The other day Teletubbies aired a film clip about a girl, about 5, making a whimsical face out of a pumpkin. She was in what was apparently the basement of a home. All the craft supplies had been laid out for her, presumably, by some unnamed adult. There were muffin tins of glitter and dry beans, piles of colorful dry leaves and felt, and so forth.

"I'm going to make a pumpkin head," says the girl, and she comments on what she's doing as she glues on leaf ears, straw hair, bean eyes, mouth and nose made of something crafty. When she's all done, she says, "I'm going to take my pumpkin head outside." We see the pumpkin head on the doorstep and hear her voice: "I love my pumpkin head."

The finished product is whimsical and cute, artfully done. I was impressed. Then the Teletubbies shouted "Again, again!" and the clip repeated. This time I saw that the whole video was faked through severe re-editing. The girl places the nose right under the ear, for instance, and uses huge globs of glue for tiny objects. In the following shots, these faux pas appear "corrected." She piles on a wad a straw hair; the hair of the completed objet d'art is meticulously arranged. The cleverly cartoonish eyes and smile of the final pumpkin face are not the authentic little-child creations of the purported artist.

I don't think she would have been able to carry that pumpkin up the steps herself, either.

Teletubbies uses film clips from around the world: an Indian girl makes a chutney sandwich; Nairobi children drag simple, homemade-looking sleds of cardboard and rope up tall sand dunes and slide down; British children go to the greengrocers with their mum; Taiwanese children make paper lanterns; Brazilian children plant some flowers into a prepared bed and then water them. Only on the American clips have I noticed fakery.

The only other faked clip I've seen so far was about a little boy and girl shining a red and a yellow flashlight beam on the ceiling, laughing and cheering as they made the little circles of light dance together and chase one another.

In more than one shot, you can clearly see that the circles of light (supposedly from the children's flashlights) are steady, though the children's hands are wobbling and waving about. They are not making the little circles of light after all.

Also American.

It makes me wonder, what is the Pumpkin Head film clip supposed to be about, really? What do Americans expect of their children?

How is a Teletubby viewer the age of the girl in the clip going to feel when he or she tries to make a pumpkin head and can't make one that "looks as good"?