We have always been at war with Mulberry Street
Ending publication of some obscure books isn't itself that big a deal. But it won't stop there.
Dr. Seuss Enterprises is ending publication of six older, less well-known works by the late children’s author. And that, in and of itself, really isn’t that big a deal. I’ve never even heard of most of them, and the one I did read as a child, And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street, didn’t leave that great an impression on me. Some of the illustrations I’ve seen from these books are indeed very cringy in 2021.
If you compare these books’ place in the Dr. Seuss canon to Steven Spielberg’s filmography, they would be the equivalent of Always and 1941. (Actually, I kind of liked 1941, but I seem to be in the minority on that one.)
You can argue that these books are so old they should be in the public domain anyway, but the fact that they won’t be published any longer isn’t the end of the world. There are still printed copies out there which can be traded and around sold.
Um, about that…
You can still buy Mein Kampf and the works of Louis Farrakhan on eBay, but some dated children’s books are suddenly much too dangerous.
And if you want to get the books from your library to see what all the fuss is about, you’d better act fast:
The Toronto Public Library will need an efficient way to dispose of the books once they’ve been pulled from its shelves. Maybe a fire.
Cathy Young, in a column written before eBay decided these books could no longer be sold on its platform, acknowledges that times change and that sometimes, things are “cancelled” for good reason. But she is as creeped out as I am by the sheer suddenness of the Woke war on Dr. Seuss:
As often happens, each side has a point.
There is nothing new about revising or even shelving published works in deference to concerns about racism and other bigotries. Nor is there anything wrong with it. In Victorian England, hardly a bastion of political correctness, Charles Dickens changed some language in reprints of Oliver Twist to cut down on references to the villainous Fagin as "the Jew" after a correspondence with a Jewish woman who criticized him for feeding anti-Semitic prejudice. In the 20th Century, a 1939 Agatha Christie novel whose original title is now unspeakable in polite society was reissued just a few years later as Ten Little Indians (And Then There Were None in the United States); the children's counting rhyme on which the title was based was also changed in the text. In Roald Dahl's 1964 classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the Oompa-Loompas working at Willy Wonka's factory were originally African pygmies. Just a few years later, controversy erupted; Dahl ended up agreeing with his critics and replaced the Black workers with pink and golden-haired "dwarvish hippies."
There is little question that many depictions of racial, ethnic, or religious minorities in books or films from past eras are now unpalatable, with good reason. The same goes for portrayals of women and gays.
And yet there are valid reasons to see the publisher's withdrawal of those six Dr. Seuss books as a worrying sign.
For one, the decision comes in tandem with other moves intended to demote Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) from his iconic status. On the same day, President Biden omitted any mention of Dr. Seuss from his official proclamation to mark Read Across America Day, breaking a tradition started by Barack Obama. The event, first established by the National Education Association in 1998, has always honored Dr. Seuss: His birthday was picked as its date. Now, the NEA says that Read Across America is no longer affiliated with Dr. Seuss Enterprises, and at least one school district in Virginia has been instructing schools to downplay the day's connection to Dr. Seuss because of "strong racial undertones" found in his work.
What's more, the critique of those "racial undertones" has been often tendentious to the point of distortion. …
[…]
No less disturbing, much of the current pushback against Dr. Seuss is based on a 2019 paper by Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens that consistently interprets his work in the most negative light and peddles extreme ideological dogma. Take Dr. Seuss's 1961 book The Sneetches, which has been widely praised for its anti-racist message: Birdlike creatures with stars on their bellies scorn and bully their plain-bellied cousins until a wily salesman brings a device that can add or remove stars, and all the sneetches change so many times they get thoroughly mixed up and decide to treat everyone equally. But Ishizuka and Stephens attack the poem as insidious because it teaches that color shouldn't matter. Echoing Kansas State University scholar Philip Nel, they also read a sinister racist subtext into The Cat in the Hat: The magical cat supposedly resembles images from Black minstrelsy and exists only to entertain two white children.
