Let me add that the stories meant to amuse children often teach different lessons than the textbooks and tracts. This toy magic lantern slide, for example, has an unusual moral: no dinner until you destroy the furniture. Your teachers do not want you to emulate the pig; but every child will admire its inventiveness, envy its contentment, and prefer it as a role model to the dittoheads in the primers.
I don’t even think those apples belonged to the pig. They do now.
(Posted by Doug Skinner)
2 responses so far ↓
1 Lisa // Aug 2, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Maybe the mixed messages we receive as we grow up are the root of our collective discontent.
The slide beautifully depicts how individual initiative and imagination will get you what you want, which in a modern capitalist society is supposed to be good . But it implies that if you pursue this impulse to get what you want for yourself, your methods will be morally corrupt and result in ruin.
Is this the myth of American “rugged individualism” and self-reliance, or simply Communist propaganda?
2 mamie // Aug 24, 2008 at 11:37 pm
This little piggy wants to know when the next meeting is. Pardon dangling…