The Dr. Seuss issue

[Pajamaman]

And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street was actually Seuss's first published book for children. I wonder if the image for which the book has been banned was historically accurate at the time of publication in 1937.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by hildea

This has become an issue because some people with a persecution complex have decided that a normal business decision is some kind of attack on their freedom

Pretty much.

I think eBay delisting the books was stupid.

But I have no problem with the foundation withdrawing the books. It reminds me of Stephen King pulling his early book Rage from publication. But when he did that it wasn't politically/financially advantageous for talking heads to make a fuss.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street was actually Seuss's first published book for children. I wonder if the image for which the book has been banned was historically accurate at the time of publication in 1937.

Not exactly. After the Qing dynasty fell and the Republic of China was established in 1912, the queue hairstyle for men was abolished. However, the association of Chinese men with that hairstyle may still have been fresh in the minds of many American's at that time as Dr. Seuss later mentioned.

Here is a link to San Francisco's museum's webpage about its Chinatown: http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist9/cook.html

As for Chinese fashion in the 1930s, it was a time of change. Many urban Chinese who could afford it, adopted western suits. Other Chinese continued to wear more traditional clothing. Here is a link to photographs taken by an American working in the American embassy in China in the 1930s: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cultur...91.htm#Content

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by hildea

This has become an issue because some people with a persecution complex have decided that a normal business decision is some kind of attack on their freedom

If it was a simple business decision, then why the need to publicly announce it on the anniversary of his birthday? They could have just quietly gone ahead and done it. Books go out of print all of time, and it would have been easy to explain if anyone had noticed and asked.

Originally Posted by hildea

It could also be a shrewd (if somewhat cynical) decision from Seuss' heirs: Some old books don't sell well, so let's tell people we're withdrawing them for ideological reasons, because then the people who disagree will buy out our remaining stock as a political gesture.

That is a possibility, but I doubt it.

As I said in an earlier post, I suspect that there was some pressure put on the Seuss foundation directly or indirectly to make this decision. However, I also suspect that certain elements are deliberately fanning the flames on this issue.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by hildea

Imagine yourself being a child of mostly Chinese descent, or a parent of Chinese descent reading for your child, and coming across that page. Can you seriously not see why the Seuss rights owners decided to stop reprinting it?

Hmm... I did ask children of Chinese descent and parents of full Chinese descent. The consensus was that if the book had been published in the 2000's, it would not be acceptable. For when it was published and considering that it was written and illustrated by foreign devils, it served to show the changes in attitudes though the copy being looked at was the 1978 modification minus the queue and bright yellow skin colouring.

Originally Posted by hildea

[*]And not quite the same, but related: Every year in December, there's a news story about some primary school somewhere deciding to change the usual Christmas celebrations and decorations to a more generic winter celebration, to accomodate a religious minority. The usual suspects write about Muslims threatening Norwegian culture, the school clarifies that they do this because of some Christian minority which regards a lot of the Norwegian Christmas traditions as heathen, and the noise dies down. Until next year.

Oddly, here the complaints about Christmas AKA the Winter Holiday are mostly from white parents who could be only be called Christian because their parents occasionally attended church but who suffer from the belief that they are insufficiently sensitive to other cultures. The kids seem to regard Christmas decorations much the same as the decorations for other occasions such as Diwali, Nowruz, Hannukah, Ramadan, El-Hijra, etc.

It's hard to argue that most of the Christmas traditions were not borrowed from earlier religions starting with the Roman Saturnalia moving on to the German-Scandinavian Yule. I tend to find the groups objecting to those as being close to the "if God meant man to eat cooked food, we'd be born with stoves in our throats" group.

Edit: For what it's worth, in Canada, the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in July, 2006 formally apologized for the head tax and the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

If it was a simple business decision, then why the need to publicly announce it on the anniversary of his birthday?

Because there were business benefits to them publicly announcing it? The earlier mentions that this doesn't exactly hurt the foundation weren't exaggerated. Why should they have been quiet about a simple business decision if being seen doing it was also part of the plan? Just because what they did is common practice in the business does not preclude them from also reaping other benefits by making a bigger deal out of it. Generating goodwill even possibly being one of them.

Why does it have to be that they caved to pressure? Why can't it be that they were sympathetic to the concerns and agreed that this was best for all concerned? It's not as if they're taking any financial hit here, by taking such a stance.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by hildea

Imagine yourself being a child of mostly Chinese descent, or a parent of Chinese descent reading for your child, and coming across that page.

