The Dr. Seuss Controversy

I have been thinking about the recent controversy over six Dr. Seuss books.  From what I can tell, the supposed problem is not with the text, but with the illustrations. 

Let’s talk about Dr. Seuss illustrations.  Are any of them an accurate portrayal of the person or animal they represent?  No…many of them are downright bizarre.  Many are caricatures.  The whole point is to over-emphasize some feature.  Others are fanciful…they look like nothing you will ever see in real life.  Vehicles portrayed are mechanically impossible.  Buildings defy gravity.  Any child who is looking at the pictures while the book is being read is going to understand that what is illustrated is not the real world.  If he or she doesn’t, there is a serious issue.

So, one of the offending books has an Asian man with chopsticks.  He has slanty eyes.  Ummmm…..lots of Asian people do have slanty eyes due to the extra fatty pad over the eye.  Guess what?  Some of my Caucasian/white family members have this same fatty pad and Asian looking eyes.  When I inquired about this characteristic, I was told, “Your Grandpa used to say that when the Mongol hordes invaded Europe, someone in the family got mixed up with them.”  Did this cause me to feel prejudice against my family members or the Mongol hordes or to be offended by pictures of slanty eyed folk.  No…it is an amusing and perhaps fanciful tale.

If this type of illustration causes offense, what about the caricatures of Obama with enormous ears…or Trump with the shock of orange hair drooping over his eyes.  How do we dare chuckle at that?  Why isn’t PETA offended by the appearance of the cat in The Cat in the Hat?

Somebody got way too “woke,” in my opinion.  I am not buying the notion that this was the family’s decision either.  Just who is “the family” of Ted Geisel?  Geisel had no children with his first wife.  After her death, he remarried a woman (Audrey) who had two children.  She divorced her husband to marry Geisel and sent her two daughters off to boarding school.  She was known to say that Geisel was not comfortable around children….there’s an irony.  Audrey was left in charge of his estate, but she is now deceased.  I have been unable to determine if the two stepchildren are in control or just who “the family” is.  The person in charge of Dr. Seuss Enterprises is not a family member.

There is so much in this world that should genuinely be offensive.  Our kids see absolute filth during prime time viewing hours on television.  They have access to books that are total trash.  The lyrics of some of the music young people listen to are vile…to say nothing of the illustrations on the covers of hard copies or the videos of this music that are readily obtained online.  Where is the outrage and soul searching about these foul mental images?

Have we lost our collective mind?

Or…perhaps…

My husband has cynically expressed that the whole Dr. Seuss thing is a marketing ploy.  I just looked up top selling children’s books on Amazon and Dr. Seuss books are 15 of the top 20.  Maybe this has more to do with pumping up sales than genuine concern about people’s feelings.  Perhaps they had some inventory they needed to unload.  News this morning is that vintage copies of the six “offending” books were selling for so much, that eBay suspended their sale.

Oh, well…maybe just an unintended consequence of what began as altruism?  It would not be the first time that what began as an honest attempt to do “the right thing” went a bit too far and stepped off the edge onto the slippery slope.