The Non-Cancellation of Dr. Seuss
If the left manages to “cancel” cocaine then Donnie boy will really be in trouble
Conservatives are currently in the midst of an extended temper tantrum/world class freakout about the scourge of “Cancel culture.”
At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, where Donald Trump delivered his first speech since that unfortunate incident on January 6th, the theme was “America Un-cancelled.”
That made it all the more hilarious and ironic when Trump-loving rapper Young Pharaoh’s appearance at the conference was, in fact, cancelled once it came out that he was too anti-Semitic and conspiracy-minded even for CPAC.
It turns out that if you tweet things like ““THERE IS NO #HISTORICAL OR #SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF #JEWS OR #JUDAISM... ITS ALL A COMPLETE #LIE. … COMPLETELY MADE UP FOR #POLITICAL GAIN” you get cancelled from an event ostensibly celebrating the un-cancelling of our culture.
The current explosion of manufactured outrage has three primary components. Conservatives are enraged by the idea that Mr. Potato Head won’t have a gender anymore, because that is apparently something that matters and is extremely important to them.
Can society function without immediate access to McElligot’s Pool? We’re about to find out!
They’re similarly faux-apoplectic that Disney + has put content warnings on select episodes of The Muppets because they contain questionable elements that have aged poorly. But what right-wingers are really angry about is the Dr. Seuss estate will stop publishing six books because they contain racist caricatures: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra, Scrambled Eggs Super! and The Cat’s Quizzer.
It seems safe to assume that if the Dr. Seuss estate simply let, for example, McElligot’s Pool and Scrambled Eggs Super! go out of circulation, nobody would notice or care.
But the announcement made huge waves because it fit so snugly into the right-wing narrative that a vengeful and power-mad “Woke” left is in the process of “cancelling” everything that does not meet its ostensibly impossible standards of inclusiveness.
It does not matter to these people that the books in question are semi-obscure and probably not terribly well read to begin with. All that mattered was that they could spin a reasonable, responsible decision by a private estate into yet another case of the Fascist busybodies behind Cancel Culture turning their sour judgment on one of the most beloved figures in American history.
A meme currently being disseminated across the internet juxtaposes the wholesome images of The Cat in the Hat and The Muppets with a lurid shot of Megh the Stallion and Cardi B. in a sensual pose with the words, “Imagine Living In a Nation Where Cardi B’s “Wet Ass Pussy” Wins Song of The Year…Yet “The Cat in the Hat” Is Deemed Inappropriate Content” and Disney Slaps Content Warnings on “The Muppet Show.”
It’s worth noting that “Wet Ass Pussy” did not, in fact, win “Song of the Year” at the Grammys or anywhere else. It’s also worth noting that The Cat in the Hat was not deemed “Inappropriate Content” but rather a smattering of books it’s safe to assume most people haven’t read and know nothing about, except that they’re Seussian exercises in wordplay and whimsy.
Yet this meme included the achingly familiar image of the Cat in the Hat all the same to create the impression that the Cancel Culture censors were intent on canceling a book that almost everybody has read.
Pretending that The Cat in the Hat is being cancelled, if not banned and the subject of mass book burnings, rather than the Seuss estate choosing not to keep The Cat’s Quizzer and On Beyond Zebra in circulation out of cultural sensitivity is like pretending that Disney + not streaming Song of the South is tantamount to Disney cancelling Mickey Mouse.
Mickey Mouse and Song of the South are both products of the Disney corporation and Walt Disney himself. They’re both aimed at children but otherwise they’re very different.
Dr. Seuss is not being cancelled. The Cat in the Hat is not being cancelled, although I would argue that its 2003 film adaptation should be cancelled and pulled from circulation permanently not for any political reasons but rather because it’s so fucking terrible. The Grinch That Stole Christmas is not being cancelled.
All that’s happening is that the Dr. Seuss estate is making a responsible choice to remove from active circulation books that contain racist imagery and ideas rooted inextricably in the racist eras in which they were created. That’s not censorship. It’s being accountable for the sins of the past.
I’ve noticed that the people complaining about the Dr. Seuss estate willingly removing books it considers dated and offensive from active circulation never actually show the imagery that led to the books being pulled.
Instead they show familiar images of The Cat in the Hat, or The Grinch, or Dr. Seuss himself, or, alternately, the covers of the sinister six. The implication is clearly that you, the reader, know Dr. Seuss well because you’ve read his stories, or had them read to you, or read them to your own children, and know that he’s not racist.
The reason the outrage brigade does not show these illustrations is because they are very racist and disturbing and would completely undercut their angry insistence that there’s obviously nothing wrong with the entirety of Dr. Seuss’ oeuvre.
These grotesque, racist caricatures of Africans and Asians are pretty damn bad. I’m not going to include them here because they’re so appalling but you can find them online without too much trouble and determine for yourself whether or not they deserve to be re-printed and shown to impressionable children in 2021.
It turns out Dr. Seuss’ fantastical, whimsical visual style looks pretty damn wrong when applied to human beings of various ethnicities.
In a surreal development, Conservatives enraged that the Dr. Seuss estate “cancelled” a beloved author like Dr. Seuss are buying Seuss books in protest, which in turn only makes the Dr. Seuss estate more money. They’re “punishing” the Seuss estate by throwing great gobs of money and attention its way.
If you were feeling very cynical you could argue that the Dr. Seuss estate pulled the books precisely because they knew that by doing so they would instantly make Dr. Seuss the most talked about author in the world, some thirty years after his death.
Removing these books from circulation would also, ironically, transform the Fascist-hating Liberal children’s book icon into a cause celebre for Conservatives enraged by the perceived excesses of Cancel Culture.
I like to think that if Dr. Seuss were alive today he would see the humor and the absurdity of the situation. I also like to think that being an artist and a thinker, his views would evolve with time along with those of the culture, and that he himself would see the wisdom of taking these books out of circulation not out of censorship but rather out of sensitivity.
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