All the early college and political cartoons that are pretty clearly definable as racist for their day, and about which hardly anyone knows, were published long ago in "The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing But the Seuss". Since cancel culture had hardly been invented, the author took the high road and affirmed it was a weakness in Geisel's overall output that disappeared over time. More people are interested in the nudes ("The Seven Lady Godivas" etc.). However, "The Sneetches" is a powerful argument against racism, in a children's story, just as "Yertle the Turtle" is a powerful argument against the deep state.
The deep state loves cancellation. When anyone can be canceled over anything then by the "virtue" of selective enforcement there is no law left except power. Think and speak freely and take refuge under the cross.
True Geiselphiles recognize that the "brat books" as he called them were one part of a vast empire including much politicking during WW2 and heavy advertising for Flit and Esso. This is not about Beginner Books at all, and "The Sneetches" is a very clear call against racism. However, in the political cartoons I found at least four N words. I didn't realize that the one below is actually in context poking a bit of fun at the frequency of the N word when Ted was 25, so it's not as direct as it appears, but it's still pretty far out there:
Swamprangers ftw. I haven't dove deep into Seuss, but what I've read about how he treated his wife is deplorable. I get judging a man on his corpus, but from what I've recently read of their works, I'd take Crockett Johnson, Margaret Wise Brown, Dorothy Kunhardt, and a variety of his contemporaries, over him from a conceptual, and literary, standpoint. Add to that, The Cat in the Hat, if you're looking for pedophilic messaging, is fucking horrific. Not really a fan.
You're right about the divorce. I used to like "Oh Say Can You Say?" until I realized it was dedicated to Audrey before he married her. There are much worse anthropomorphs messing with kids than the mere Cat in the Hat. However I "canceled" Scarry way back so can't relate.
Sort of wondering why you cancelled Scarry? Honestly, I just remember loving the illustrationa from MY childhood, haven't really broken his stuff out with the kiddo yet. We've paged through a few of his simpler books (counting one and one's that's like a dictionary of airport items) and nothing has come at me as creepy as TCITH's final words saying "Don't Tell your single Mom about my strange visits (not to mention the poor fish who sees through the mask)".
Not having dug in too much, I'd guess Scarry has some "counter cultural" leanings (the cops are often pigs), maybe sprinkled in with vaguely perverse imagery? Completely guessing though.
In recent years there has been research revealing radical undertones in the books written and illustrations drawn by Dr. Seuss
If you have to spend time researching simple and short children's books to find the bad content (i.e. it's not obvious) then maybe it's not the book that has the radical undertones but your mind does.
It also makes me think that these researchers don't understand children very well. Dr. Suess' books are designed for very young children. For children at an age where they only understand very basic and obvious concepts, so the books have to be very simple. Any subtle nuance, even if intentional (almost certainly imagined in this case) is not going to be picked up by these children. My guess is these 'researchers' specialize in Marxist studies and not early childhood development.
This whole thing sounds a lot like revisionist history to me, like described in 1984. A lot of cancel culture where they dig into someone's past to find dirt sounds a lot like that me.
I don’t know what radical undertones they’re talking about with Dr Suess’ books, but I agree it’s probably not that obvious... but that’s how subliminal stimuli works; being conditioned without even knowing it. A technique perfected a long time ago.
Subliminal stimuli tends to be used for adults because adults tend to have conscious filters for information in that they don't normally believe something just because they have been told and use these filters to judge whether information is trust worthy or not. If you want to plant an idea in their head, you have to try to bypass those.
For Children, this doesn't make much sense to do or work for the following reasons:
Children, especially the very young (the audience for these books), don't have those conscious filters yet. That's why they tend to accept what they are told and take things at face value. You don't need to go subliminal because there aren't any filters to bypass yet.
Younger Children also don't have the eye for detail yet that adults do, both consciously and unconsciously. So if you do try to put some subliminal symbol into the literature, they are almost never going to pick-up on it.
What sometimes helps with subliminal stimuli is to try to tap into a previous experiences someone may have has and try to manipulate that to get your message across (this one generally needs to be tailored but there are a few shared ideas that most people do have in society that can potentially be exploited, but this this tactic is very hit and miss). Very young children tend not to have that many experiences yet, so those types of levers simply aren't there to be pulled yet.
The bigger question here is why are they going after him (the MSM). Reading up on him in Wikipedia (hopefully he's not a political enough figure that his entry would be manipulated), he was not by any means a right winger. He was a centrist at best, looked like center-left. If there were to be subliminal messages in his books, I very much doubt they would be right leaning. There was some indication that he tried to make his books politically neutral. Maybe that's why they want to cancel them. So they can replace them with their own openly radical literature.
Dr. Seuss described himself as "subsersive as hell" and it's true that the kids' books often had adult themes put into simplistic, bite-size pieces. The racism charge has nothing to do with the kids' books at all. Usually the message is clear to discerning adults ("Butter Battle Book", against nuclear war; "Yertle the Turtle", against Hitler); sometimes it's a bit questionable ("Lorax", against environmental degradation); and sometimes it's so good it gets repurposed ("Horton Hears a Who", against racism but then reappropriated contrary to Audrey's wishes as being against abortion).
It's definitely revisionist to hold his collegiate-level indiscretions as an excuse to ignore all his later work. They were immature and wrong, like many things rejected by cancel culture. When cancellers have no outsiders left they turn on themselves. The better approach is to recognize that we're all flawed and recognize where we've been and what we've done since then. There is only One who is good.
Stories with racial undertones are only good if they praise/glorify the pre approved race. Trying to dissect complex issues and reach others to see past superficial qualities is BAD
One of the first to go was “Little House on the Prairie” books. Can’t have true personal accounts of the pioneers in the west being read by children, Oh Heavens No! The libs clutch their pearls and screech like the old Progressives of the early 1900’s, all the while showing that they are the true bigots.
