Do You Read “problem” Books to Your Children?
To understand the often unspoken depths of growing up in a sexist and racist society, you just need to become a parent and decide that it would be interesting to meet some of our favorite books, films or cartoons from our childhood with our children. It’s suddenly very clear that we didn’t grow up reading books like Ada Twist, The Scientist, and we didn’t watch shows like The Strange Squad , both of which are excellent and feature strong, intelligent female characters and colored characters. No, we watched Looney Tunes and classic Disney films with their racist overtones and read fairy tales in which every girl is in distress and needs a strong young prince to save her.
When we read and watch these things decades later, from an adult perspective, which is hopefully more insightful, we realize how incredibly problematic they are and how they sow the seeds of gender and racial stereotypes at such a young age. So we have three options. We can say, “Well, I did it, and so did they,” and let them act without censorship and without giving reasons. (Obviously least preferred.) We can ban all of this entirely. (Knowing that they might eventually find it on YouTube.) Or we can do what Emma Brokes describes for The Guardian as “real-time editing”:
These are tangent and lateral sides, but there is a faster set of interventions performed at the reflex level. In Curious George, the nurses are all women and the doctors are all men, and I instinctively change the gender distribution. In Snow White, the question is how we indicate value. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest – and the smartest! – of them all, “while Charlotte’s Web requires some bizarre foot movements to get around the fact that 8-year-old Fern is wearing a dress for the fair because there might be boys.
The ancestor, of course, is Roald Dahl, whose ability to attract young children is proportional to the amount of work you have to do on the fly to give him new knowledge. I am not against violence in children’s books; sudden death pleases the crowd and inspires. However, he hates fat people – especially fat women, or perhaps women in general; the aunts in ” James” and “Giant Peach” are a pair of “terrible witches” (in my version “terrible people”).
I had a similar experience with the originalCurious George , which was published in 1941. Basically all the characters are (white) men, we identify the cops as “thin” or “fat” and everyone smokes a pipe, including George. I read it aloud several times, wondering where all the women are, explaining why smoking is bad, and completely skipping the words “thin” and “fat” before finally “losing” the book so I didn’t have to read anymore. …
I have sometimes used these books and shows to illustrate what not to do, how not to describe someone, or to talk about stereotypes and why they are unfair and untrue. Other times, I just banished them entirely. When I read Brokes’ article, I became curious about how other parents dealt with similar stories.
So tell us in the comments: do you read problem books like this and watch problem movies and TV shows with your kids? And if so, will you be “live editing” along the way?