Babar, the Elephant

Consuming children's entertainment as an adult is a fraught business. It's got its positive side, certainly - you finally get all the really good jokes in the Disney cartoons, for example. But you can also make discoveries that are hazardous to your understanding of the universe.

I don't often feel the urge to re-read books from my childhood, but recently I developed a hankering for Babar, the Francophone elephant king, so I checked out a few volumes from the library.

(Asides: a) There are a lot more of these titles than I realized. b) The children's room is hard to navigate - everything is too low to the ground for my rheumatically compromised joints. )

I hadn't counted on the three little picture books I brought home being so politically loaded. Let me recount Babar's story for you, in case it's been a while (keep in mind, original publication was 1933):

Little Babar lived with the other elephants in the "forest" (that's how it's translated from the French). One day, his mother is brutally murdered by a white poacher, and Babar runs away to Paris (?). He falls into the good graces of a very old, very rich lady, who becomes his benefactress and takes him to get a suit of clothes in a becoming shade of green, including spats and a bowler. Courtesy of a private tutor, Babar also receives a proper European education.

Eventually, Babar returns to the forest (in the old lady's motor car), where it just so happens that the old elephant king has just died (he ate a poisonous mushroom, and turned the same shade of green as Babar's suit). The elephant elders unanimously decide to make Babar the new king, seeing as how he's become a sophisticated, enlightened European and all. (Yep, we're totally going there.) Like any self-respecting European monarch, Babar then marries his cousin.

Babar sets about civilizing the elephant kingdom, and sets up a capital city with paved roads, modern homes, a school, and an opera house. The elephants dress in lovely western clothes and become doctors and cobblers and mechanics. They learn to read and write and play orchestra music. And then...they all live happily ever after.

Just...wow.