Filed under: where the sidewalk ends | Tags: apocalypse, books, in the ANGRY DOME
An excerpt from a morning conversation:
Joel: reading this right now
me: EFF BABAR!
i hate that shit!
Joel: ha!@#
i’ve never read it!
but colonialism implicit leftist critics?!@
Seriously, you guys. This New Yorker article, Freeing the Elephants: What Babar Brought, is interesting I guess, but which am I more likely to do in this blog? Comment intelligently on French colonialism in children’s literature or RAGE AGAINST ELEPHANTS?If you picked option B, ding ding ding! You win!
I can’t really explain my hatred for Babar—I liked elephants as a child, but something about that smarmy elephant rubbed me the wrong way. My hatred for Babar was/is only eclipsed by the burning dislike I have for one Mr. Paddinton Bear.
My parents could speak more clearly to the facts of my hate. I’m pretty sure Paddington Bear just really freaked me out as a child. It wasn’t merely a sense of childhood xenophobia—I could hang with Madeline any day of the week!—but I could never tolerate Paddington Bear or Babar. Am I the only one?
In a conversation some weeks back with Glynnis, we developed a theory that rich kids read Babar and Paddington Bear, while the rest of us got by with Frog and Toad Are Friends (holler!). Am I wrong? Babar and Paddington seem like the kind of characters who adorn the bedrooms of wealthy children in New York and San Francisco. Ye defenders of Babar, now is the time to step up—and if not, chime in with your least favorite/most creepsome characters from childhood. Because I’m eyeing Corduroy next…
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Alright, look. I have a deep and abiding love for Babar. The simply rendered lines of animation, the eloquent speech, the exotic accents, the current of colonialism running through the nerve of the show as it has coursed through the ancestral veins of my Norman forbears for eons. When my mom bought me kiddie perfume in a shapely bottle inspired by Babar’s wife (?) Celeste, I prized it for years, long into my pre-adolescence. Probably too long into my preadolescence. Madeline was fancy, too–didn’t she go to a boarding school at a young age? Was it a boarding school or an orphanage? Can’t remember. The point is, what about Angelina Ballerina?
Comment by Cameron September 16, 2008 @ 7:07 pmHow can you hate a cartoon elephant? Also, I don’t know who frog and toad are. I got by with the Berenstein Bears.
Comment by Nikki September 18, 2008 @ 11:02 pm[...] friend Rachel Will [apparently] Blog for Food Haterade as she thrashes childhood icons Babar and Paddington Bear (not to mention my personal favorite Corduroy…you WOULDN’T!!). This seems about as [...]
Pingback by Monday Links: September 22nd, 2008 | Tropophilia September 21, 2008 @ 11:19 pmlisten, rachel. i read all of those books as a child. babar, paddington, corduroy, frog & toad, madeline, and many more. don’t you try to impose your classist ideas on me and my childhood. not everything’s about elitism, you know.
personally, i was (and am) most partial to the children’s books that had my name in them: noisy nora, nora and the great bear, new neighbors for nora, etc.
Comment by nora September 22, 2008 @ 11:14 pm