3. It's not widely understood that blackface & ethnic caricature weren't just popular in early 20th century, they were the very visual language through which America saw itself as a hybrid society.
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4. Blackface & ethnic caricature introduced a gestural expressiveness that changed American comedy. It's main legacy is cartooning. Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny etc are heirs. These 1930 comic strips highlight how much Mickey owed to Al Jolson & minstrelrypic.twitter.com/6gPgGWU1lf
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5. This very early Mickey Mouse cartoon from 1930 was written by Walt Disney himself and drawn by Mickey's co-creator Ub Iwerks. It really makes clear the visual debt Mickey Mouse has to minstrel imagery. Not how Mickey is nearly a mirror image of the ooga-booga native.pic.twitter.com/xX7cUnBzPF
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6. Seuss grew up on such images and used them wholesale in his early work. But even as he started to move away from them (as a result of his own political shift during World War II), he repurposed these images into imaginary beings, as
@philnel persuasively argues.2 replies 6 retweets 133 likesShow this thread -
7. In the 19th and early 20th century in the United States (and indeed up till the present in the United Kingdom) it was common to portray the Irish as simians.pic.twitter.com/gSjcAlyfVn
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8. The Irish Simian lives on in two very popular characters: the American everyman Homer Simpson & the Grinch (which Michelle Abate traces back to images like this 19th drawing of Bridget McBruiser).pic.twitter.com/5ZTcKOf9RL
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9. I was dissatisfied with both sides of the Seuss wars. Unlike lunkheads like Ted Cruz, I wouldn't ever show the racist ooga-booga images to kids. But I don't want the books to go out of print either; cultural history is too important. The books should stay in print for adults.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
What is your line for which books should stay in print? All books ever published? All books ever written? Should publishers publish literally every book ever submitted to them forever? At what point can books no longer be printed? Where is the line drawn?
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Replying to @CGioiello
It would be good to have digital copies of all books ever printed that anyone can access.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
So free? And not actually published but a digitized library? Do the discontinued Suess books now no longer exist in any form? Because that's very different from "a publisher chooses not to publish physical versions of these books anymore."
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All old books should be in an easily accessible digital library. Books of historical and literary interest should be kept in print by enterprises like Library of America, university presses etc. Since Seuss is a historically important creator, he'd be covered by that.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
But would all of his books be covered? And since his foundation decided that these books don't represent what they believe he would have wanted, where is the problem. Do these books really have a huge cultural importance? They still exist.
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Replying to @CGioiello
I don't think a corporate enterprise should decide if a book published in 1937 by an author dead for 3 decades should be available or not. If scholars want to make an archival edition, they should be free to do so.
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