Book Report: Curious George

Curious George: Torgo disapproves

I enjoy Curious George. Don't get me wrong. As children's characters designed to embody a toddler in whimsical, cartoon form, I'd like nothing more than to see George take out Elmo once and for all (perhaps in a tag team match wherein Clifford the Big Red Dog, representing children's characters who are gigantic and should really be terrifying, maybe even devouring children, triumphs over Barney, the purple dinosaur who looks carnivorous but actually just giggles and bounces and creeps me the hell out).

Back to George, here's my thing. The book. It's dated. It's dated badly. The most obvious example of this is the pipe-smoking:


The Man In the Yellow Hat smokes a pipe early in the book, and one of the sailors smokes a pipe while rescuing George from drowning, as George vomits water and whole fish, but when George lights up, you know this is from an era when doctors did commercials for cigarettes. That's a facet of the story notably missing from the current tv show and recent movie.

Then there's Africa. Oh, Africa. Heart of Darkness, Africa.

George is a monkey. Monkeys live in Africa (they live elsewhere, too, but I'm willing to accept that George is a monkey from Africa).

The Man in the Yellow Hat is a white guy. Ok, lots of white people out there.

But the Man in the Yellow Hat (TMITYH) goes to Africa to capture himself a wild monkey. He outwits the monkey by leaving his hat on the ground which George, ever so curious, tries to put on his head. When it covers his whole body, TMITYH rushes in a gets him in a bag.

Now I'm not pretending to tell you that this isn't how a guy from Boston who wants an African monkey doesn't go about getting one. I'm just saying that it has uncomfortable undertones.

Unfortunately, this origin story is faithfully recounted in the movie.

To preserve the racial allegory, George ends up being hauled off to jail later in the book for committing no serious crime other than being a monkey. Where is TMITYH when this happens? Off at his white-collar job, presumably, counting his money.

In fact, the iconic image on the cover of the book (see above), whimsical as it appears, is actually George being carted away.

So as much as I want to like Curious George, I find all this disturbing. I still read it to the Boy whenever he asks. And he still has a stuffed George he sleeps with (plus one picture on the wall). But sooner or later I'm going to transition him from Curious George Gets Denied Parole to The Autobiography of Malcolm X.