Since we’re talking about canceling kids books, racism, colonialism and the monarchy, it reminds me of when I recently re-read #BabarTheElephant for my daughter. As a kid, I remember it to be endearing, but holy shit racism can be insidious af. So gather ‘round... [thread] 
The book was originally published in France in 1931, so I assumed this story begins in Africa, but the name “Babar” is Persian for “tiger”, or Sanskrit for “king”, and the ears are small like an Asian elephant, so perhaps Jean De Brunhoff meant for it to be South Asia...
So somewhere in the jungle, Babar is happy and playing with his mom, and for no reason at all a hunter shoots his mother. Scared and alone Babar runs away, but instead of finding refuge among his fellow elephants, he runs towards more evil humans: the city...
Once in the city, he finds a generous white lady who gives him her purse so he can go shopping in the department store. Amused by the novelty of the elevator, he forgets to shop, and the manager is summoned...
He eventually settles on his new haberdashery, including a derby hat and shoes with gaiters. Take note: previously he was walking as elephants usually do (on 4 legs), now he’s fully anthropomorphized (and therefore “civilized” as he is now walking upright on 2 legs)...
Fresh and clean, Babar moves in with the old lady, his white savior. But even as he learns to assimilate into civilized life among humans, he longs for the life he had in the jungle... et voila! His unclothed cousins come running from the jungle to find him...
First order of business: getting them looking respectable and standing upright...
Arthur and Celeste are making their family worried so their two mothers came to the city to retrieve them. Babar takes his cousins back in his new car. He couldn’t fit the mothers in his car they had to run behind (they didn’t get clothes either).
As soon as he returns to the jungle, the king tragically dies that same day from eating a poisonous mushroom. When Babar and Celeste arrive the elders find that he is now wiser than them from having learned from men, so they make him king.
Apparently Babar and Celeste had a lot to talk about during their car ride back, because they ended up getting engaged. They must have forgotten to remind each other that they were cousins, and the elder Cornelius had no qualm about marrying young Celeste and making her queen.
After the wedding, Babar and Celeste leave in a hot air balloon for their honeymoon. Despite all the great ideas he had learned having lived among men, apparently the most important: learning how to throw a party, dress nicely and earn adulation...
I legit struggled to find the “moral” of the story. Was the audience really post-war France waxing nostalgic about pre-colonial excess, or was it just a coded message to savages of the jungle to assimilate and become civilized?
As a kid, I remember it as a tale of adventure and the allure of the exotic. As an adult, the callous attitude toward pursuit of happiness and social status was troubling. No effort for reconciliation with loss, only blind acceptance of a new and “better” norm...
Does Babar deserve to be #canceled? Removing without reconciliation misses the mark, especially if what is lost are the historical aspects that made these depictions acceptable then, and why ignorance isn't an excuse now...
This book explains so much about how the @RoyalFamily and British press treated #HarryandMeghan: the monarchy has not attempted any reconciliation, rather it continues to yearn for superficial fealty and the nostalgia of taming the savage and colonizing the exotic. [fin]
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