Enid Blyton

[Yithian]

Si-Fan

She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armoury, Petrie. But a woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous. To our great fortune she has formed a sudden prelidiction, characteristically Oriental, for yourself.

or, famously:

Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an Entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect...

Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man. [!]

My favourite for pure drama, however, is:

To Smith and I, who knew something of the secret influences at work to overthrow the Indian Empire, to place, it might be, the whole of Europe and America beneath an Eastern rule, it seemed that a great yellow hand was stretching out over London. Dr. Fu-Manchu was a menace to the civilised world. Yet his very existence remained unsuspected by the millions whose fate he sought to command.

:eek!!!!:

 

[nambo2]

Originally posted by Quixote
[BIts got so that untill you get to know a Black person, its too risky to even talk to them... ah I'll have to remember that one in future.

Yes, a good idea, especially if your job depends on it, the point of my post being even the national press can slag off Germans, but where I work just politely asking a Black person to do something he doesnt like can and does result in " its because Iam Black", a complaint about you and instant dismissal. I know not all Black people are like that which is why I said "untill you get to know them", but the risks are there, maybe not where you live but down here in London its not just "In my opion" its fact, we are forever being sent on courses to remind us of the fact and how sensitive they are.
And its this political correctness that makes ordinary people into racists because you now have to treat Black people as being differant, something special that you have to be carefull around rather than just another Human Being and if this is the world you want you are welcome to it!

 

[stu neville]

Yes, a good idea, especially if your job depends on it....its not just "In my opion" its fact, we are forever being sent on courses to remind us of the fact and how sensitive they are.

Perhaps you could see if there's a course in recognising mild sarcasm?

Just my opion, of course.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Aargh! Is Nothing Sacred? Blyton Imagineered!

You know you're getting old, when Blyton's Famous Five are given the Disney Channel, High School Musical treatment!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7306752.stm

Famous Five return for TV series

BBC News Online. 20 March 2008

Enid Blyton's Famous Five are returning to TV screens in a new animated series - with an updated 21st Century look.

Famous Five: On the Case features the children of the original ginger beer-loving adventurers - and their dog, Timmy.

But the Famous Five's offspring are now multicultural; their enemies include a DVD bootlegger and they sport modern gadgets like iPods and mobile phones.

The new series launches on 5 May on the Disney Channel.

The first Famous Five book, Five on a Treasure Island, was published in 1942 and the series is considered a children's classic.

Contemporary twist

Producers say the animated tales remain faithful to the themes of storytelling, mystery and adventure central to the original books but add a contemporary twist.

They feature 12-year-old Anglo-Indian Jo, short for Jyoti - a Hindi word meaning light - who, like her mother George, is a tomboy and the group's team leader.

Other characters include Allie, a 12-year-old Californian "shopaholic" who enjoys going out and getting "glammed up" but is packed off to the British countryside to live with her cousins.

Her mother was Anne in the Famous Five, a reluctant adventurer who has now become a successful art dealer.

The team is completed by adventure junkie Max, who is 13-year-old Julian's son; Dylan, the 11-year-old son of Dick, and dog Timmy.

The animated series was given the seal of approval by Blyton's eldest daughter, Gillian Baverstock, before she died at the age of 76 last year.

"We tried to imagine where the original Famous Five would go in their lives," Jeff Norton from Chorion, which owns the rights to Blyton's books, told the Press Association.

"Because George was such an intrepid explorer in the original novels we thought it would be only natural that she travelled to India, to the Himalayas, where she fell in love with Ravvi. That's the back story (to Jo).

"We spoke to Enid Blyton's daughter and she thought her mother would love what we have done," he added.

Example of 'animation' here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/...tm&news=1&nbwm=1&bbwm=1&nbram=1&bbram=1&asb=1

"We spoke to Enid Blyton's daughter and she thought her mother would love what we have done," he added.

Why do I get the impression that Blyton would have showed her appreciation, by introducing them to the business end of a Purdey double barreled?

 

[JamesWhitehead]

"The team is completed by adventure junkie Max, who is 13-year-old Julian's son; Dylan, the 11-year-old son of Dick, and dog Timmy."


The comma before the "and" just prevents the second half of this sentence from being even more alarming than the first! :shock:

 

[James_H]

God, that looks pretty awful. Last year I was up all night and saw some children's TV at the end of it... Has anyone seen the current version of rupert the bear? Not only are the protagonists amazingly high handed little twats (!), but badger has a mobile phone he waves around at every opportunity, and everything's covered in glitter.