If such takedowns can get an author moved to the "problematic" list, who and what will escape the purges? Some who support the withdrawal of the six Dr. Seuss books argue that even subtle racism must be "exorcised" from our cultural legacy, especially works intended for children. But if the exorcism targets racial codes so subtle that they are invisible or innocuous to the naked eye (a black-and-white cat wearing white gloves represents racist minstrelsy?), it could do much more harm than good, fostering both paranoia and backlash. And imagine how much art and literature will have to be junked if we ever apply the same magnifying lens to gender stereotypes.
Year Zero isn’t just going to happen on its own, Cathy.
I am well aware that, back in the day, Geisel did indeed draw some cartoons which come across as horribly racist to modern eyes. They may have been racist even by the standards of their time.
I also know that the Dr. Seuss of 1984, who was writing parables about the nuclear arms race, was not the Dr. Seuss of 1944. People evolve over time and must be given the chance to redeem themselves. But you read a piece like this and see that there is absolutely no acknowledgment that Geisel may have changed, nor any suggestion that he deserves any grace or forgiveness. Once a witch, always a witch. And everything he wrote is now tainted.
The real lesson here: buy physical books and hang on to them. What is considered acceptable and even enlightened today might be considered horribly racist tomorrow. But they can’t come into your home and physically go through your bookcase without your permission.
For now, anyway.
If you’re a Republican reading this, and nodding along with my righteous rant against an example of illiberal fundamentalism in action, take a seat. You’re part of the problem yourself.
The increasingly abused term “cancel culture” does not and should not apply just to left-wingers getting people fired from their jobs and bullied out of polite society because they used a racial slur once. It also applies to things like punishing people for refusing to take part in compelled displays of patriotism.
When left-wingers respond that Colin Kaepernick is a victim of cancel culture, they have a point.
That doesn’t mean Kaepernick (who really is better than many active NFL quarterbacks, though he had regressed from his unlikely Super Bowl run by the time he started his protest campaign) should be free from criticism. I reserve the right to criticize anyone who lionizes a Communist dictatorship and supports complete abolition of the police. And few “cancel culture” victims get lucrative Nike deals out of it.
But I still don’t think he should have lost his day job for expressing himself. I’ve long remembered what someone - I can’t remember who - tweeted when Pence huffily stormed out of a Colts game when some players protested during the anthem. He or she responded that a real leader would have tried to go their locker room after the game to have a real conversation about it.
Speaking of Dr. Seuss, everyone knows the TV special about how the Grinch stole Christmas. But how many of you remember the creepy Grinch Halloween special from 1977?
The musical number that starts at 18:40 is some serious nightmare fuel.
There is a big difference between not promoting something on the one hand, and making it completely inaccessible on the other hand. Older writings, art etc. are a window on past attitudes and ways of thinking... not just of one author or artist, but as an aspect of wider society at that time. Saying that they should be made completely unavailable (and that idea does seem to be out there) feels a little like saying we shouldn’t study history.
That said, I would probably not read some of the books on my shelf from my own childhood to children without explaining the context (and not until an age at which they can understand it at their level). Kids can be taught to think about the implications of what they read, see, hear, watch etc. from an early age, rather than simply absorbing new information uncritically. But that requires the presence of a closely attentive adult, which is not always available in public settings.
Maybe those offensive library books should go into a historical children’s books section - out of the hands of children, but still accessible to adults.
The comparison between the availability of Mein Kampf and the 6 Dr. Zeus books misses an important distinction: Mein Kamf isn't in the Children's section of the bookstore/library. Right or wrong, as a society we don't expose children to overtly racist, violent, and sexually degrading content, especially presented in the form of a positive tale with fun whimsical illustrations. We can debate the extent to which this censorship from the real world is appropriate and at which ages (for example the vilification of mere nudity in children's content is not as prominent in Europe) but surely most societies agree that you probably shouldn't play Texas Chainsaw Massacre to 5 year old.
Mein Kamf is still available at libraries and book stores because it is an important book for historical purposes. But we also don't add it to elementary school reading lists because young minds are very malleable and are not mature enough to handle the intricacies of the content. And I don't think there is any danger that these six books will disappear from public libraries forever, they just won't be in the children's section anymore.