This is George.
He lived in the forest.
He was very happy.
But he had one fault. He was too curious.
Now he is not happy. Now he has many faults.
What is your fault?
What will make you unhappy?
One day George saw a man.
He had on a large yellow hat.
The man saw George, too.
When a man sees you, nothing can stop him from what he will do next.
Which means it is very important not to be seen.
What do you do when someone tries to see you?
“What a nice little monkey,” he thought,
“I would like to take him home with me.”
The man put his hat on the ground,
and of course George was curious.
He came down from the tree
to look at the large yellow hat.
The hat had been on the
man’s head. The hat belonged
to the man. George belonged to the man now too.
Do you see how simple it is?
George picked it up
and put it on. That meant “yes.”
The hat covered George’s head. He couldn’t see. That meant yes too.
The man picked him up quickly
and popped him into a bag.
George was caught. Caught means yes. Seeing means caught. Seeing means wanting. Wanting means yes. Do you see?
The man with the big yellow hat
put George into a little boat,
and rowed them both
across the water to a big ship.
On the big ship, things began to happen.
Anything can happen to you. Anything can happen to you.
Anything can happen to you.
The man took off the bag. But George was still Caught.
George sat on a little stool, and the man said to him,
George, I am going to take you to a big city. You
will like it there.
(Was that a promise or an instruction?)
Now run along and play,
but don’t get into trouble. Be Good.
What is Good, George asked the man in the yellow hat.
Good is what I tell you to do, the man said. Good is something you will find out.
But it is easy for little monkeys to forget.
On the deck he found some sea gulls.
He wondered how they could fly.
He was very curious. George had not yet learned to be Good. He was still himself. But George cannot be both. He is going to have to choose. Which would you choose: Good or Yourself?
Finally he had to try.
It looked easy. I want to go, he told the birds.
I want to Go Home or I want to Just Go but I have to Go.
I am afraid to learn what Goodness is.
And the birds wheeled over his head and said nothing,
because birds are first and foremost Themselves,
and not very interested in Good, or in monkeys,
or in the little things that get caught when men want them.
George tumbled and fell.
“WHERE IS GEORGE?”
The sailors looked and looked. (Men help other men recover what is theirs. If you belong to a man, other men will help him find you, if you go missing. You will always be found. Does that make you feel safe?)
At last they saw him
struggling in the water,
and tired.
George no longer minded being Caught. Which meant he was as caught as caught could be.
“Man overboard!” the sailors cried
as they threw him a life belt.
George caught it and held on. George had to catch it to hold on. George had to hold on to be caught. George was caught and held on. George held and was held, caught and was caught. George was safe on board.
The opposite of Good is drowning.
After that, George was more careful
to be a good monkey, until at last
the long trip was over. Being a good monkey meant:
not moving, not leaving, not going away. Being good meant listening, and staying where he was put. Being good meant quiet. Being good felt tired.
George said good-by to the sailors,
and he and the man with the yellow hat
walked off the ship on to the shore
and on into the city to the man’s house.
The man’s house was where all of the man’s things lived.
George lived there too now.
George had a good meal, because George had been Good.
George was grateful now. George had learned to be grateful for things like eating. George had learned that being grateful kept him safe, so George was grateful always.
George felt very tired.
“May I sleep?” he asked the man in the yellow hat.
“You may sleep,” said the man in the yellow hat, who was pleased that George had learned to ask for the things he once did by himself.
George crawled into bed
and fell asleep at once.
George dreamed of nothing. This was safe.
What do you dream about?
The next morning
the man telephoned the Zoo.
George watched him.
He was fascinated.
Then the man went away. (Men could do that. Monkeys couldn’t.)
George was curious. (He was not so Good that there was not still room for George too. This is dangerous. Better to be all Good, and no George.)
He wanted to telephone, too.
One, two, three, four,
five, six, seven.
DING-A-LING-A-LING!
GEORGE HAD TELEPHONED
THE FIRE STATION!
There was an emergency.
George was an emergency.
Are you an emergency?
Who can you tell about it?
The firemen rushed to the telephone.
“Hello! Hello!” they said.
But there was no answer. George was curious enough to dial, but not curious enough to speak. That was too much like drowning.
