Deconstructing the 'Rubber Duckie Song’

Simple lyrics hide subversive 'woke' agenda

In 1970, a nest of Communist fellow travelers at the Public Broadcasting System's Sesame Street program created a song that has weaseled its way into the bath and hygiene habits of children throughout America.

Through the character of "Ernie," a seemingly harmless muppet, the "Rubber Duckie Song" was presented to America's children in a steamy bathtub scene, with the muppet's private parts (assuming he has any) barely concealed by bubbles.

But of greater concern is the philosophy and issues concealed in the lyrics. 

We will use Marxist Critical Theory against itself to examine the "meaning behind the muppet" through reverse reification.  The term reification is from the Latin "res" or "thing," i.e. turning something abstract into something concrete. The process of reverse reification will take the material object of the duckie and then discover and deconstruct the ideas that underlie it. 

A little history is required first. After the death of Hegel and then Karl Marx's adoption of his dialectic method, the Frankfurt School combined this with Freud's psychoanalysis for a critique of social institutions including religion and politics. Today the same tools are famously applied to race in Critical Race Theory, but also to feminism, gender and other areas in advanced academic courses.

When we take these tools and reverse engineer them - focusing on the “Rubber Duckie Song” - the results are shocking.

First Verse: "Rubber duckie you're the one,

"You make bathtime lots of fun.

"Rubber duckie I'm awfully fond of you."

First - Why a Duck? OK, yes - that's a famous scene from the Marx Brothers film The Cocoanuts. But perhaps you already see the tie-in between Karl and Groucho here. Very subtle.

The über-positive opinions toward this duck expressed in the song recall similar positions taken by PETA and other radical animal rights groups. There are echoes of the philosophy of Peter Singer and his animal liberation theories. Do we really want to put the rights and consciousness of ducks or other fowl on the same level as humans?

It's also important to notice the spelling of "duckie" - "ie" instead of the more American "y" at the end. This bit of cognitive dissonance causes a brain stutter that opens the young mind, allowing subliminal ideas to seep in.

Second: Why is it a RUBBER duckie? There are any number of other substances that this bath toy could have been composed of. Multiple plastics like polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride or polyethylene were available. The dangerous fingerprints of the environmental lobby are evident here. Sure, plastics take thousands of years to degrade, but the plastics industry is still a main building block of America's global business economy.

I'll skip over the disturbing indications of inter-species love by Ernie, whatever species he is, being "awfully fond of" the inanimate duckie.

Second Verse: "Rubber duckie joy of joys.

"When I squeeze you, you make noise.

"Rubber duckie you're my very best friend it's true."

The "squeezing of the duckie" represents, in this instance, the supposed oppression of the suffering workers by their capitalist overlords. The characters are acting out a political performance, a kind of Kabuki theater, in which the "noise" emitted by the duckie who is suffering in extremis is a call for social transformation. The relationship that starts out as "joy" in Rousseau’s state of nature becomes a vicious competition as civilization progresses. Once the workers throw off their chains, the state will wither away and society will be "very best friends" again.

The Bridge: "Oh, every day when I make my way to the tubby,

"I find a little fellow who's cute and yellow and chubby - Rub-a-dub-a dubby"

First - Why yellow? I'm curious. The Vatican flag is primarily yellow. Is this an attempt to denigrate religion, specifically Catholics? Or the opposite -  to promote a papist slant to infant baptism of the duckie, implied by the tub setting? This is where things start to get confusing. But let's move on.

By designating the duckie as "little" and "chubby" we see signs of body shaming. Surveys show that most body shaming comes from those closest to you, like family, friends and perhaps tub-mates. The appearance of these slurs in the song pushes the need for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion standards - "woke” standards that do more to divide Americans than to produce equality.

"Rub-a-dub-a dubby" tells us that the tub experience is invoking a hallucinogenic rapture expressed through ecstatic glossolalia.

Last Verse: "Rubber duckie, you're so fine,

"And I'm lucky that you're mine.

"Rubber duckie, I'm awfully fond of you."

By emphasizing the ownership over another person indicated by the phrase "you're mine," the lyricists make a veiled, ironic allusion to the evils of slavery, perhaps including a hidden demand for reparations. Do America's children need to have racial divisions stirred up by a novelty song? 

It's shocking to recognize creeping wokeness even as early as 1970. But now that it's been unmasked, we hope you'll be able to get this subversive earworm out of your head.

Next time: The Influence of Stoicism in the development of Romper Room.