 

[Stormkhan]

"The team is completed by adventure junkie Max, who is 13-year-old Julian's son; [...]

Even as a youth I found Julian to be so right-wing and destined for a career in the upper echelons of the army, or in politics, that he was the archetypal public school closet homosexual. I'm presuming that his providing a son was more to keep up his right-wing macho credentials than any sexual leanings.

 

[milk23]

slightly off the point but i have been working with an Iranian fella for some months now and from the get go i started with the inflamatory remarks about his culture and he responded admirably by ridiculing my own country's standing. It is strange and a sign that this happens all too infrequently but now i just think this Iranian fella is great because of this easy and often highly offensive banter we have (the kind that apparently a third party could sue the both of us over for causing them secondary exposure to emotional trauma... or something)

It aint easy I know but just as an upside to all this I say, it is possible for different coloured people to spontaneously enjoy a joke that whilst refering to their differences really states that they don't matter more than the actual laughter

 

[Kondoru]

They feature 12-year-old Anglo-Indian Jo, short for Jyoti - a Hindi word meaning light - who, like her mother George, is a tomboy and the group's team leader.

Other characters include Allie, a 12-year-old Californian "shopaholic" who enjoys going out and getting "glammed up" but is packed off to the British countryside to live with her cousins.

Her mother was Anne in the Famous Five, a reluctant adventurer who has now become a successful art dealer.

The team is completed by adventure junkie Max, who is 13-year-old Julian's son; Dylan, the 11-year-old son of Dick, and dog Timmy.

They seem a charming bunch, EB `certainly` relied a lot on reader feedback, and did modernise her characters.

Dont get me on her fairy books....

 

[Anonymous]

Re: Aargh! Is Nothing Sacred? Blyton Imagineered!

But the Famous Five's offspring are now multicultural; their enemies include a DVD bootlegger and they sport modern gadgets like iPods and mobile phones.
...
...
...
Contemporary twist

Producers say the animated tales remain faithful to the themes of storytelling, mystery and adventure central to the original books but add a contemporary twist.

Sweet baby Jesus up a ladder.......

This 'update a classic and ruin it just because we can't come up with an original idea' attitude really does make my pee boil.

 

[LordRsmacker]

Re the Dambusters, it would be worse if Spielberg got hold of it and remade it - then we'd have the Yanks running the whole operation with not a Brit in sight:hmph:
Carole

Not quite as bad as Spielberg, but Peter Jackson (LOTR, King Kong etc) is due to do a remake this year. Executive producer is Sir David Frost, but I wouldn't think that would be any guarantee of a straight remake, judging from his increasingly erm, "bewildered" manner!

 

[stu neville]

Not quite as bad as Spielberg, but Peter Jackson (LOTR, King Kong etc) is due to do a remake this year. Executive producer is Sir David Frost, but I wouldn't think that would be any guarantee of a straight remake, judging from his increasingly erm, "bewildered" manner!

We have a dedicated Dambusters remake thread, right here.

 

[rynner2]

Noddy returns without the golliwogs
Noddy returns to Toyland later this month in the first official new book for more than 45 years, but the golliwogs have been banished from his circle of friends.
By Roya Nikkhah, Arts Correspondent
Published: 7:30AM BST 18 Oct 2009

In a bid to avoid any controversy for Noddy's 60th birthday, the golliwogs will not appear in the latest book.

Enid Blyton's granddaughter, Sophie Smallwood, who wrote the new adventure, had considered including the characters but decided it would be too controversial – a decision which has been described as "unnecessary" by fans of the series.

The new adventure, Noddy and the Farmyard Muddle, follows the wooden elf as he tries to solve the mysterious events taking place on the Toyland farm that coincide with the arrival of the goblins.

His best friends including Big-Ears, Tessie Bear, Mr Plod and Bumpy Dog rally round, but the golliwogs are nowhere to be seen.

The original Noddy stories featured golliwogs who lived in Golly Town, including Mr Golly, one of Noddy's best friends who ran Toyland's garage and looked after Noddy's car.

Blyton also featured villainous golliwogs in the stories and in the 1951 book Here Comes Noddy Again, the black-faced woollen dolls were Noddy's arch enemies, who were rude to his friends and stole his car.