Then they looked for the signal
on the big map that showed
where the telephone call had come from.
They didn’t know it was George.
They thought it was a real emergency.
Maybe they would see the emergency when they saw George.
What do you call an emergency that looks just fine?
HURRY! HURRY! HURRY!
The firemen jumped on to the fire engines
and on to the hook-and-ladders.
Ding-dong-ding-dong.
Everyone out of the way!
Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!
The firemen rushed into the house.
They opened the door.
NO FIRE!
Only a monkey.
There is an emergency here, George said to the firemen.
Can’t you see it?
“Oh, catch him, catch him,” they cried. (Men help other men catch things.)
George tried to run away.
He could Run, but he couldn’t Go.
Do you know the difference between Running and Leaving?
George knows now.
He almost did, but he got caught
in the telephone wire, and –
a short fireman caught one arm
and a tall fireman caught the other.
“You fooled the Fire Department,”
they said. “We will have to shut you up
where you can’t do any more harm.”
But George was already shut up!
And there was already harm!
Where is the harm?
If you have very good eyes, you can see it.
Who is hurting? Who is harming?
Can you spot the hurt on the monkey?
They took him away
and shut him in a prison.
George wanted to get out. George always wants to get out.
Will George be happy when he gets out, do you think, or will he be happy when he stops wanting to?
He climbed up to the window
to try the bars.
Just then the watchman came in.
He got on the wooden bed to catch George.
But the watchman was too big and heavy.
The bed tipped up,
the watchman fell over,
and, quick as lightning,
George ran out through the open door.
He hurried through the building
and out on to the roof. And then
he was lucky to be a monkey.
Out he walked on to the telephone wires.
Quickly and quietly over the guard’s head,
George walked away.
He was outside, but he was still Caught.
You can be inside and Caught, or you can be outside and Caught,
but if someone has Caught you, you are Caught until they are dead.
Was the man in the yellow hat dead?
Down in the street,
outside the prison wall,
stood a balloon man.
A little girl bought a balloon
for her brother.
George watched.
He was curious again.
He felt he MUST have
a bright red balloon. George felt he MUST have something. George felt he MUST. George wanted it. George felt bigger all over from the wanting of it. George wanted it more than George wanted to be Good, or Uncaught, or Free, or even Home Again. George wanted something that was red, and his.
He reached over and
tried to help himself, but –
instead of one balloon,
the whole bunch broke loose. George wants things too much. How bad is your wanting?
Does it hurt, when you want?
May I tell you a secret?
Wanting always hurts.
Now you know something you didn’t before!
In an instant
the wind whisked them all away
and, with them, went George,
holding tight with both hands.
You can hold onto something without having it.
George was learning so many lessons. George was getting smarter.
Up, up he sailed, higher and higher.
The houses looked like toy houses
and the people like dolls.
George was frightened.
He held on very tight.
At first the wind blew in great gusts.
Then it quieted.
Finally it stopped blowing altogether.
George was very tired. George thought that perhaps he might like to die.
But he didn’t want to die as much as the man in the yellow hat wanted to catch him.
Down, down he went – bump,
on to the top of a traffic light.
Everyone was surprised.
The traffic got all mixed up.
George didn’t know what to do,
and then he heard someone call, “GEORGE!”
He looked down and saw his friend, (they were very good friends)
the man with the big yellow hat!
Well. They had to be friends. The man knew his name, didn’t he?
Someone who knows your name is your friend.
Even if his name hadn’t always been George. (Had it been?)
It was George now, and the man knew it.
Even if he didn’t know the man in the yellow hat’s name,
George was very happy to see him now.
If enough things happen to you, you can learn to love something just for being familiar. And the man in the yellow hat was familiar now. And that’s Good.
George had learned what being Good was!
What have you learned?
The man was happy, too.
George slid down the post,
and the man with the big yellow hat
put him under his arm. Where George belonged.
Then he paid the balloon man
for all the balloons, because the man in the yellow hat took good care of everything he owned.
And then George and the man
climbed into the car,
and at last away they went, back to the house of the man in the yellow hat.
What a nice place
for George to live!
This is deeply unsettling.
Oh man I kept re-seeing the trailer for ‘Room’ when I read this.
