The Babar show I mentioned last spring is now up at the Morgan Library through January 4 and, while I haven't been to see it yet (though be assured I will!), you can read this review in the Times about it for now. It draws attention to some of the political questions raised by the Babar books, particularly in relation to French colonialism, and introduces some revisions offered in the show's catalog to the increasingly popular understanding of the Babar books as celebratory of colonialism -- that perhaps de Brunhoff was self-consicously satirizing French colonial culture and imagination.Either way, I find the projection of politics onto cartoonish animal depictions --whatever those politics may be in Babar (and I don't have a conclusive opinion yet) -- very interesting. The author of the Times review is astute to bring up the importance of the mode of allegory, as well as the curious mixing of human and animal explored and enjoyed by the books, for which he offers a highly suggestive historical/political explanation: "As the ’30s progressed, it had to have been less clear what the divisions were between the animal and the human, or what civilization itself could hope for."
More once I've seen the show!
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I never made that connection before, and now it seems so obvious! Of course the use of humans and animals interacting as peers was De Brunhoff's critical commentary on colonialism. Don't you think he was pointing to the notion that humans blur the distinction between race and species, which draws a parallel between colonialism and domestication?
Rothstein rightly points out that Babar is constructed as the archetypal "enlightened savage", and that is definitely troubling. But I don’t think it escaped De Brunhoff that colonialism will seem ludicrous precisely because the peer relationship between humans and animals is so fantastical.
Ok and I also think Predicate, Ink. should more deeply explore highly political graphic novels and their recent emergency in mainstream American culture (Persepolis, Maus, etc.). We use the term 'graphic novel' to distinguish from, say, 'comic' or 'cartoon'. Interesting that in French, apparently, the term 'Bande Dessinee' (literally 'drawn strip') is used for comic strips and graphic novels alike. No more serious term needed because comic strips are not thought to be frivolous in the first place. So in that regard, are all cartoons ultimately political? What about animals?
Can we go to the exhibit together?
Gah. Time to return to the syphilis reactor grid...
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