Seahorses, I Love 'Em (& other Links of Interest)

[bi]

Tarasoriku:

Add to that Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra overture playing in the background, followed by... some cheesy tune or other? I sure wish more scientists would present their work like that.

[gsandi]

Maybe he was senile, you never know.

Denouncing one's youthful racism isn't usually a clinical marker of senility.

Why exactly did he renounce Tintin in the Land of the Soviets?

Actually, with that one I think the deciding factor was shoddiness rather than offensiveness per se.

The two albums are early works by Hergé, poorly drawn, with a laughable story line and primitive, stereotyped representatives of peoples and cultures Hergé had never visited.

Their only conceivable value is to show where Hergé came from. The likelihood that they could conceivably influence the thinking of any child living today is remote - the fact that they are in black and white, and that they are not easily found in any case, reduces any "danger" they may pose.

And for God's sake, it's a BD, a comic strip. Anyone who takes his/her worldview from a BD is beyond any rational thinking anyway.

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The two albums are early works by Hergé, poorly drawn, with a laughable story line and primitive, stereotyped representatives of peoples and cultures Hergé had never visited.

Sounds about right.

the fact that they are in black and white, and that they are not easily found in any case, reduces any "danger" they may pose.

Ummm, the whole reason we're talking about Tintin in the Congo is that it's been recently republished. See upthread.

And for God's sake, it's a BD, a comic strip. Anyone who takes his/her worldview from a BD is beyond any rational thinking anyway.

Again, I find this affected yawning about the possible impact of literature on children ridiculous. I assure you, most children's lit is produced and sold in quite specific awareness that it will have an impact on the worldview of the people reading it. I can't see any reason that that shouldn't be the case.

(An update to the earlier link: the Congo book was moved out of the children's section in Borders UK, and in the same chain in the US, both in July. Seems like the right call. I'm kind of curious now to see what steps if any have been taken in Canada, so far no luck.)

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Pseudoscience at its FINEST. I especially love the matter-of-fact delivery of the narrator.

Wow. There's totally no evidence for subduction? I did not know that. Thanks, crazy guy.

[gsandi]

Ummm, the whole reason we're talking about Tintin in the Congo is that it's been recently republished. See upthread.

And for God's sake, it's a BD, a comic strip. Anyone who takes his/her worldview from a BD is beyond any rational thinking anyway.

Again, I find this affected yawning about the possible impact of literature on children ridiculous. I assure you, most children's lit is produced and sold in quite specific awareness that it will have an impact on the worldview of the people reading it. I can't see any reason that that shouldn't be the case.

You can accuse other people of affectation, Ian, but not me. I never affect anything - I express my own views (which can be quite strong, and often go against the grain), but I never "affect" - I don't follow fashion, and my interest in how other people view me relative to intellectual/political trends is minimal.

The Tintin series has 20-odd volumes, and the later editions are much more likely to capture children's imagination than the earlier ones (especially the first two, but Tintin in America isn't much better either).

In my view, it is good for children (and adults) to be exposed to how the world, including what is today called the third world, was presented 80 years ago. When people are not exposed to the past, they will find it that much harder to understand how past conflicts developed, and how their present world evolved from the previous one. Whatever you think of paternalistic colonial ideologies in the past (such as presented by Tintin in Congo), I do not think that it is right to hide the existence of such ideologies from today's children. Some people believed in those ideologies then, just as you believe in yours today.

(An update to the earlier link: the Congo book was moved out of the children's section in Borders UK, and in the same chain in the US, both in July. Seems like the right call. I'm kind of curious now to see what steps if any have been taken in Canada, so far no luck.)

Borders can do as it likes, I don't care. If I ran my own bookstore, I would sell Tintin in Congo in any section I pleased - this is known as freedom. You would of course be welcome not to come into my bookstore.

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In my view, it is good for children (and adults) to be exposed to how the world, including what is today called the third world, was presented 80 years ago.

I completely agree. But I submit that it's unwise to put literature in the children's section that parents will need to heavily filter for or explain to their young ones. If you do this as a bookseller, people get bitter with you awfully fast, as well they should. Borders was smart to realize this IMO.

If parents want to buy Tintin in the Congo for historical interest, and take it down one day to explain to Junior about racial ideology of the early twentieth century, that's a far cry from selling the book as a contemporary equivalent to Captain Underpants.

Borders can do as it likes, I don't care. If I ran my own bookstore, I would sell Tintin in Congo in any section I pleased - this is known as freedom. You would of course be welcome not to come into my bookstore.

A-ha, but would I be welcome to heckle you and picket you as a racist bastard? Of course I would -- that also is known as freedom!

[TomHChappell]

..

[Ketumak]

So, children are just sort of magically immune to propaganda?

No, but it doesn't automatically work on them, either. If it did society would never change and I couldn't explain my own non-imperialist views, or yours. I remember in the 80s when there was a lot of debate about Tom and Jerry: did they encourage violence? Research was done and a consensus emerged that kids probably knew the difference between cartoon and reality. That's also the kind of thing I was thinking of.

[LinguistCat]

Pseudoscience at its FINEST. I especially love the matter-of-fact delivery of the narrator.

Fantastic!
Anyone want to conworld an alt.earth where this is accurate?

Exactly what I was thinking.