They are making a movie out of that?!
*shudder*
I feel like this post has distilled a fundamental truth about the nature of Men.
I didn’t know I was going to need to go hide in a corner and have an existential crisis about being Good or Myself today, but it’s on the agenda now.
And that is how you know you’re one step closer to being Good.
I’ll take existential questions I did not expect to be faced with today for $500.
What is “Which would you choose: Good or Yourself?”
my answer is best expressed as an image: http://static02.mediaite.com/themarysue/uploads/2…
oh. Oh. OH.
THIS IS SO DEPRESSING.
I’m suddenly questioning everything about life and humanity now.
If enough things happen to you, you can learn to love something just for being familiar.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Right? Damn, Mallory. You just leveled up on “Horrific.”
Then again, don’t we all know that, deep down?
That didn’t even hit me in the “horrific” as much as the “entirely too accurate fffffffff—“
I came down here for that line too. GODDAMN.
“George no longer minded being Caught. Which meant he was as caught as caught could be.”
I…
Yeeeah.
This one is particularly awesome because now all the subtext is made text. I’d already gotten rid of all of the Curious George books my kid got as gifts because I find them too heartbreaking to read.
Yeah I was never really into those… Although I think in my case I was mostly freaked out by all the destruction and thinking “OMG someone will have to clean that up” which I think says other things about me.
MALLORY
can we talk about “If enough things happen to you, you can learn to love something just for being familiar” and my buying a house here feelings because………………………
Definitely counts, yes.
OMG, you just helped me articulate why I want to buy a house here.
I need to go lie down now.
MALLORY!
Srsly tho, how glad am I that my kids are too old for Curious George now?
SO GLAD. *shudder*
Seeing means caught. Seeing means wanting. Wanting means yes. Do you see?
No! I do not see! I see nothing! You cannot catch me, Mallory Ortberg!
DO YOU SEE?
I will put out my eyes if that’s what it takes to escape capture by Mallory’s hand.
Has anyone checked to see if she’s an old Slavic witch?
Mallory: how many legs and what type of legs does your house have?
GODDAMMIT MALLORY
JESUS CHRIST, MALLORY
I think this one might be the most horrifying one of all, although I’m sure I’ll say that again, and then the next time, and then the time after that, as the scream caught in the back of my throat becomes more and more a part of me until it solidifies in the place where my tonsils used to be.
In the end, there will never be anything but the screaming. Maybe there was never anything else.
oh come onnnnnnnn
/weeping
Weeping is nothing more than quiet screaming. Speech is merely a lie we tell ourselves while we pretend that the screaming makes a sound other than it does. Everything is screaming, but we tell ourselves we do not hear.
came down to the comments to make sure this precise epithet was used.
*curls up into ball*
Always. It really needs to be a tag at this point.
*Screams until face melts*
I’m a primatologist. I got a copy of Curious George for my newborn baby cousin because of fond memories of Curious George and monkeys and wanting to instill a love of monkeys into all small children, and then reread it with new primatology and conservation context and realized that The Man in the Yellow Hat is a poacher and Curious George was illegally trafficked and part of the pet trade in primates with serious detrimental effects on conservation of endangered species. So I did not give Curious George to my newborn baby cousin.
And so, if it was not already horrible enough – you went and made it horribler!
Curious George could have met a Curious Lady and had Curious Babies! But no!
Maybe try this one instead? It’s about Jane Goodall as a little girl.
http://www.amazon.com/Me-Jane/dp/0316045462
*wails*
This book was already horrific! Now it’s just horrific to the nth.
(Didn’t quite realize the awfulness until my brother mentioned how much he hated reading it to my niece, which of course meant she wanted it every night because toddlers. Like cats.)
My three year old wants it all the time too, which is the only reason we keep it. I hate it! I always thought it was about slavery. I could sneak it away, and hope the kid doesn’t notice, which would be depriving him of a choice in this matter. Is that better or worse than reading him this horrible book?
That depends. Would you rather be Good, or Yourself?
Aaaaah!!! AAAAHHHHH!!! I…I don’t know any more.
The Man in the Yellow Hat, it was decided, was not to have a name. The Man in the Yellow Hat did not need a name.