I think my personality is more determining than my ethnicity.

I don't want to argue whether the books are racist because I haven't yet re-read them, and they shouldn't be suppressed either way. Instead I'll link to someone who makes a good case that you are correct on the racism:

Confront Dr. Seuss’ Racism, Don’t Cancel It: Erasing problematic works as if they never existed won’t prevent stereotyping

On a practical level, such campaigns to ban or suppress books often do more to popularize a questionable work than blot it out, which is especially true in the Seuss case. Who among us does not thrill to obtaining forbidden literature? . . .

Maybe that last sentence is more applicable to journalists like Jack Shafer than to typical parents. But, although the word thrill might be too strong, it does describe me.

Deprived of full access to these memories and context in which the creators worked, we end up expunging the past from the present and forfeiting the lessons that the past, when viewed in full, can teach. Disney’s suppression of Song of the South is softened by the fact that the Internet Archive has preserved a copy of the movie, allowing the independent-minded to point their browsers at it to assess its cruelty firsthand.

Life arrives straight out of the box with rough edges. To paraphrase Seuss, we shouldn’t be so eager to round all of them out. Surely, we’re strong enough to endure the insults of a few pages of vile Seuss. If not, we’re in worse trouble than any of us imagined.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

But I have no problem with the foundation withdrawing the books. It reminds me of Stephen King pulling his early book Rage from publication.

This may be the best, or least-bad, argument yet, in the thread, for book suppression. King was afraid that one of his fictional murders was being enacted in real life, so he suppressed the novel to save lives, as he explains here.

In #15, issybird uses the word “subliminal” to describe the situation this thread is about. Whatever anyone thinks about King’s decision, suppressing books, because of a subliminal message to children, gets us into a deeper assault on freedom to read.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

This may be the best, or least-bad, argument yet, in the thread, for book suppression. King was afraid that one of his fictional murders was being enacted in real life, so he suppressed the novel to save lives, as he explains here.

In #15, issybird uses the word “subliminal” to describe the situation this thread is about. Whatever anyone thinks about King’s decision, suppressing books, because of a subliminal message to children, gets us into a deeper assault on freedom to read.

I think the real issue is that some don't want to admit that there was a public campaign that triggered pulling the Dr Suess books off the market. Obviously, the King situation was a very different situation. I would tend to argue that once the book has been published and is out there, there was very little point for King to stop putting out new copies, but I can understand it and he was the author.

I'm reminded of a small child on movie night at the karate school years ago. He didn't want to watch a particular movie and he didn't want anyone else to watch it either and got very upset that anyone would want to watch it. People who are offended by a specific book can simply not buy it, or if they do buy it and become offended, ask for their money back. Heck, go ahead and put a bad review on Amazon if it makes you feel better. But that's not good enough, that don't want anyone else to be able to buy it either. Frankly, it's arrogance in extreme.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

This may be the best, or least-bad, argument yet, in the thread, for book suppression. King was afraid that one of his fictional murders was being enacted in real life, so he suppressed the novel to save lives, as he explains here.

In #15, issybird uses the word “subliminal” to describe the situation this thread is about. Whatever anyone thinks about King’s decision, suppressing books, because of a subliminal message to children, gets us into a deeper assault on freedom to read.

I think 'book suppression' is over-the-top phrasing for an author withdrawing their work for their own reasons, which is what happened with King and more-or-less with Seuss.

To switch from books to music, the group The KLF was enormously popular in the early nineties. For reasons of their own, after a bizarre appearance on the BRITs award show where they fired blank-filled machine guns at the audience, they announced they were retiring from music effective immediately. They stopped work on their follow-up album and deleted availability of their entire catalog.

This was done for their own reasons. I wouldn't call that censorship or music suppression or say that if a work of art is pulled it must automatically be due to outside coercion.

Sometimes an artist decides they no longer want to support their work.

I wish the Seuss books hadn't been removed from print. I wish Rage was still legally available. I wish The KLF still sold their music. But those aren't my decisions to make.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I think the real issue is that some don't want to admit that there was a public campaign that triggered pulling the Dr Suess books off the market. Obviously, the King situation was a very different situation.

So King pulled his book for his own reasons. But the Seuss foundation was under pressure from some shadowy group. And you know this to be true based on...?