The dolls were popular at the time that the stories were written, but were later considered racist, prompting publishers to reissue the books replacing the golliwogs with other characters, with the white-faced Mr Sparks becoming the proprietor of the garage and the evil goblins Sly and Gobbo becoming Toyland's main villains.

Fans of the books said they had hoped that in the modern era, when even children can understand that books were written in a certain historical context, the new book could have retained the golliwogs.

Miss Smallwood, 39, a preschool teacher from West Sussex who was commissioned last year by Chorion, the entertainment company which owns the Blyton estate, to write the first new Noddy book since 1963, said she had tried to remain "very true to the original stories because they are so loved as they are".

"I read all the Noddy stories again before I started writing to make sure I struck the right tone with the characters," she said. "I think most people now do realise that the toys removed from the stories were just toys, but sometimes things are too complicated and I thought it would cause more upset to try and recreate something that had moved on."

Tony Summerfield, of the Enid Blyton Society, said that the new book was "a wonderful way to recognise Noddy's 60th birthday," but said that the removal of the golliwogs was unnecessary.

"I don't think when Enid wrote about golliwogs there was anything racist in it at all," he said. "Gillies were just ordinary nursery toys and it was not until much later that they became seen as racist symbols, but even then it was only by a vociferous minority.

"I can understand that the publishers are aiming the book at children and don't want to do anything controversial, but I do think that some publishers underestimate children, who should be able to understand that they were written in an historical context.

"Personally I would like to see the books left as much as possible in the time they were written in. I do not like the way Enid's books have been updated and tampered with. It doesn't seem quite right to remove the gollies when you can still buy original copies of Helen Bannerman's Little Black Sambo."

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6359248 ... iwogs.html

 

[PeniG]

And once again "controversial negative images" invoking people of color are removed and replaced by images evoking only people of white middle-class.

You can still get the original Bannerman-illustrated Little Black Sambo in the UK? You can't here. Even the Little Golden Book copy I remember had new, more realistic illustrations. The story of Sambo itself isn't racist at all; in fact, more than one critic raised in early 20th-century America has remarked that it was the only book they ever read in childhood in which people of color appeared in a sympathetic light. I think it was Eleanor Farjeon (in The Green and Burning Tree? who combed the local shoe stores looking for shoes just like his. Only black men got sick and tired of being addressed as "Sambo," and who can blame them?

 

[GNC]

Nice to see The Telegraph with their finger on the pulse, the golliwogs were removed from the Noddy books way back in the eighties.

 

[GNC]

And once again "controversial negative images" invoking people of color are removed and replaced by images evoking only people of white middle-class.

I don't know if Enid Blyton was ever exactly penning a call to arms of non-white, working class grit seeing as how the golliwogs were about the only "black" representations in her canon. If you believe they were supposed to be representative of black people in the first place.

Maybe the world isn't ready for Chuck D's Adventures of Noddy in Toyland...

 

[rynner2]

Nice to see The Telegraph with their finger on the pulse, the golliwogs were removed from the Noddy books way back in the eighties.

There was no suggestion this was new, just that the new book excludes them too.

 

[PeniG]

I don't know if Enid Blyton was ever exactly penning a call to arms ...

I'm sure she wasn't. The point (which we in the kidlit industry feel called on to make again and again) is that exclusion is no improvement on negative stereotyping. The gollywog toys, if I understand correctly (I've never seen one) were modeled on stereotypes of black people and to the extent that they were and are perceived that way they will have to bear that onus; but that is not always enough, IMHO - I will bow to the opinions of people more diretly affected than me - to warrant their exclusion. The crows in Disney's Dumbo and Prince Bumpo in Hugh Lofting's Dr. Dolittle books are similar cases. If you know about the black stereotypes of the era in which they were conceived, they're embarrassing as hell; block off that part of your brain (and many small children have never been exposed to them) they are fun, positive, lovable characters. Most of the time, the removal of such characters is a sop to white embarrassment and does nothing to improve the situation for anyone.

When strong non-white leads appear in a critical mass of stories, all these figures will diminish in importance. That's the ideal I think we should be aiming for in the industry.

 

[Recycled1]

My "best dress" when I went off to university in 1964 had the "Sambo Dollyrocker" label and cost about 4 guineas as I remember!
I bet that label wouldn't be allowed these days! And no, it wasn't a little black dress! It was a blue wool mix.

