What fresh hell is this?

Things are getting worse here in le Château Ottawacker: I may well have just discovered Dante’s sixth circle of hell – you know, the one reserved for heresy. 

I’ve been slowly working my way through the excellent Clive James translation of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy and have been impressed at how he makes this rather dense text sing. Like James, I tried to work my way through the original with dictionary and tongue firmly clamped between my teeth; unlike James, I didn’t finish – in fact, I manage three lines. The road to these circles of Dante’s is paved with multitudes of my good intentions.
 
Silly me, I had always imagined this to be a work of allegory, as opposed to Alighieri, but incredibly on this grey and rainy morning, I found out it was reality. For today I discovered that the ubiquitous Paw Patrol exists in French. And, as such, it makes an excellent language acquisition tool for Ottawacker Jr. For a second, I contemplated wandering back into the fifth circle (wrath) or advancing to the seventh (violence) – “we don’t need a TV, if I smash it up, all our problems are solved,” I thought – but finally invented my own circle (resignation).
 
Of course Paw Patrol exists in French. It probably exists in Tagalog and Martian. It is omnipresent, sending liminal messages of patience and community and love to all who are subjected to its limitless reach. And don’t get me wrong (how could you, after that?), I am fine with those messages being inculcated in the plum of my loins. I have just had my fair share of it over the past four years. No, my problems are over-exposure, and the fact that my own defence mechanisms against the English version will no longer work. For the longest time, I have called the Mayor Humdinger Mayor Bumswinger, for example. But now, in French, he is called Monsieur le maire Hollinger”… try and be funny with that to a seven-year-old boy. Similarly, Foggy Bottom became Soggy Bottom… again, I got nothin’.
 
So, while Ottawacker Jr. sat in front of the same episode twice in a row, so he could then relate the story to me in French using the five stages he is learning (Premièrement, puis, après, ensuite, finalement), I sat in the next room staring at the ceiling and wondering how all of this came to pass. How did “Pat’Patrouille” (as it is known in Québec) become such a dominant force in Canadian and global culture?
 
The answer is actually quite surprising. Paw Patrol isn’t a children’s program designed to entertain and educate children, it is actually a long advertisement by Spin Master designed to interest kids in its range of merchandise. It is unbelievably successful. Indeed, in 2016, the Toronto Star reported that the company’s revenues reached US$161.7 million in a single quarter. That’s more than I make. Kids love it – and it is a really smart idea, and it does no harm, so I suppose I am right in not really caring too much.
 
But how much do the pups get out of this? Do Chase and Rubble get gold-lined kennels? Does Zuma have an endless supply of treats brought to on a silver salver him by a butler? Is Marshall getting the therapy his obvious illness requires? One suspects not – so, sadly, this must go down once more as a further example of the human exploitation of animals.
 
Thank God it is Friday.