Somehow the mr potato head fiasco stopped. We have to stop this one the same way.
The one thing that appears is sacred to the left is destroying everything that was so they can replace it with their perverted process.
The characters are fucking green. This just shows the lunacy of the left.
All the early college and political cartoons that are pretty clearly definable as racist for their day, and about which hardly anyone knows, were published long ago in "The Seuss, The Whole Seuss, and Nothing But the Seuss". Since cancel culture had hardly been invented, the author took the high road and affirmed it was a weakness in Geisel's overall output that disappeared over time. More people are interested in the nudes ("The Seven Lady Godivas" etc.). However, "The Sneetches" is a powerful argument against racism, in a children's story, just as "Yertle the Turtle" is a powerful argument against the deep state.
The deep state loves cancellation. When anyone can be canceled over anything then by the "virtue" of selective enforcement there is no law left except power. Think and speak freely and take refuge under the cross.
Can you link one that is racist?
True Geiselphiles recognize that the "brat books" as he called them were one part of a vast empire including much politicking during WW2 and heavy advertising for Flit and Esso. This is not about Beginner Books at all, and "The Sneetches" is a very clear call against racism. However, in the political cartoons I found at least four N words. I didn't realize that the one below is actually in context poking a bit of fun at the frequency of the N word when Ted was 25, so it's not as direct as it appears, but it's still pretty far out there:
https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/28/living/feat-racist-dr-seuss-drawing/index.html
Dr. Seuss should be judged on his whole corpus just like Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, or Randall Kennedy.
Swamprangers ftw. I haven't dove deep into Seuss, but what I've read about how he treated his wife is deplorable. I get judging a man on his corpus, but from what I've recently read of their works, I'd take Crockett Johnson, Margaret Wise Brown, Dorothy Kunhardt, and a variety of his contemporaries, over him from a conceptual, and literary, standpoint. Add to that, The Cat in the Hat, if you're looking for pedophilic messaging, is fucking horrific. Not really a fan.
But then again I'm a Richard Scarry guy at heart.
You're right about the divorce. I used to like "Oh Say Can You Say?" until I realized it was dedicated to Audrey before he married her. There are much worse anthropomorphs messing with kids than the mere Cat in the Hat. However I "canceled" Scarry way back so can't relate.
Sort of wondering why you cancelled Scarry? Honestly, I just remember loving the illustrationa from MY childhood, haven't really broken his stuff out with the kiddo yet. We've paged through a few of his simpler books (counting one and one's that's like a dictionary of airport items) and nothing has come at me as creepy as TCITH's final words saying "Don't Tell your single Mom about my strange visits (not to mention the poor fish who sees through the mask)".
Not having dug in too much, I'd guess Scarry has some "counter cultural" leanings (the cops are often pigs), maybe sprinkled in with vaguely perverse imagery? Completely guessing though.
If you have to spend time researching simple and short children's books to find the bad content (i.e. it's not obvious) then maybe it's not the book that has the radical undertones but your mind does.
It also makes me think that these researchers don't understand children very well. Dr. Suess' books are designed for very young children. For children at an age where they only understand very basic and obvious concepts, so the books have to be very simple. Any subtle nuance, even if intentional (almost certainly imagined in this case) is not going to be picked up by these children. My guess is these 'researchers' specialize in Marxist studies and not early childhood development.
This whole thing sounds a lot like revisionist history to me, like described in 1984. A lot of cancel culture where they dig into someone's past to find dirt sounds a lot like that me.
I don’t know what radical undertones they’re talking about with Dr Suess’ books, but I agree it’s probably not that obvious... but that’s how subliminal stimuli works; being conditioned without even knowing it. A technique perfected a long time ago.
Subliminal stimuli tends to be used for adults because adults tend to have conscious filters for information in that they don't normally believe something just because they have been told and use these filters to judge whether information is trust worthy or not. If you want to plant an idea in their head, you have to try to bypass those.
For Children, this doesn't make much sense to do or work for the following reasons:
The bigger question here is why are they going after him (the MSM). Reading up on him in Wikipedia (hopefully he's not a political enough figure that his entry would be manipulated), he was not by any means a right winger. He was a centrist at best, looked like center-left. If there were to be subliminal messages in his books, I very much doubt they would be right leaning. There was some indication that he tried to make his books politically neutral. Maybe that's why they want to cancel them. So they can replace them with their own openly radical literature.
Dr. Seuss described himself as "subsersive as hell" and it's true that the kids' books often had adult themes put into simplistic, bite-size pieces. The racism charge has nothing to do with the kids' books at all. Usually the message is clear to discerning adults ("Butter Battle Book", against nuclear war; "Yertle the Turtle", against Hitler); sometimes it's a bit questionable ("Lorax", against environmental degradation); and sometimes it's so good it gets repurposed ("Horton Hears a Who", against racism but then reappropriated contrary to Audrey's wishes as being against abortion).
It's definitely revisionist to hold his collegiate-level indiscretions as an excuse to ignore all his later work. They were immature and wrong, like many things rejected by cancel culture. When cancellers have no outsiders left they turn on themselves. The better approach is to recognize that we're all flawed and recognize where we've been and what we've done since then. There is only One who is good.
Stories with racial undertones are only good if they praise/glorify the pre approved race. Trying to dissect complex issues and reach others to see past superficial qualities is BAD
Suess wrote for Random House.
No fucks given. Cancel away.
I threw away the lorax. Terrible book.
One of the first to go was “Little House on the Prairie” books. Can’t have true personal accounts of the pioneers in the west being read by children, Oh Heavens No! The libs clutch their pearls and screech like the old Progressives of the early 1900’s, all the while showing that they are the true bigots.
This pisses me off.