Oh, Little Bear

[marydell]

We watch Little Bear around here with distressing regularity. Normally it's non-offensive and fairly entertaining--Little Bear spends most of his time in a haze of imaginary nonsensical adventures, and then at the end there is cake or pie. I ignore the little things that nag at me, like, what was Mother Bear's name before she became a mother? Was it just "Bear?" And why is there only one set of grandparents, who look like an exact older version of the parents? Are they Mother Bear's parents or Father Bear's? Or both? And why does a bear who makes his living as a fisherman wear a 3-piece suit in his spare time? Why is Little Bear's uncle named "Rusty" when everyone else has a name like "Duck" or "Owl?"

Anyway, generally we enjoy the show and it's free from the annoying lesson-slinging of Chuggington (one repeated lesson from Chuggington: when you ignore your orders and fuck up, get your friends to help fix it, and then the authority types won't have to find out. W. TF.) and don't even get me started about Ni-Hao Kai Lan; they seriously added extra chairs to MUSICAL FUCKING CHAIRS y'all, so nobody would be left out. No I am not kidding.

Ok so today we're watching Little Bear fly a kite. And he imagines the kite going all over the world. So then we see what he imagines (it's like Scrubs, only with bears and ducks etc.). Kite goes to France-looking place, and children look up at it and wave. Kite goes to Africa-looking place and...animals look up at it. OH COME ON NOW! Finally it goes to China (Great Wall, check) and encounters a fancy Chinese kite, without seeing anyone flying it. End of fantasy.

So: France, people; Africa, animals; China, uh...manufactured paper arts?

Comments

[readinggeek451]

That--is messed up.

Do you know the Little Bear books, too? They, or at least the first one, were a staple of my young childhood.

[shveta-thakrar.livejournal.com]

This was one of my problems with Pixar's Up--they go to South America, but there are no South Americans. (With a house and basically colonize.) Only there are no South Americans to be seen, just dogs and one crazy villain.

[curmudgn]

If you've not seen it before, try to track down a copy of The Art of Maurice Sendak. You'll end up with a lot of insight into the illustrations and where Sendak was drawing his material from (in large measure, his own birth family).

I don't pretend to understand the motivations behind Elsa Holmlund's storytelling, though.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Stereotypes, oh dear. How very, very uneducational.

[gailmom.livejournal.com]

I used to have that problem with Dora on occasion. She'd go travel the world, and the europeans would be friendly, and the africans would have one friendly representative and all the rest just staring, and the chinese would...ignore her completely and not speak english.

?!?!?!?

Those "hidden and unintentional racisms" really climb up my butt. I can only imagine it would be that much MORE distressing if the nation of your child's own cultural heritage was going unconsidered.