There's the far right, whining away again....

[conuly]

Waa, waaa, waaaa, Seuss has been cancelled!

No, he has not, his estate has decided to stop printing half a dozen poor sellers. They sell poorly because, frankly, they're not his best work, but the publisher decided to make a little PR out of it by saying they're being pulled because of offensive imagery. Not that the imagery isn't there, but it's the profit margin driving this, and that is why they aren't simply editing out the offensive words and images (again). Though if this hullabaloo continues long enough they might "decide" to "compromise" and it after all... at least for Mulberry Street, which seems to be the only one of the six anybody claims to have any fond memories of.

(And no, it's not just like book burnings, you're not living in 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, thanks very much - wait until it enters the public domain and print it yourself if you care so much.)

That's nothing compared to the silliness around Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head.

Hasbro has decided to start selling this product under the name "Potato Head", though the actual potatoes are still called Mr. and Mrs, at least if you want to call them that. Cue the hysterical handwringing about how Mr. Potato Head has been "neutered".

This is silly but also very interesting. How has he been neutered? Neither the potato bodies nor any of the accessories have genitals. So if it's not the genitals that make the potatoes "male" or "female", what is it? What could it possibly be other than that their identity and outward presentation?

There's actually room for a very interesting insight into gender identity roiling in the middle of their hysterics. I think they even recognize it, explains why they're freaking out so much over something so silly.

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

Noooo but the free speech of the deceased you are all Communists now don't you know China suppresses speech so we need these racist caricatures for our Asian children.

To paraphrase the guy who I wasted way too much time on today on Facebook.

The potato thing seems exciting. It also made me notice some apparent potato colorism. I had assumed the different colors of my potatoes was a manufacturing defect, but it seems to be in the ads.

[conuly]

I used to get into it regularly with somebody who poured out buckets of crocodile tears for the hurt feelings of our deceased ancestors.

[kengr]

Heck, when I played with them, you had to supply your own potato!

[conuly]

Now that's old school.

[readerjane]

I think Pixar has a golden opportunity here. They already have the rights to use Mr. & Mrs. P in Toy Story movies, right?

The next TS movie should be a Potato Head spin-off, where Mrs P. talks Mr. P into going home to see the extended family, even though he's worried they won't accept the adopted Martian kids, and it turns out Potatoland has every kind of skin color there is and every gender expression and something something Pixar is much better at inventing this stuff then I am.

[cesy]

I love this idea

[sabotabby]

I was wondering why people were suddenly upset about Dr. Seuss but I thought it might be better for my sanity if I knew nothing about it.

But the Potato Head thing is interesting because apparently it gets used in Gender Studies 101 to demonstrate the way gender is performative.

[conuly]

1. You were right.
2. Quick, somebody tell them!

[bitterlawngnome]

I confess to being confuse by Potatogate ... doesn't this mean the company only gets to sell one potato when two used to be de rigeur?

[conuly]

No, they're still selling them in sets of two + a small spud.

[bitterlawngnome]

Ah ok. Whew I almost lost my faith in capitalism for a moment.

[oursin]

I am reminded of the scene in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, in which the Puritan zealot is raging against a puppet-show (because acting is evil and godless):

It is your old stale argument against the players, but it will not hold against the puppets; for we have neither male nor female amongst us. And that thou may’st see, if thou wilt, like a malicious purblind zeal as thou art. [Takes up his garment.

(Boom, boom)

[conuly]

Sweet. Not familiar with the work - other than the quote, ought I be?

[oursin]

Not unless you're terrifically into Jacobean city comedies full of jokes that rely on incomprehensible contemporary allusions and period sensohumour.

[conuly]

I mean, I might be.

[oursin]

Well, it's available on Project Gutenberg if you ever want to take a look!

[chelseagirl]

I had Mr. Potato Head as a child and I don't recall considering it as being gendered in any practical way.

[hudebnik]

I don't recall ever owning any Potato Heads, but as I recall from the advertising, the whole point of "Mr. and Mrs." was the gender-associated accessories: moustaches, hats, purses, aprons, etc. And I suspect that approximately every kid who ever owned them tried putting a moustache on Mrs. PH, or a flowery Easter bonnet on Mr. PH, just for the amusing cognitive dissonance.

