scrotums and Haman and racism, oh my!
This "High Power of Lucky" commentary from "the Brookeshelf" became particularly funny after watching "Idiocracy" last night. (About a future in which everyone in the U.S. is an idiot and the most popular t.v. show is called "Ow! My balls!")
Evan says the creator of "Beavis and Butthead" has some nerve making "Idiocracy." I say, the creator of "Beavis and Butthead" had to make "Idiocracy."
Also at the Brookshelf, though sadly not scrotum-related, is this lovely review of Elizabeth Enright's classic, The Saturdays.
***
So I've been encountering a lot of weird censorship issues lately. Just the status quo for a modern parent? The other day, while reading Sammy Spider's First Purim at our temple preschool, I saw that "wicked" had been blacked out. Is that perhaps taking a commitment to anti-bias education a little too far? Isn't Haman's wickedness kind of necessary to the story of Purim? What the heck are the groggers for without that?
Then I got home and at the end of the fifth chapter of Little House in the Big Woods encountered a song which begins:
"There was an old darkey
And his name was Uncle Ned,
And he died long ago, long ago.
There was no wool on the top of his head,
In the place where the wool ought to grow."
Yi! I had expected to have to provide more balanced informations on Indians as we read the book--and have already had to provide more balanced information on wolves! (Farley Mowat would be proud of me.) But I wasn't expecting that. I dealt with it in my usual cowardly fashion, saying I didn't know the tune to that song and ending the chapter.
Loving classic children's books means having to deal with these unpleasant surprises, and I don't think anyone has come up with a perfect solution. I have a set of the lightly edited "Books of Wonder" edition "Oz" books all waiting for my son--animouse convinced me these were a good idea, because the hell with the children, she doesn't like having to read stuff like the above--but there has yet to be a rewritten version of the Doctor Dolittle books that didn't destroy them. I don't know if there has been an updated version of LHitBW; I don't know how I'd feel about it if there were. These books are someone's memories, after all. Does it destroy something about the books to substitute another song? And if we start, where do we stop? Look at the censored Doctor Dolittle's Post Office and the answer seems to be, "we don't." Even the mention of race was deemed inappropriate.
There is only one thing I know for sure about this: I will not be going to the library and demanding they remove Little House in the Big Woods. Not even if I come across a scrotum.
Evan says the creator of "Beavis and Butthead" has some nerve making "Idiocracy." I say, the creator of "Beavis and Butthead" had to make "Idiocracy."
Also at the Brookshelf, though sadly not scrotum-related, is this lovely review of Elizabeth Enright's classic, The Saturdays.
***
So I've been encountering a lot of weird censorship issues lately. Just the status quo for a modern parent? The other day, while reading Sammy Spider's First Purim at our temple preschool, I saw that "wicked" had been blacked out. Is that perhaps taking a commitment to anti-bias education a little too far? Isn't Haman's wickedness kind of necessary to the story of Purim? What the heck are the groggers for without that?
Then I got home and at the end of the fifth chapter of Little House in the Big Woods encountered a song which begins:
"There was an old darkey
And his name was Uncle Ned,
And he died long ago, long ago.
There was no wool on the top of his head,
In the place where the wool ought to grow."
Yi! I had expected to have to provide more balanced informations on Indians as we read the book--and have already had to provide more balanced information on wolves! (Farley Mowat would be proud of me.) But I wasn't expecting that. I dealt with it in my usual cowardly fashion, saying I didn't know the tune to that song and ending the chapter.
Loving classic children's books means having to deal with these unpleasant surprises, and I don't think anyone has come up with a perfect solution. I have a set of the lightly edited "Books of Wonder" edition "Oz" books all waiting for my son--animouse convinced me these were a good idea, because the hell with the children, she doesn't like having to read stuff like the above--but there has yet to be a rewritten version of the Doctor Dolittle books that didn't destroy them. I don't know if there has been an updated version of LHitBW; I don't know how I'd feel about it if there were. These books are someone's memories, after all. Does it destroy something about the books to substitute another song? And if we start, where do we stop? Look at the censored Doctor Dolittle's Post Office and the answer seems to be, "we don't." Even the mention of race was deemed inappropriate.
There is only one thing I know for sure about this: I will not be going to the library and demanding they remove Little House in the Big Woods. Not even if I come across a scrotum.
posted by web at 11:59 AM
1Bligs:
When I read LHitBG to my kids (two boys, two girls) I sang the song (fairly tunelessly) and made no mention of what it was about: the age they were I think it was just a nonsense song to them, and they probably heard 'darkey' as 'donkey' anyway. There are other songs in the Little House series that are confusing or nonsensical, especially to children in the UK who don't know a lot of the history of the States. When they were older and there was reference to 'darkies' in Little Town on the Prairie, I was able to talk to the 10 yr old that was listening and explain it properly, and the children got the idea very quickly. You don't need to censor the past for them, I don't think.
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