angus
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« on: October 20, 2008, 03:38:00 PM » |
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« edited: October 20, 2008, 04:12:38 PM by angus »
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We were at Barnes&Noble yesterday looking at Curious George books. My son watches that show on PBS every day, and seems to like it, so we wanted to get him some books like that. They had a large collection of titles like "Curious George goes to the Museum" and "Curious George flies a Kite" and so on. One particularly big volume was just titled "Curious George" and the artwork on it looked sort of neo-impressionistic. I found it odd among the others, so I picked it up and looked at it. It was fascinating. It was a 2006 reprint of the original 1941 book Curious George. So I read it intently, and learned how the Man With The Yellow Hat hooked up with George in the first place. On about page five of the story it showed George trying out the pipe of The Man With The Yellow Hat. Even talked about it. "George was a good little monkey. He learned to read the man's book. Learned to wear the man's boots. He even learned to smoke the man's pipe."
It seemed so out of place, to be honest. Times have changed.
I remember being like four years old, and there were no car seats and no one buckled, not even children, and little children rode in the front seat or the back seat or on the dashboard, or even standing up in the bed of a pickup, if they wanted. And no one ever pulled anyone over for drinking an alcoholic beverage while driving. And everybody smoked. Teacher's lounges, back when I was in elementary school, all had smoke wafting out under the door. And every actor and actress--we used to have separate words for actor and actress--in every movie smoked. We even had a nursery rhyme that went:
"I know a secret I cannot tell
3 little monkeys in a peanut shell
one can read, one can write
and one can smoke his daddy's pipe."
Smoking (pipes), peanuts (at least the shell), and implied misogyny (assuming only daddy would have the lung capacity or inclination to smoke) all in one poem. Never seemed like it, though. Well, the peanuts did sound like peanuts. Most schools nowadays are peanut-free, even. We don't even keep any peanuts in our house. Or peanut butter.
Funny, though, one of the first things I notice when I watch old movies is how people smoke all the time, and drink quite a bit of alcohol. And slap their wives around. Stuff like that. I guess it's conditioning. Back when I was in college, I almost always kept a bag of weed in my car, along with rolling papers and roach clips, never wore a seat belt, and usually had a serious Wild Turkey buzz when I was driving around after school. I would show up at job interviews stoned, and attended class more than a few times high on acid or coke. Nowadays, I always buckle up first thing when I get into a car, never drive if I've had more than a couple glasses of wine, and I wouldn't dream of letting my child ride in a car without being strapped into his booster seat. And, of course, we never let him near cigarette smoke. Or any smoke, for that matter. We cross the street to walk on the other sidewalk if anyone's doing barbeque in their lawns. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine that I used to show up to class high on acid or coke or weed or alcohol. Or stand in front of open barbeque pits, smoking reefer, drinking hard liquor, and breathing in all that particulate matter from the charcoal. But it's not just me. Individuals become more responsible as they grow older, but it seems like the whole society has matured a bit. We don't even allow smoking in bars, pool halls, and restaurants anymore. It would seem so out of place to see someone lighting up indoors, wouldn't it? I used to be so anti- anti-smoking. When the anti-smoking craze hit college campus back in the late 80s, I decried the phasing out of indoor smoking lounges as an affront to personal liberty. I guess I've just gotten used to it. Particularly since I became a parent. I don't want my son breathing cigarette smoke, or riding around in a car with the driver high on crack or meth. And I don't want him going inside skanks without a condom, the way we did when I was younger. It all seems dangerous, Didn't used to. Does now. I guess we hope our children don't do all the stupid things we did.
I guess the artist has just been so conditioned by our more uptight society that he left out the cigarette. It does look odd, though, to see her fingers pursed like that, empty. Should have found a different pose if he was going to do a smoke-free stamp. Because all you notice here is the empty fingers. So much so that it sort of defeats the purpose of leaving the cigarette out, imho.
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