Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared (often abbreviated to DHMIS) is a web series of short films, created by British artists Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling since 2011. It was originally released through the artists' website, later being uploaded on other platforms such as YouTube.^[1]

Each episode is made to appear like a typical children's television program, consisting of singing and talking puppets similar to those of Sesame Street, but eventually takes a dark turn, usually involving gore. The series parodies children's television shows by ironically juxtaposing puppetry and musical songs against psychedelic content and disturbing imagery. Six episodes have been released, on the subjects of creativity, time, love, technology, healthy eating, and dreams.

Plot

Each episode revolves around Yellow Guy, Red Guy, and Duck Guy meeting one or several anthropomorphic characters, who begin a musical number related to a basic concept of day-to-day life with an upbeat melody similar to that of a nursery rhyme. As each song progresses, it becomes apparent that its moral or message is nonsensical or contradicts itself, and that the episode's "teacher" character has ulterior or sinister motives. The climax of each episode typically involves a shock element with use of gore imagery, and sometimes other coercive or warped themes.

Episode 1

The first episode begins in a kitchen where the main cast is eating breakfast. A singing sketchbook teaches the main characters to "get creative", singing about childlike activities. The climax of the episode is an exaggerated depiction of 'creativity' in which the puppets dance frantically and engage in deranged acts like covering a heart in glitter and serving a cake made from viscera. The video ends with everything seemingly restored to normal and the sketchbook telling the puppets to "never be creative again".^[2]

Episode 2

A talking clock, Tony, sings about time.^[3] The protagonists question the reality of time, to Tony's annoyance. The passage of time is accelerated, rapidly ageing the cast. The events are revealed to be part of a television programme watched by the three friends.^[4] This episode introduces Yellow Guy's father, Roy.

Episode 3

At a picnic with Yellow Guy and Red Guy, Duck Guy kills a butterfly. Yellow Guy, distressed, flees to a tree and is found by a butterfly, Shrignold. He and his friends sing about love, saying that true love is kept for one's 'special one'. After a brief anecdote featuring 'Michael, the loneliest boy in town', Shrignold then introduces Yellow Guy to Malcolm, the 'King of Love', and the leader of a cult whom they worship by feeding gravel to him. The cult explains that he must lose his memories and name. The video ends with Yellow Guy waking up where he started, and his friends bringing him an egg which splits, revealing a maggot-like creature who calls Yellow Guy "father" and is promptly killed by Duck Guy.^[5]

Episode 4

The protagonists are playing a game. Colin, a talking computer, begins to sing. He becomes enraged when Red Guy tries to stop him and takes the characters to the 'Digital World'. Colin sings about the "Three Main Activities of the Digital World" – viewing different graphs, Digital Style, and Digital Dancing. These are repeated until a room becomes populated with distorted dancing clones of Colin, Yellow Guy and Duck Guy. Red Guy escapes to find a film crew wearing spandex suits apparently filming a poorly-made replica of the first episode. A crewman snaps a clapperboard, whereupon his head suddenly explodes into glitter.^[6]

Episode 5

The other two main characters seem unable to understand that Red Guy is missing. Various characters led by a lamb chop gives increasingly bizarre and self-contradictory advice about eating habits in song. The song is stopped twice by the telephone ringing. Duck Guy answers the telephone, but does not respond to what he hears on the line. Eventually, he becomes irritated and runs off-set, knocking over the camera. He wakes up in an operating room to finds a large tin can eating his organs. Yellow Guy continues following the song and becomes bloated from eating cans of meat labelled with Duck Guy's picture. Red Guy is shown dressed in a coat and scarf, walking away from a phone booth carrying a suitcase,^[7] revealing he was the one calling throughout the episode. The creators claim that a phone number seen in this video was ringing within seconds of the episode's release, which at first they would answer and pretend to be characters from the show.^[8]

Episode 6

Yellow Guy is in bed, crying because he misses his friends. As he tries to go to sleep, a lamp who sings about dreams appears. Despite Yellow Guy's protests, the Lamp drags him along for an animated sequence that ends with him having a dream about drowning in oil. Yellow Guy then wakes to see the Lamp transform his mattress into oil. Red Guy wakes in an office with multiple other red people wearing clothing. He starts to sing a song about an office file. Later, at a bar, he performs the Creativity song from episode 1. The crowd starts booing. Red Guy notices Roy in the crowd. The microphone and boombox turn into teacher-puppets and he is transported to a dark black room. Red Guy follows the sound of the dream song to a machine with monitors showing Yellow Guy. Red Guy presses buttons that transform the lamp into other characters. Roy taps Red Guy on the shoulder with a massively elongated arm. Seeing Yellow Guy becoming gaunt from his ordeal, Red Guy disconnects the machine's power supply. The scene cuts to a reshoot of episode 1 with the protagonists recoloured. The calendar turns from 19 to 20 June. A sketchbook starts singing but is cut off as the episode ends.^[9]

Characters

• Yellow Guy — One of the three main characters. He has a childlike demeanor. He is the most optimistic and naive of the three puppets. He wears blue overalls and has long blue hair. He becomes increasingly aware of the events taking place around him in the later episodes.
• Red Guy — One of the three main characters. Unlike Yellow Guy and Duck Guy, Red Guy is portrayed through the use of a person wearing a costume. He speaks in a monotonous voice and shows little emotion to the occurrences he and his friends experience.
• Duck Guy^[10] — One of the three main characters. He is the most verbose character. He frequently theorises about or questions what he sees.

