Filmmaker explores America’s hate for Barney in new doc

PHILADELPHIA — Barney, the big, purple dinosaur’s ever-present smile, his saccharine song lyrics that force-fed love to the masses, engendered a level of hate few children’s characters have ever seen.

Barney stuffed animals were torn apart and run over at public events. An online group declared “jihad” on him a decade before most Americans had even heard that word. His most infamous song, “I Love You,” may have been used to torture prisoners.

Tommy Avallone, a Haddon Heights, Camden County, native, spent two years immersed in the Barney universe researching his latest documentary, “I Love You, You Hate Me.” The experience, he said, didn’t drive him over the edge; it made him a better father, and a little less cynical.

“Why would we make people feel bad for liking something? Super simple things can sometimes heal scars or knock down barriers,” Avallone, 39, said. “I hope the film makes some people rethink the things they say around others, especially children. Barney has done that for me.”

Avallone, who lives in Audubon, N.J., with his wife and two children, has explored other, more beloved cultural phenomenons in the past, including Santa Claus and Bill Murray. Too old to enjoy “Barney & Friends,” which ran from 1992 to 2010, Avallone said he grew up dismissing the show as kiddie pablum like most tweens, teens and adults. But that focused ire, the organized hate directed at Barney for years, is what drew his interest as a filmmaker. Specifically, it was an old news clip of a “Barney Bashing” event at the University of Nebraska.

“At the end, the newscasters said, ‘That’s the future of the country’,” he said. “And I thought it would be great to explore our current times, to explore love and hate, though the lens of Barney.”

The two-part documentary, which debuts on Peacock Wednesday, is an examination of that hate, not a celebration. Meeting the people behind the purple costume, the musicians who wrote the songs, and the now-grown children who appeared in the popular television show, do much to humanize the show. Singer Demi Lovato, who appeared on the show as a child, has said Barney “saved her life.”

Most of the show’s cast and creators earnestly believed in the message.

“Barney stands for inclusion, acceptance,” Bob West, the original voice of Barney, says in the documentary’s trailer.

Children’s television stars Bill Nye, the Science Guy and Steve Burns of “Blue’s Clues” make appearances.