 

[GNC]

I'm sure she wasn't. The point (which we in the kidlit industry feel called on to make again and again) is that exclusion is no improvement on negative stereotyping. The gollywog toys, if I understand correctly (I've never seen one) were modeled on stereotypes of black people and to the extent that they were and are perceived that way they will have to bear that onus; but that is not always enough, IMHO - I will bow to the opinions of people more diretly affected than me - to warrant their exclusion. The crows in Disney's Dumbo and Prince Bumpo in Hugh Lofting's Dr. Dolittle books are similar cases. If you know about the black stereotypes of the era in which they were conceived, they're embarrassing as hell; block off that part of your brain (and many small children have never been exposed to them) they are fun, positive, lovable characters. Most of the time, the removal of such characters is a sop to white embarrassment and does nothing to improve the situation for anyone.

I don't think the answer is to ignore the stereotypes of the past (and last time I saw Dumbo the crows were all present), the answer is to educate. Unfortunately there aren't many five year olds who want to listen to a lecture on the history of slavery before settling down to watch Song of the South, hence the "problematic" works and characters are swept under the carpet. Having a sense of humour and perspective might well help too, but it's hard to teach that on such a touchy subject.

Mind you, you just have to watch a Transformers blockbuster to see that racial stereotypes in family entertainment are still around.

When strong non-white leads appear in a critical mass of stories, all these figures will diminish in importance. That's the ideal I think we should be aiming for in the industry.

The ball's in your court, there!

 

[MsPix]

What would Noddy think!?

Naked tennis, a lesbian affair with the nanny: New TV drama reveals Enid Blyton as a barking-mad adulterous bully
By Lisa Sewards
Last updated at 1:16 AM on 13th November 2009

On paper, the world of Enid Blyton was one populated by happy, carefree children whose idea of bliss at the end of an adventure-filled day was a slice of plum cake washed down by lashings of ginger beer.
The setting was an idyllic Britain, one of thatched cottages and lych gates, a fairytale time, in an age of innocence.
But the creator of Noddy, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven and Malory Towers was in truth a cold-hearted mother and a vindictive adultress who set out to destroy her former husband.


The darker revelations, which will dissolve the image of Blyton conveyed by her 753 much-loved books, are part of a brilliant new television biopic, starring Helena Bonham Carter as the author.
At first glance, Blyton's life seems unlikely material for gripping drama, as much of it consisted of her sitting at a desk, knocking off 10,000 words a day. Her books sold 600million copies around the world and made her extremely rich and famous. Her works still sell eight million copies a year.
But Blyton's home life at her cottage, Old Thatch, near the Thames at Bourne End, then at Green Hedges, a mock-Tudor house in Beaconsfield, was nothing like as idyllic as the picture she tried to create.

In spite of the children's nursery, crumpets for tea, Bimbo the cat and Topsy the dog, all foisted on the public in convenient photocalls to project the Blyton brand, the truth was more conflicted.

'Enid's self-awareness was brilliant and she was incredibly controlling, too,' explains Bonham Carter. 'I was attracted to the role because she was bonkers. She was an emotional mess and quite barking mad.
'What I found extraordinary, bordering on insane, was the way that Enid reinvented her own life. She was allergic to reality - if there was something she didn't like then she either ignored it or re-wrote her life.
'She didn't like her mother, so let her colleagues assume she was dead. When her mother died, she refused to attend the funeral. Then the first husband didn't work out, so she scrubbed him out.
'There's also a scene in the film where her dog dies, but she carries on pretending he's still alive because she can't bear the truth.'
Emotionally, Blyton remained a little girl, stuck in a world of picnics, secret-society codes and midnight feasts. It acted as a huge comfort blanket.

Many of Blyton's obsessions can be traced to her father, who left her mother when Enid was 12. She then seized up emotionally and physically.

'It was my job to understand how she became like this in the first place, not to judge her,' explains Bonham Carter.

'When Enid consulted a gynaecologist about her failure to conceive, she was diagnosed as having an immature uterus and had to have surgery and hormone treatment before she could have children.'

Cold-hearted mother: Blyton with her daughters Gillian and Imogen
The irony was that when she finally did have two daughters, Gillian and Imogen, with her first husband, Hugh Pollock, she was unable to relate to them as a normal mother.

