The Surreal School Bus

Thanks to the readings and lectures from the past few weeks of HumCore, I now know that surrealism (specifically surrealist animals) is incredibly prevalent in media targeted at young audiences. It serves as an effective tool to foster engagement in children’s television, and Magic School Bus is a perfect example. The two episodes I’d like to highlight specifically are “The Magic School Bus Gets Eaten” (Season 1, Episode 4) and “The Magic School Bus: In A Beehive” (Season 3, Episode 1); both these episodes involve the class diving (in one episode, literally) head-first into animal habitats and animal-ruled worlds to learn their science lesson for the day. In both these episodes, surrealist animations and situations use animals to simultaneously reflect realities already familiar to its young viewers, while bringing to life an uncanny fantasy world that focuses on animal-human relations.

Episode one of the third season of Magic School Bus follows the class into a beehive, where they learn the intricacies of bee life - by becoming bees themselves. The animation in the episode literally combines the physical being of the students and bees. The surrealist image of animal bodies with human heads allows the humans to ‘be the bees’, while retaining their human minds. While the students’ heads remain in their human form, their tongues take the form of a honeybee’s proboscis, which allows them to slurp honey up in a bee-like manner. The mouth, then, becomes the ultimate point of intersection between bee and human, allowing students to eat like insects but speak like people.