view or wish to ima­gine the world of work to be. 

Divi­sion of labour

A lack of intrinsic value taken from work has been related to the divi­sion of labour which, accord­ing to Durkheim, Marx and Weber, has been a fea­ture of work since the indus­trial revolu­tion. Although often thought about in a fact­ory con­text (e.g. Hamper, 1991) the divi­sion of labour is very much present within many types of work today. I will first look at this from the per­spect­ive of the human char­ac­ters and will then argue that it is the machines which are the best example of the divi­sion of labour. From here I will go on to argue that BtB can be read to show the machines to be the ulti­mate examples of the divi­sion of labour and that instead of them being machines which are anthro­po­morph­ised, it can be argued that they are rather work­ers who are dehu­man­ised to the point of becom­ing their indi­vidu­al­ised job.

Bob, Wendy and Farmer Pickles are all work­ers who exper­i­ence very little divi­sion of labour, they are all able to do almost any job they need to. The only exper­i­ences of this divi­sion between the human char­ac­ters is the call­ing in of experts to do the job, e.g. how Bob and the gang get their work, even when it may not be really neces­sary (such as Little, Sneez­ing Scoop, 2001) where Wendy and Dizzy put in a wash­ing line for Mrs Potts, a job that most people would do themselves.

On the whole the humans are given lots of autonomy with Bob and Wendy run­ning their own busi­ness and hav­ing no one to answer to except for the cus­tomer. Even in rela­tion to the cus­tomer there is a huge amount of sov­er­eignty, e.g. Scare­crow Dizzy, where instead of giv­ing a house a white­wash, Wendy and Dizzy paint it pink but the cus­tomer did not seem to mind, luckily.

Within BtB it is cer­tainly the anthro­po­morph­ised machines who are the example of the divi­sion of labour. First, just by their pres­ence since it is the divi­sion of labour which has led to the devel­op­ment of machines which can ‘facil­it­ate and abridge labour’ (Smith, 1862: 20) which is exactly what these machines are doing whilst enabling the human char­ac­ters to tran­scend this divi­sion — an idea also echoed by Weber’s Tech­nical divi­sion of labour whereby there is spe­cial­ism and the use of machines (Weber, 1947: 219). Unlike the human char­ac­ters each machine has a set task to do within each pro­ject. Their skills are lim­ited solely to that task and they are largely phys­ic­ally unable to learn a new skill. Each machine has been cre­ated simply for that repet­it­ive task and no oth­ers, if a machine decides to try and change its role then this always leads to dif­fi­culties and them return­ing to their ori­ginal role as exem­pli­fied by Dizzy attempt­ing to become a scare­crow (Little, Scare­crow Dizzy, 1999). So although they are given human char­ac­ter­ist­ics there is a strong machine men­tal­ity to this.

From here I will, how­ever, argue that it is very fit­ting to read BtB from the other per­spect­ive, that instead of anthro­po­morph­ised machines that demon­strate some divi­sion of labour they are work­ers who have become dehu­man­ised through this divi­sion of labour to become rep­res­en­ted simply as machines. The idea of a worker becom­ing simply an exten­sion of their machine due to the divi­sion of labour (Ritzer, 2008) is one which is as true today with com­puters as it would be in the fact­ory set­ting. It can cer­tainly be argued that for the work­ers under Bob and Wendy, who have to repeat their sole skill with a machine again and again they have simply become recog­nised as that skill and machine rather than a human with other attributes.

This read­ing can be taken fur­ther look­ing at the hier­arch­ies which exist, although there is undoubtedly a hier­archy amongst the machines with Scoop unof­fi­cially at the top. The biggest hier­archy which exists is cer­tainly between the skilled work­ers (the char­ac­ters depic­ted as human) and the non-skilled (those shown as machines). The non-skilled are widely treated as chil­dren who although keen to learn have no real abil­ity to as there is no pro­gres­sion between shows.

The main area in which this read­ing does, how­ever, fall down is the rela­tion­ship between the skilled and non-skilled work­ers where des­pite hav­ing to be guided, the non-skilled work­ers are always appre­ci­ated and val­ued. Rather than being viewed as replace­able they are seen as unique. Also des­pite their unskilled, repet­it­ive work the machines do gain a sense of enjoy­ment from the work they pro­duce. In the sense of BtB a value is made out of the divi­sion of labour as it enables the gang to work together. In doing so the divi­sion of labour is viewed in an entirely pos­it­ive light.

Ali­en­a­tion

As we have seen, the divi­sion of labour is viewed in a pos­it­ive way set­ting the scene for the lack of depic­tion of ali­en­a­tion with BtB. Of the main char­ac­ters only one can be viewed as really exper­i­en­cing ali­en­a­tion, Spud the Scarecrow.

Bob is still doing jobs for oth­ers and so in the­ory would have little con­trol of the end product he cre­ates, he is also stopped from becom­ing fully engaged within his work due to the out­sourcing of much of his work to the machines. These would nor­mally be seen as ali­en­at­ing factors. There is still a cer­tain amount of free­dom that Bob has within the work as shown when a house ends up pink rather than white (Little, Scare­crow Dizzy, 1999). How­ever, this lack of ali­en­a­tion may also be linked back to the cash nexus which Bobs­ville has man­aged to escape, this has cre­ated a situ­ation where Bob has con­nec­tions with all the people he does work for. The human char­ac­ters within BtB still have con­trol over all areas of the work des­pite hav­ing little engage­ment within the actual phys­ical activ­ity. They are able to con­trol and guide the machines and retain an over­view of the pro­ject from start to finish.

