![]() If the show premiered today, do you think there would be a comparable backlash? Bob West, right, running lines with the cast of "Barney & The Backyard Gang: Waiting For Santa". I think we’ve got some growing up to do as a society in terms of learning to live together and support each other, and to put the community before the individual. I think consumerism is a big contributor, too, because a lot of kids are pressured to wear the coolest thing or buy the coolest toy, so that feeds into it. But there’s a kind of machismo that kids are encouraged to adopt when they’re growing up, and I think that is a big contributor. I won’t go into an analysis of John Locke or anything. I think we have this focus on, and sometimes an obsession with, rugged individualism. What is it about American culture or the American psyche that fosters what you’re describing? They were very receptive to me, very nice. But that turned out to be all in good fun. ![]() I had heard about some internet groups that were out there doing this role-play thing where they were fighting Barney because he was evil and such. I have been online since way before most people accessed the internet. When did you first start to realize there was all this hatred swirling around the show, though? It’s a pretty good indication the love was strong. When you show up at a shopping mall in Hartford, Connecticut, and the sidewalks are lined with parents and strollers, and you get inside, where you expect 600 people but there’s 6,000, that’ll bring you to the present. We’d get to see the love that was being poured out toward Barney, and that was just amazing. But then we would go out and do personal appearances, and we’d have meet-and-greets with kids and parents. We were in the studio so often, and we really didn’t see a lot of the reaction to the show. What did it feel like to be at the center of such a big hit? The show was ubiquitous when I was growing up in the ‘90s. “Barney & Friends” was a genuine pop culture phenomenon. ![]() David Voss, who was shorter than me, fit the costume while I got the voice. Because of a fluke, they had started to build the costume before casting the voice. My agent recommended me to Dennis DeShazer, who was one of the producers of “Barney & Friends.” I auditioned with a lot of other folks. Hit Entertainment / Everett Collectionīob West, a veteran performer who provided the voice for Barney from 1992 to 2000, recalls the production of “Barney & Friends” as a blissful experience that was sometimes shadowed by darker intrusions from the wider world, like a string of death threats he says he received via email. “Parents admit to a cordial dislike of the saccharine saurian, and no self-respecting second-grader will admit to liking Barney.” Barney on "Barney And Friends" in 1992. “Barney is on the receiving end of more hostility than just about any other popular cultural icon I can think of,” the University of Chicago academic W.J.T. The internet gave rise to new genres of anti-Barney humor that freely mixed winking irony with seemingly real rage. Urban legends about the character's dark secrets sprung up. NBA great Charles Barkley beat up Barney in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. School-age kids added violent lyrics to the “Barney & Friends” theme song. The docuseries explores how, throughout the ‘90s and early 2000s, Barney turned into a cultural punching bag, the subject of disdain from adults and derision from kids desperate to disavow their childish pastimes. But not everyone considered Barney a friend, a phenomenon at the heart of a new Peacock documentary series called “I Love You, You Hate Me.” (NBC News and Peacock are both owned and operated by NBCUniversal.)
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