The Man in the Yellow Hat, you see, can be anyone. The Man in the Yellow Hat could be everyone.
The Man in the Yellow Hat might even be you.
The Man in the Yellow Hat believes The Man in the Yellow Hat has done nothing wrong. Does this sound familiar? How curious.
This, somehow, makes the whole thing just a bit more hopeful to me. I think it’s because George gets a little bit of revenge on The Man in the Yellow Hat by not even gracing him with a name. But damn. Nicely done.
I don’t know… that just means that The Man in the Yellow Hat is beyond names. He is everywhere, always, ever-seeing, ever knowing, inescapable. He is even inside *you*.
Men help other men recover what is theirs. If you belong to a man, other men will help him find you, if you go missing. You will always be found. Does that make you feel safe?
*screams into a pillow*
This was the line that really closed up my throat.
Because it made me think of all the thousands of missing or murdered indigenous women in Canada; and how no one will look for you at all if you don’t belong to the right (white) kind of man.
And if you try to escape from the wrong kind of man, other men will help him recover you.
NO I DO NOT FEEL SAFE AT ALL
I WOULD REALLY LIKE A GLASS OF WINE
I think I need the whole bottle.
One day I’m going to sign up for internet dating. Today is not that day.
*Goes upstairs, throws away copy of “Happy Thanksgiving, Curious George” grandma brought for the children last weekend.* What does George have to be thankful for?
No it’s cool Mallory just keep destroying everything I loved as a child. (OK the Curious George books probably deserved it though.)
They totally did. Along with Babar. Colonialist narratives in children’s books: UGH.
Between this, the end of Daylight Saving, and having just finished “A Little Life,” I no longer know how to live in this world.
I came here to talk about A Little Life. Which was basically just summarized here. (I liked it a lot. But good lord.)
My (quick, non-thread-hijacking) comment about A Little Life: somehow manages to be incredibly moving despite being something of a mess? Nails the way abuse can dull your ability to accept love.
With fear and trembling.
Emergency feelings repair:
– Make or fix something you care about, even if it’s small, even if it’s just a nice dinner
– Go for a walk that is no more than half the distance you think you should travel for something to really count as a walk, so you’ll actually put on your shoes and do it
– Restorative naps
Oooh, #2 is a good suggestion, thanks.
D-:
Oh no it’s worse than ever before
no no no no no no no no
Curious George was already this horrific, but now I am sadder than ever.
This is the thing that’s freaking me out. The actual narrative is almost unchanged from what I remember.
Man sees monkey. Man reads consent into monkey’s natural curiosity about the world, removes monkey from home, family, and suitable habitat. Monkey remains a monkey, hijinks ensue. Man judges monkey based on non-monkey standards, scolds monkey for natural curiosity. Monkey is returned to captivity, having learned that curiosity leads to frightening situations. This will all happen over and over again.
The worst thing is that George first appeared in “Cecily G. and the 9 Monkeys”. The nine monkeys are George, his mother and his bothers and sisters. So not only is he taken from his home but his family and his very good giraffe friend as well. Poor little monkey.
The opposite of Good is drowning. Jesus.
This is basically The Handmaid’s Tale.
Why did I read this?? My children still love watching Curious George. It’s like finding out what chicken nuggets are made of. I can keep giving them Curious George and chicken nuggets, but now I cannot say I Didn’t Know.
and now i gain an entirely new perspective on my former marriage.
I am with you right there.
The Man In The Yellow Hat = Francis Dolarhyde
George = Leeds
DO YOU SEE?
Well, thanks for ruining my one hour of alone time I get when the kids watch Curious George in the morning. Now I feel like I’ve been indoctrinating them into the kyriarchy
The TV show is much better than the books! It is newer and has Ethics, and Professor Wiseman is now a black woman with a hint of misandry about her. (In the book version, he was a white man, who was all, “I will forgive you for making a huge mess IFF you agree to be blasted into outer space and then parachute back to Earth using this equipment that has not been tested”, and then there’s a moment where George might miss the correct moment to bail out of the space rocket and might be lost in space forever, and I was all, oh, Laika *sob*).