[chelseagirl]

I am 59, and I don't recall the Mrs. accessories at all. It was pretty basic in my youth -- eyes, nose, mouth, ears.

[conuly]

Having two different potato heads with a Mr. and a Mrs. allowed them to expand the number of accessories sold and hopefully the market as well.

[hudebnik]

I may well be remembering things that never existed; as I said, we never owned any Potato-Head stuff.

[silveradept]

It's a pretty good PR move for Seuss, letting them say they're trying to publish less terrible books and letting them gauge what the reaction would be if they decided to go after some of the bigger ones, like the Cat in the Hat. (They won't, but depending on how loud the calls are to move past Seuss, I can see some others being sacrificed.)

And Potato Heads have always been about presentation, which is probably why there's so much furor over it, Reactionaries have never been particularly subtle about the idea that they want to be able to tell someone's gender solely by looking at their presentation (as well as enforce strict boundaries on who gets to present as what identity.)

Predictable is the best thing I can say about it.

[conuly]

It's honestly sad. Like, I spend a lot of time reading fanfic and playing sudoku, and I still think my time is better spent than the people who continually rage over trivial nonsense. (And such projection, all the time! It's not the lefties who are constantly offended over every little thing, no matter how much they try to assert this.)

[silveradept]

Well, of course. You can't claim to be persecuted by an immoral majority if you're not constantly finding things to be persecuted over.

[conuly]

I think they claim they're being persecuted by a very vocal and immoral minority. Talk about trying to have your cake and eat it too!

[silveradept]

But a very powerful minority, who controls the government at all levels and has to be resisted, clearly, pay no attention at all to all those people who believe as we do already in the government, it's not truly ours until there's no minority left to oppose us or undo our glorious work.

[gale_storm]

‘Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head Were Neutered on Mulberry Street’: a new title of the Dr. Seuss franchise? (Hee-eey, why not?) >B^D

[luscious_purple]

Sorry, doesn't have that nice anapestic rhythm. :-D :-D

[gale_storm]

Okay. Got any suggestions for how to make it fit?

[hudebnik]

"The Potatoes were Neutered on Mulberry Street"

[gale_storm]

✓ Okay, then! Thank you!

[greghousesgf]

he lost his french fry?

[conuly]

*snicker*

[ratcreature]

I have no idea about the Dr. Seuss titles in particular because he's just not a thing here, so I've never encountered him as a kid, and am only familiar with the Grinch and the Hat Cat by osmosis. However usually this tension between what we consider appropriate for children changing and adult nostalgia gets resolved via bifurcated publishing, i.e. you get the children's line, where some especially racist installment of a "classic" series are skipped and/or edited with updates or such, and then you get a collector's edition for adults, sometimes annotated, that reprints the originals.

Like Tintin comics are frequently not great from today's perspective, but some of the oldest with Tintin visiting then Belgian Congo for example were so racist nobody wanted that in children's comics even when I was little, so there were updated versions that were slightly better (not sure whether they are still trying to salvage anything from these tbh, I love Herge, but would not give these to children), but you could also buy reprints of the original version for more than twice the price in a collector hardcover edition. And those sold as well (like I bought them fully knowing they were racist), but not as children's comic. I bet if there truly was a nostalgia market of that kind for those Dr. Seuss books, they would just make money publishing an annotated complete works of Dr. Seuss edition, that contained everything, in addition to the regular ones.

[conuly]

Trust me when I say that these particular books are really unpopular. The popular ones are very, very popular - Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, The Grinch - and then you have his solid midlist, and these are scraping the very bottom of the barrel. (Again, with the exception of Mulberry Street, which is more popular than it deserves to be because it's one of his earliest.)

[ratcreature]

If they can't even make the cut for completist fans there's a problem for any publishing. From my understanding it's just the latest manufactured outrage anyway, and probably entirely unconnected from the actual availability of the books or whether any children would even still want to read these.

Weren't they also outraged that at Disney "canceling" the Muppet Show, even though they now made more episodes available via streaming than you could get as DVD sets previously, just with some warnings? So more Muppets than before.

I bet if a complete works of Seuss edition with footnotes and some scholarly introduction to early 20th century racist cartooning tropes or something got published, making available every minor cartoon for anyone who really wanted it for having a complete Dr. Seuss, they'd still be upset, because what they actually want is racist stereotypes to remain normalized, ubiquitous and inescapable.