I suspect that you are already inclined to be concerned about 'cancel culture' and you are filtering this news accordingly.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Because there were business benefits to them publicly announcing it? The earlier mentions that this doesn't exactly hurt the foundation weren't exaggerated. Why should they have been quiet about a simple business decision if being seen doing it was also part of the plan? Just because what they did is common practice in the business does not preclude them from also reaping other benefits by making a bigger deal out of it. Generating goodwill even possibly being one of them.

As I've acknowledged elsewhere in this thread, that is a possibility. Personally, I don't buy it. But it's all just speculation unless they release all the documentation that led to this decision, an act which is unlikely to happen.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Why does it have to be that they caved to pressure? Why can't it be that they were sympathetic to the concerns and agreed that this was best for all concerned? It's not as if they're taking any financial hit here, by taking such a stance.

Because they were made aware of issues with some Dr. Seuss books well before this last year, and seemed to ignore the complaints.

The removal was not made abruptly, as, according to Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the company made the decision last year. There had already been various complaints raised by the likes of teachers regarding the content of certain books. For example, If I Ran the Zoo was challenged at the Vancouver Public Library in 2014 for racist Asian stereotypes. However, the book was retained.

https://www.cbr.com/dr-seuss-stepdau...s-publication/

Then, in 2017, the issue got a lot of public attention when a Cambridge school librarian publicly refused a donation of Dr. Seuss from Melania Trump. She could have refused the books privately and written a private letter explaining her reasons. Instead, she chose to politicize the matter, despite having dressed up as the Cat in the Hat back in 2015.

https://thefederalist.com/2017/09/29...thday-costume/

Now, it could be that Dr. Seuss Enterprises experienced a revelation and suddenly became sympathetic to such concerns when previously they had seemed deaf. Or it could be that they were taking scope of various social media wars and weighing up the potential outcomes of increasing publicity and pressure...

Again, it's all just speculation unless they choose to thoroughly document their decision making process.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Question Mark

Now, it could be that Dr. Seuss Enterprises experienced a revelation and suddenly became sympathetic to such concerns when previously they had seemed deaf. Or it could be that they were taking scope of various social media wars and weighing up the potential outcomes of increasing publicity and pressure...

Potato, potahto. Though I wouldn't say they've seemed particularly deaf about things before 2021. The links you provided earlier indicated a willingness to respond to concerns about a mural. There were changes made to the particular image being discussed in this thread before 2021, as well. I don't see "weighing up the potential outcomes" and "sympathetic to such concerns" as being entirely mutually exclusive motivations, myself. *shrug*

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

So King pulled his book for his own reasons. But the Seuss foundation was under pressure from some shadowy group. And you know this to be true based on...?

I suspect that you are already inclined to be concerned about 'cancel culture' and you are filtering this news accordingly.

I know it's true because of stories like that were linked in this thread. It's not a shadowy group who is pressuring, of course, they are quite open about it. But calling it shadowy does let you imply that anyone who noticed the campaign is obviously some sort of conspiracy nut.

Yes, I am quite concerned about the cancel culture, no scare quotes needed. We need to get back to the old ACLU ideal of "I don't believe in what you say, but I defend your right to say it". Kind of funny that back then, it was considered enlightened and liberal, but now it's just a bunch of conservative conspiracy nuts who believe it.

[Question Mark]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Potato, potahto. Though I wouldn't say they've seemed particularly deaf about things before 2021. The links you provided earlier indicated a willingness to respond to concerns about a mural. There were changes made to the particular image being discussed in this thread before 2021, as well. I don't see "weighing up the potential outcomes" and "sympathetic to such concerns" as being entirely mutually exclusive motivations, myself. *shrug*

Not sure if there is a link between the museum and the Enterprise. However, the reluctant changes to the mural were brought about by public pressure. Not a sudden enlightenment.

That Dr. Seuss himself agreed to change the original image seems to have been based on a realization of how dated it was many years later. That he refused to outright remove the picture suggests that he did not see or intend it to be offensive.

As for the difference between "weighing up potential outcomes" and "being sympathetic to such concerns", I think there is a world of difference. One implies a reluctant bowing to public pressure. The other implies a newfound enlightened understanding of the valid points others are making.

Which was it? Who knows? Given the history of events over the last few years, I have my suspicions. But they remain just that.