Not just Laika – the US used monkeys and very young chimps to test rockets in the early days of the space program, and some of them had bad things happen, and then a significant number of them were sent to biomedical research facilities after it was officially safe enough for people. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/201…
So Curious George Gets a Medal is a case of the author taking an actual horrific situation, and turning it into a children’s story? This is the opposite of Mallory’s process, and yet it is more horrific.
I didn’t want to read this but I was Curious.
From the highs of Madeline Kahn to the lows of Children’s Stories Made Horrific. I really need to learn to parcel out my Toast better. But still:
“Men help other men recover what is theirs. If you belong to a man, other men will help him find you, if you go missing. You will always be found. Does that make you feel safe?”
I’ll be shuddering about that one all day.
Only made it to the third paragraph before freaked out, refused to read anymore. You broke my brain.
I am so sad now. So very sad.
*sobs*
Can we go back to feeling vaguely uncomfortable by an accidentally high percentage of religious content instead?
REAP WHAT THOU HAST SOWED AND SPEAK NO MORE
Yes ma’ams we are sorry thank you.
Speaking would be too much like drowning. *shudders*
YOU GET WHAT YOU ASK FOR
something something stay-puft marshmallow man
ASKING MEANS GETTING
GETTING MEANS REGRETTING
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO ASK FOR NEXT?
WE’RE SO SORRY, MALLORY. SO, SO SORRY.
“How bad is your wanting?
Does it hurt, when you want?
May I tell you a secret?
Wanting always hurts.”
I didn’t need this today…
I am afraid to learn what Goodness is.
You’ll never learn what it is, but you’ll continue to learn what it isn’t.
I am not Caught anymore, goddammit.
I tore me down.
I built me new.
And I will never be Caught anymore,
not with these thorns I made.
Not with these knives in my hands.
CURIOUS GEORGE WAS ALREADY THE MOST HORRIFYING CHILDREN’S STORY, YOU GUYS
NEVER READ THE ORIGINAL BOOK I HAD TO HIDE IT FROM MY SON/MYSELF
Disagree. Love You Forever is the worst. Curious George is a close second, possibly tied with Babar.
Late, no one will read this, The Giving Tree is THE WORST EVER
If The Toast ever figures out a way of monetizing horrified screams of “MALLORY,” adblock will suddenly become irrelevant.
There has got to be a way, right? My skincrawls from this alone could power a serverfarm for a week
Something with galvanic skin responses and batteries, I’m sure.
i’m going back to bed
I think
I just realized some things about myself
I have a deep, unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach that’s telling me I’m realizing some things about myself, too.
welp. shit.
Jesus dogshit, Mallory.
(Men help other men recover what is theirs. If you belong to a man, other men will help him find you, if you go missing. You will always be found. Does that make you feel safe?)
JESUS, MALLORY
What do you call an emergency that looks just fine?
I am stricken, I am chilled. Back when I was going through a major depressive episode + severe anxiety, I would often get panicked enough that I thought I would need to call 911 and report…report what? What was the emergency? Hello? 911? What is your emergency? Ma’am, we came as fast as we could, but you look just fine.
Jesus, if that single line didn’t sum up my situation then (and now) I don’t know what did (does?). I can relate to your dilemma, George.
Solidarity.
I spent two years in a postdoc where I sort of walked around in a despairing haze and nobody realized it because I went to my office and taught my classes and got drinks with friends and played D&D and went to choir practice and acted like a completely normal person and nobody could ever tell that there was an emergency because I would never let myself break down, never, because that’s not what I do.
(shiver)
There have definitely been a few periods in my life where I’ve (for example) eaten breakfast every day because that’s what Normal People do,* and if I can perfect my Normal Person costume, nobody will notice anything’s wrong & I won’t have to deal with it.
*Normal People do not actually all have the same breakfast habits, but that was not really a thought process I could handle at the time.
While I was going through this period I often I was wandered up and down the aisles of SuperTarget, a thing I used to do when staying in my house became too unbearable and I wanted to not-cry somewhere new and different. I had a car that barely worked, and as such the closest non-home place I could travel to was this SuperTarget, not a mile down the street.