• Sketchbook — Educates the puppets about creativity. It is voiced by series co-creator Becky Sloan.
• Tony the Talking Clock — Educates the puppets about time.
• Shrignold^[11] — A talking butterfly who teaches the Yellow Guy about love in the third installment.
• Colin^[12] — A talking computer who teaches the puppets about technology in the fourth episode. Voiced by series co-writer Baker Terry.
• Roy* — Yellow Guy's father.
• Malcolm — The "king of love" whom Shrignold and his friends worship. He is burned in the credits of episode 3, but later makes a cameo as small ornaments around the puppets' house.
• Michael — The "loneliest boy in town" whose story is described in episode 3.
• Gilbert the Globe^[13] — A teacher of episode 4.
• Fridge — Introduced in episode 5, this character has no given name.
• Lamb Chop — Introduced in episode 5, this character has no given name.
• Can — Appeared in episode 5. It has a green label on its body (a can), with green "leaves" sticking out of its lid and mouth.
• Bread Boy^[14] — Appears in the fifth episode.
• Giant Can — A human-sized tin can who ate the organs of Duck Guy in episode 5.
• Lamp — Appears in episode 6 as a teacher.
• Money Man — The man seen holding the characters hostage in the Kickstarter campaign.

Unnamed Characters In Episode 6

• Universe — Depicted as the solar system with its face on the sun, and a rocket ship in its hand.
• American Football — A floating American football.
• Magnet — A horseshoe magnet holding a paper clip.
• Spade — A shovel with a spot of dirt on it.
• Saxophone — A floating saxophone.
• File — A talking file on which is written "DHMIS FILE 6."
• Stoplight — Sings about how red means do not go, and green means go.
• Gel
• Cigarette — The cigarette from the ashtray seen in the background of several episodes.
• Microphone — The microphone that Red Guy holds on the stage.

Production

Sloan and Pelling met while studying Fine Art, and Animation respectively at Kingston University where they started THIS IS IT Collective with some friends.^[15] They produced the first episode of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared in their free time with no budget. When they started on the project they imagined making it into a series, but initially dropped the idea after finishing the first episode. After the short film gained popularity, they decided to expand it into a series.^[16] Channel 4's Random Acts commissioned the second episode. The show soon attracted mainstream commissioners, but Sloan and Pelling turned them down because they "wanted to keep it fairly odd" and "have the freedom to do exactly what we wanted."^[8]

In May 2013, Sloan and Pelling announced that they would start a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to make four or more additional episodes, one every three months, starting in September 2014. They uploaded low-quality camera footage of the characters being taken hostage and held for ransom.^[17] A 12-year-old American boy tried to use hacked credit card information to donate £35,000 to the campaign, but he was caught and those funds were thrown out.^[18] Their Kickstarter goal of £96,000 was reached on 19 June 2014, and in total £104,935 was raised.^[17]

In January 2016, Sloan and Pelling collaborated with Lazy Oaf to release a line of clothing based on the characters and themes of the show.^[19]

Reception

The original short film became a viral hit and the series grew to become a cult phenomenon. The six episodes have so far amassed 94.6 million views on YouTube.^[20] Scott Beggs listed the original short film as number 8 on his list of the 11 best short films of 2011.^[21] Carolina Mardones listed the first episode as number 7 in her top ten short films of 2011.^[22] It was also included in as part of a cinema event in Banksy's Dismaland.^[23][24] In April 2016, the main characters of the series were featured on the cover of the magazine Printed Pages, along with an "interview" of the three main characters written by the magazine's editor.^[25][26] All six episodes of DHMIS were included in the September 2016 festival XOXO.^[27]

Drew Grant of the Observer wrote that the series episodes are "horrifying nightmarish absolutely beautiful" and "mind-melting".^[28] Freelance writer Benjamin Hiorns observed that "it's not the subject matter that makes these films so strangely alluring, it's the strikingly imaginative set and character design and the underlying Britishness of it all."^[29] Joe Blevins of The A.V. Club praised the show's "sense-to-nonsense ratio" and its production values.^[30] Samantha Joy of TenEighty praised the sixth episode of the series, writing that it "creates a provocative end to a pretty dark narrative about content creation."^[31]

Themes

Pelling, when asked about how the film came about, said that the purpose was "how not to teach something" and "how an abstract concept like creativity is kind of stupid when people try to teach it in a limited way that [they] do". In addition, he comments on how the video is open for interpretation, and how, when different people reach different conclusions about the video, they may all be valid in their own right.^[32]

A student writer for Nouse compared the appeal of the first episode to themes in Gothic literature, arguing that they are both "tapping into the same cultural fear of a violent subconscious hiding beneath the facade of normality."^[33] In The Wesleyan Argus, another student writer called the series a "fine example of the era of esotericism" and noted that, "There is a building meta-commentary on the relationships between viewer, perception, creator, participant, and art (and perhaps death) that began with the first episode, but what that commentary is trying to say is not yet entirely clear. However, there is an absolute sense that the series is building toward a culmination."^[34]

Creators

Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling are British graphic designers, artists and animators. Their advertising runs through commercial productions.^[20] The duo have worked as part of the THIS IS IT Collective.^[35]

Their content consists of videos, graphic design art, animation, music, and working with real-life materials to resemble things in the real world as art.^[36] They have won multiple awards, including the 2012 SXSW Midnight Shorts Award,^[37][38] and the 2016 ADC Young Guns award.^[39]

References

External links

• Official YouTube channel
• Becky and Joe's website