Thursday, March 5, 2015

Dr. Seuss and the Cold War

So, a while back we talked about Dr. Seuss and the propaganda he drew during WWII. Now that we're pretty far into the Cold War, I thought I'd share another politically-motivated piece that he wrote in 1984, called The Butter Battle Book, which is basically just a huge metaphor for the war. In it, he alludes to a bunch of topics and points of interest from that time period, especially the arms race, mutually assured destruction, and nuclear warfare.

It was made into an animated TV special, which is linked below. It's pretty long, but if you're ever in the mood to watch a children's cartoon with very heavy Cold War themes, it's definitely the right choice.


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2 comments:

  1. UnknownMarch 8, 2015 at 4:19 PM

    Thanks for the information! I was actually just thinking about this book and was going to make a post on it haha. The Butter Battle Book was actually banned in a library in Canada because people didn't like that it took a stand against the arms race. The ending (where both sides are holding a destructive nuclear weapon, each one about to drop it) is much darker than most children's books and mirrors the American sentiment at the time.

    Other books Dr. Seuss wrote to take a stance on political issues were Horton Hears a Who!, where he spoke against the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII and Yertle the Turtle, against Hitler and authoritarian dictators in general.

    Sources:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yertle_the_Turtle_and_Other_Stories
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butter_Battle_Book
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horton_Hears_a_Who%21
    http://bannedbooks.world.edu/2011/09/11/banned-books-awareness-dr-seuss/

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  2. UnknownApril 6, 2015 at 4:22 PM

    Wow! I'm surprised Canada actually banned the book-- but I did some research and found out that this also happened more recently with Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax". in 1989, the California Unified School district challenged the book for criticizing the logging industry. It's interesting to see how similar political situations come up again and again depending on the current climate of American culture. Here's an interesting article to check out: http://bannedbooks.world.edu/2011/09/11/banned-books-awareness-dr-seuss/

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