I’d just wander around slowly and aimlessly in the store for an hour or two and for whatever reason I felt the need to look like I had A Purpose while shopping, instead of the truth, which was I didn’t know what to do about anything anymore and I had lost control of my life entirely. I wanted other people to think that I was perhaps carefully shopping for nutritious meals for my (nonexistent) family. That was my cover identity: A Person Who Has Their Shit Together.
But I was an Emergency That Looked Just Fine the whole time.
“when staying in my house became too unbearable and I wanted to not-cry somewhere new and different”
mmm. mmmmMMMMMMmmm. I feel those FEELS.
*Normal People do not actually all have the same breakfast habits
“Normal People can afford to violate customary routines, because they’re obviously, provably normal. If I violate customary routines, people will start to ask questions, and then they’ll do that worrying thing with their faces and I’ll have to talk about things.”
Jesus Christ. That shudder of recognition was even more horrifying than Curious George…
“Breakfast is normal. Breakfast is good. You want to be normal, right?”
As long as your skin is doing laundry and paying bills on time, nobody thinks to check whether there’s anything underneath.
Oh jesus fuck.
This is why I firmly support hugging when meeting a friend. Because you never really know who’s having an invisible emergency.
This line got me too.
I have had some bad things happen lately, and when I told people – one a close friend, one a family member – they minimized and dismissed it, all while hugging me and saying they loved me. And that made the emergency even bigger, and NOW what?
Oh no. I’m so sorry. People do that to me too and I hate it. 🙁
FWIW, this random internet stranger re-reads favorite light-hearted books that make me laugh and bear no resemblance to the crappy event / my life. Georgette Heyer is my favorite for that because her plots are so over the top and her period research so detailed that almost none of her books resemble my life at all, and they’re all pretty hysterical (except for Cousin Kate and Penhallow *shudders*).
Good luck and I hope the emergency gets better.
The worst part is that you know Mallory has a list of the next 5-10 or so of these just waiting to be written. It’s all coming for us and won’t stop.
If she does The Stinky Cheese Man I’m fucked.
Oh lord, if she comes for E. B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan I am hosed.
Guys, stop mentioning things! She’ll see, she’ll know! Keep the things you love hidden and secret, that you may not become the lathe of heaven.
“May I tell you a secret?
Wanting always hurts.
Now you know something you didn’t before!”
(weeps silently, rocking back and forth)
That line hit me write in the feels too
Damn it. I saw a couple dressed as Curious George and The Man in the Yellow Hat on the subway on Halloween and was pretty amused and now I’m just horrified. And of course the woman was Curious George.
okay that’s super disturbing
So I was already feeling vaguely unsettled today and then this and now I realise I am Caught and I have been Caught for a very long time and I mistook being Caught for being loved and I have been very busy being Good.
Oof.
*Jedi hugs*
There is room inside you for you to be both Good and You, but let it be the Good that you have defined and chosen for yourself.
Best wishes for you from someone who was once Caught, and is now no longer.
“George no longer minded being Caught. Which meant he was as caught as caught could be.”
“Will George be happy when he gets out, do you think, or will he be happy when he stops wanting to?”
“If enough things happen to you, you can learn to love something just for being familiar.”
Aaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!
I have spent my whole life Being Good, and have spent the last few years realizing that it is not the same as Being Myself.
But people don’t like it when you are yourself. They like you compliant.
But how do you fix that sort of thing when you think Being Good is a fundamental part of Being Yourself?
THIS. Please, parents, if you have children, and you love them, and you see one who’s giving off signs that she (it usually is a she) is going to be the Good One, intervene. I know you never have energy to do it because the other ones have usually used up all your patience for the day, but send her to stay for a weekend with the hippie cousin who’ll give her junk food for dinner and let her stay up late watching somewhat inappropriate movies, or something.
Good is exactly the kind of trap you walk right into, and the chains you padlock around yourself à la Jacob Marley.
I think I have struggled to separate out my innate sense of morality from what is really about trying to keep people happy. It takes a lot of work, anguish, and courage.
I will admit though, that I am responding to what I think you’re getting at, and that you may be talking about something else entirely, so forgive me if I am off base.
That is indeed what I’m getting at (and what I’m trying to work on, personally, but I’ve pretty much just started on what’s gonna be a long road).
This is too much for a Monday.