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So, children are just sort of magically immune to propaganda?

No, but it doesn't automatically work on them, either.

It works consistently enough that corporations can profitably focus millons of dollars' worth of advertising on children, relying on the "nag factor" to bring in their parents' dollars. (One of the subjects covered in this book.) One doesn't have to think children are stupid to find it absurd to envisage them emerging from the womb as literary critics, ready to dissect the historical context of any image presented to them at a moment's notice.

[gsandi]

Borders can do as it likes, I don't care. If I ran my own bookstore, I would sell Tintin in Congo in any section I pleased - this is known as freedom. You would of course be welcome not to come into my bookstore.

A-ha, but would I be welcome to heckle you and picket you as a racist bastard? Of course I would -- that also is known as freedom!

You would be more than welcome. I would invite a local TV station to report on the event, and while they interviewed me I would explain the difference betwen Tintin in Congo and Mein Kampf. I love publicity!

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Looks like we have a date!

[gsandi]

In my view, it is good for children (and adults) to be exposed to how the world, including what is today called the third world, was presented 80 years ago.

I completely agree. But I submit that it's unwise to put literature in the children's section that parents will need to heavily filter for or explain to their young ones. If you do this as a bookseller, people get bitter with you awfully fast, as well they should. Borders was smart to realize this IMO.

If parents want to buy Tintin in the Congo for historical interest, and take it down one day to explain to Junior about racial ideology of the early twentieth century, that's a far cry from selling the book as a contemporary equivalent to Captain Underpants.

The above scenario is an exercise in didacticism that I have never practiced on my children, neither have my parents on me, or my grandparents on theirs (AFAIK). It is a form of preaching, which - to my mind - is at best irrelevant, at most a highly irritating overlay on the parent-child relationship. If I have to preach about morality, I have already failed in my primary role as a parent.

I grew up in a household overfilling with books, some of which would have been found objectionable by the ruling communists in Hungary. My parents managed to keep those books in the apartment anyway - you don't for a moment think that I would, in the relative freedom of today's West, care a whiff whether some outsider busybody considered some of my books racist, or sexist, or patronizing? Or that I would have to vet my book collection on the chance that some of them contained things some outsider found objectionable? It is not possible to vet thousands of books, and it is not possible to keep children from those books if they want to find them, any more than it is possible to keep them from certain web sites (a more likely threat to their morals these days). Either my children know that it is wrong to judge people for their race, ethnic background or religion, or they don't. If they know that it's wrong, a stupid, badly-drawn cartoon from 80 years ago won't change their mind - and if they don't, it's not the cartoon that produced that view.

[bi]

The most advanced anti-crime biometric gizmos in the world are no match for human procedural stupidity.

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[Ian's reply to Gabor is now in the "Racist Children's Literature: Should We Care?" thread in Ephemera.]

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Cosmos magazine on the future of civilization.

[Tarasoriku]

Cosmos magazine on the future of civilization.

Ugg, I didn't notice till the end that Michio Kaku wrote that, but I could've guessed as much. He's mastered narrating populist science. He's also seen too much anime.

[Ketumak]

It works consistently enough that corporations can profitably focus millons of dollars' worth of advertising on children, relying on the "nag factor" to bring in their parents' dollars. (One of the subjects covered in this book.) One doesn't have to think children are stupid to find it absurd to envisage them emerging from the womb as literary critics, ready to dissect the historical context of any image presented to them at a moment's notice.

I haven't read the book, though I read JK Galbraith on corporations and advertising when I was a student and found him persuasive. My experience as a parent though has led me to revise a few things. My son spends a lot of time on Battlefield 2, but isn't violent and withdrawn. The first Harry Potter book was published here by a small independent and sold by word of mouth. A few years back my son and his friends decided McDonalds was uncool and moved over to Subway Sandwiches, despite McDonalds having the bigger advertising budget.

I'd now say that to get through corporate messages have to: 1) not be cancelled out by other corporate messages, 2) not conflict with the child's own experience (a modern white child with black neighbours will most likely base his idea of black people on them rather than a book), and 3) not conflict with the collective wisdom of the peer group. A child doesn't need to be a front rank critic particularly, they just need to make use of their alternative sources of info.

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Sonib, mind if we redirect the Congo discussion to the Ephemera thread noted above? I copied my last response to Gabor there and removed it from here, as I'm trying to avoid over-cluttering this thread with it.

He's mastered narrating populist science. He's also seen too much anime.

No such thing, surely!

[Ketumak]

No, that's fine. I had my doubts about making my last post!

[zompist]

The French are different.

Check out the new Orangina mascot:
http://jwz.livejournal.com/813057.html

And that's not all!

http://www.naturellementpulpeuse.fr/

Safe for work. But not for your mind.

[Tarasoriku]

There might be something vaguely sexual to some people about an octopus - but the second one??

Also as one poster notes they've already gone ahead and inserted a subliminal message into the ice cube.

[Legion]

There might be something vaguely sexual to some people about an octopus - but the second one??

cactus = desert = HAWT

[Risla]

Politician Builds Toilet-Shaped House.

The name of the guy who did it makes me wonder. Shm Jay, are you a Korean politician?

[Shm Jay]

I would be if I could live in that house

How would you write Sim-Jae in Korean? What a coincidence!