Nev­er­the­less, the machines appear to be engaged within tra­di­tion­ally ali­en­at­ing work. The divi­sion of labour and their inab­il­ity to fully under­stand and engage with their work provides an image of work­ers who would con­ven­tion­ally get little sat­is­fac­tion, yet the machines are shown as gain­ing a great deal of intrinsic value from their work. This can be read as a claim that some work­ers (such as these who can­not com­pletely engage) do not suf­fer from ali­en­a­tion from such a divi­sion of labour, or that group dynam­ics can help to solve issues of alienation.

This is espe­cially inter­est­ing when we con­sider Spud the Scare­crow, who I have claimed is the most ali­en­ated. Spud is a semi-human char­ac­ter who can take part in many dif­fer­ent activ­it­ies although often not very suc­cess­fully. Spud is extremely ali­en­ated by his main job of being a scare­crow which he often views as bor­ing. As such, Spud has a desire to do jobs that the machines and human char­ac­ters are doing. Although Spud is shown as a liab­il­ity fail­ing in much of the work he attempts, he does show some abil­ity bey­ond his set job of being a scare­crow which is more than is demon­strated by most of the machines. It remains unclear if his frus­tra­tion stems from this or his lack of a com­munity, some­thing which both the machines and the human char­ac­ters have.

What does this all tell us? 

There is cer­tainly an argu­ment that by express­ing order­li­ness in Bobs­ville and later Sun­flower Val­ley we are attempt­ing to pro­tect chil­dren from the insec­ur­it­ies of the real­ity of work­ing life, and BtB can be seen as an expres­sion of, indeed a cul­tural mani­fest­a­tion of, cer­tain feel­ings that we have about work.

The strongest read­ing presen­ted here is the view of the machines as dehu­man­ised, low skilled work­ers rather than anthro­po­morph­ised machines. Here BtB shows the danger of unskilled work. Only those who are incap­able of learn­ing are not ali­en­ated by this work. There is a cer­tain con­des­cend­ing tone which the human char­ac­ters use with the machines as though they are chil­dren, yet without the oppor­tun­ity to mature that alone can tell us a great deal about the way we view unskilled, prac­tical work within a sin­gu­lar area. Although the machines are shown to be happy with their pos­i­tion, a hier­archy between the char­ac­ters is clear with Bob being placed unmis­tak­ably at the top. For most view­ers in the audi­ence that BtB is aimed at their desire is to be like Bob rather than being like one of the other char­ac­ters.[2] BtB can then be read as show­ing issues of being an unskilled worker who exper­i­ences a divi­sion of labour, des­pite these work­ers not exper­i­en­cing ali­en­a­tion within them­selves per­haps due to a sense of unity with other workers.

For more about Bob, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/bobthebuilder/ and http://www.bobthebuilder.com/uk/.

Ref­er­ences

  1. Anthony, P. (1977). The Ideo­logy of Work. Lon­don: Tav­is­tock Publications.
  2. Chichester-Clark, R. (1976). On the Qual­ity of Work­ing Life . In M. Weir, Job Sati­fac­tion (pp. 26–31). Fontana: Fontana.
  3. Clayre, A. (1974). Work and Play. New York: Harper & Row.
  4. Cooper, R. (1976). How Jobs Motiv­ate. In M. Weir, Job Sat­is­fac­tion (pp. 138–147). Fontana: Fontana.
  5. Grey, C. (1998). Child’s Play: Rep­res­ent­a­tions of Organ­iz­a­tion in Children’s Lit­er­at­ure. In J. Has­sard, & R. Hol­l­i­day, Organ­iz­a­tion Rep­res­ent­a­tion (pp. 131–148). Lon­don: Sage.
  6. Hamper, B (1991) Riv­et­head. New York. Warner Books
  7. Little, B. &. (2005). Benny’s Back. Bob the Builder: Pro­ject Fix It . HIT Entertainment.
  8. Little, B. &. (2001). One shot Wendy Series 4 Ep 5. Bob the Builder . HIT Entertainment.
  9. Little, B. &. (1999). Scare­crow Dizzy. Bob the Builder . HIT Entertainment.
  10. Little, B. &. (2001). Sneez­ing Scoop. Bob the Builder . HIT Entertainment.
  11. Marx, K. (1986). The Eco­nomic and Philo­soph­ical manu­scripts of 1844. In J. Elster, Karl Marx, A Reader (pp. 35–47). Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press.
  12.  Mészáros, I. (1975). Marx’s The­ory of Ali­en­a­tion. Whit­stable: Whit­stable Litho Ltd.
  13. Reeves, R. (2001). Happy Mondays. Lon­don: Pear­son Education.
  14. Ritzer, G. (2008). The McDon­ald­iz­a­tion of Soci­ety 5. Lon­don: Sage.
  15. Sen­nett, R. (2008). The Crafts­man. Lon­don: Allen Lane, Pen­giun Books.
  16. Stran­gle­man, T., & War­ren, T. (2008). Work and soci­ety. Lon­don: Oxon.

 

[1] When refer­ring to the show as a whole rather than the sin­gu­lar char­ac­ter I will now refer to BtB.

[2] This con­clu­sion was drawn from a highly unscientific poll of my nephew and 6 of his friends. Of the 7 asked sep­ar­ately 6 iden­ti­fied with Bob, one with Spud. Obvi­ously other stud­ies need to be con­duc­ted before draw­ing a formal conclusion.