Mallory destroyed me again. I am Caught.
Well at least now I feel great about getting divorced.
“Will George be happy when he gets out, do you think, or will he be happy when he stops wanting to?”
DAMMIT MALLORY
This is, like, Lovecraftian levels of terror. BECAUSE IT IS ALL TRUE.
I thought I would hate this, but I actually love it for its clarity. Thank you Mallory?
This is like “Love You Forever”- Mallory took a book I’ve always hated and brushed off the sickly sweet to reveal the chilling message that was there all the time.
When’s Babar? I’ll make popcorn!
“Will George be happy when he gets out, do you think, or will he be happy when he stops wanting to?” ouch
yes, there is nothing to say, but: fuck, mallory
“Good is what I tell you to do, the man said.” AAAAAUUUGHHHHHH
Suddenly I am thinking of all the times I have huddled up on the therapist’s couch, clutching my knees and rocking back and forth, remembering something that happened decades ago, and wailing, “I wanted so much to be Good!”
My yellow-hatted man’s definition of Good was about as idiosyncratic and goalpost-moving as this one. And I tried very hard, and failed, to be invisible to him.
Poor George.
I want to give you lots of <3s b/c being Good is such a damn trap.
This is the most horrific one yet, I think.
In wholly unrelated news, I’m going to go sit in a corner with some wine now, and try really hard not to think.
Well, this one kicked me right in the throat.
Gah. Curious George has always bugged me for similar reasons, but I’ve certainly never seen it put so well, and my lord, that bloody hurt, but if you’re ruining childhoods that well, I suppose you may as well keep on.
You forgot the trigger warning.
Fucking hell, Mallory. I’m a fucking nanny.
1) This is deeply unsettling.
2) Guys, whence all the real-Curious George hate? I get that it was uncool of TMWTYH to kidnap George, but I always read the ensuing stories as being about George’s persistence in being George, despite all constraints of firefighters, doctors, nurses, painters, and little boys with kites. Did really no one else see that?
3) The extra franchised books that aren’t by Margaret and H. A. Rey are awful, though.
2) It’s uncool in a way that relates specifically to colonialism, as well as the more literal trafficking in exotic pets. White man goes to Africa, sees something/someon he wants, takes it without regard for the life the monkey is already living. We then spend a vast series of books laughing at the inability of the monkey to fit into a human world, which uncomfortably parallels other contemporary colonialist writings about how hilarious it is when natives try to be “civilized.”
Huh. I definitely noticed the colonial connection, but then I always read everything that happened next as celebrating George for just doin’ his thing.
“There is an emergency here, George said to the firemen.
Can’t you see it?”
I’m just going to put my head on my desk and weep silently for the rest of the day.
This will be very handy next time I need a new therapist. I will just hand this over and say, “‘Men’ are grown ups and ‘The Man in the Yellow Hat’ was my mother.” That will make it a lot easier to get started… Thanks, Mallory.
And here’s celebrating being pretty damned Uncaught after many years of work at getting there.
OMG you must have had the same mother I did.
OMG you must have had the same mother I did.
As a resident of that city, I know exactly which store you mean, and I am terribly glad it isn't part of my daily walk home anymore.
I just spent the last few hours reading all of the “Children stories made horrific.” This one was the first I read and hit me the hardest. All the men in my life (boyfriend, friends, co-workers, relatives) are always telling me to “be good”. So far I’m still me and not good 🙂
Once upon a time
There was a writer named H.A. Rey.
Not to be confused with Rey in the new Star Wars
Who is sexy and cool.
No, H.A. Rey was so full of crap
It stained everything on him yellow.
It even overflowed and stained his hat yellow.
Even as a kid I thought Curious George was stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
But H.A. Rey didn’t just write crappy children’s books.
His crappiness was truly multi-dimensional.
He also wrote a crappy astronomy book.
It was supposed to make the constellations easier to see.
But his designs were much more complicated than the traditional ones
And much harder to remember.
Plus they included faint stars
That most people in cities would never be able to see.
So I am delighted to see Mallory Ortberg
Give the treatment he really deserves
To an author who makes Tom Clancy
Look like Clausewitz.
I want every woman to read this.
It would be good if every man read it as well.