She loved signing thousands of letters to her 'friends' the fans, encouraging them to collect milk bottle tops for Great Ormond Street Hospital to help the war effort, and even ran a competition to name her house, Green Hedges.
But her neighbours said Blyton used to complain about the fearful racket made by children playing.
She was distant and unkind to her younger daughter Imogen and there was clear favouritism in the way she privileged her elder daughter Gillian, who died two years ago aged 75.
The first husband: Hugh Pollock was prevented from seeing his daughters
Imogen Smallwood, 74, says: 'My mother was arrogant, insecure and without a trace of maternal instinct. Her approach to life was childlike, and she could be spiteful, like a teenager.'
Although Imogen prefers to remain private, she did visit the set to advise Bonham Carter. 'We had email correspondence before Imogen visited the set. We agreed that I wasn't going to try to impersonate her mother because this is a drama,' says Helena.
'Imogen is sensitive, but was very supportive and gave me a few tips, such as how her mother did everything at immense speed because she was ruled by the watch. Enid's domestic life was seen as an interruption to her writing, which was her escapism.'
There is a poignant scene in the film where Blyton holds a tea party at home for her fans, or 'friends' as she preferred to call them. But her daughters are banished to the nursery.
'Enid is one of the kids at the Famous Five tea parties - the jelly and ice-cream are as much for her as they are for her fans,' explains Helena.
'It's also significant that when her daughters go to school, a large mannequin of Noddy - her new child - arrives in the hall to take the place of the children.'
Blyton's first husband, Hugh, called her 'Little Bunny' and adored her. He helped launch her career after they met when he was her editor at Newnes, the publisher.

Blyton's first book, Child Whispers, a collection of poems, was published in 1922. She wrote in her diary soon after meeting him: 'I want him for mine.'
They were married for 19 years, but as Enid's career took off in the Thirties, Hugh grew depressed and took to nightly drinking sessions in the cellar while Enid managed to fit affairs in between writing.

The marriage deteriorated and Hugh moved out. She mocked him in later adventure stories, such as The Mystery Of The Burnt Cottage, as the clueless cop, PC Theophilus Goon.
After a bitter divorce, she married surgeon Kenneth Darrell Waters, with whom she had a fulfilling sex life.


Although the drama shows Blyton's flirtatiousness - she entertained servicemen to dinner at the house while her husband was away at war and found them and their attention attractive - directors chose to omit some aspects of Blyton's apparently sensual side, such as visitors arriving to find her playing tennis naked and suggestions of a lesbian affair with her children's nanny, Dorothy Richards.

But the drama, which has been given the thumbs-up by the Enid Blyton Society, does highlight the author's cruel streak. When Hugh remarried, as she had done, Blyton was so furious that she banned her daughters from seeing their father.
According to Ida Crowe, who later married Hugh, Blyton's revenge was to stop him from seeing Gillian and Imogen, and to prevent him from finding work in publishing. He went bankrupt and sank into depression and drinking.
Ms Crowe, 101, is using her memoir, Starlight, published this month, to break her silence on her feelings towards Blyton, whom she portrays as cold, distant and malevolent. Ms Crowe confirms that during her first marriage, Blyton embarked on a string of affairs, including a suspected relationship with nanny Richards.
Yet Blyton could never forgive Hugh for finding happiness of his own when their marriage ended.
Rosemary Pollock, 66, daughter of Ida and Hugh, says: 'My father. was an honourable man - not the flawed, inconsequential one which was the deliberate misconception perpetuated by Enid.'
Ida and Hugh met when she was 21 and he was 50. In her memoirs, she describes him as 'shatteringly handsome' - tall and slim with golden hair and blue eyes.
After Ida narrowly escaped death in an air raid, she says, Hugh asked for a divorce and Enid agreed. The memoirs claim, however, that Hugh agreed to be identified as the 'guilty' party in the divorce in return for an amicable separation and access to their daughters.
But Rosemary says: 'This agreement was a sham because Enid had no intention of allowing him any kind of contact with either of the girls. She even told Benenden, the girls' boarding school, that on no account was their father, who was paying the bills, to be allowed near them.'
Ida and Hugh married within days of the divorce being granted in October 1943. Gillian and Imogen were 12 and eight. Rosemary got in touch with her half-sisters after Enid's death in 1968, at the age of 71.

Blyton's revenge: The author's daughter Gillian (centre) with the TV cast of The Famous Five. She never saw her father after her parents' divorce
Rosemary says: 'Gillian said the last time she saw her father was when they were walking to Beaconsfield station and she had this awful feeling she was not going to see him again.
'She said that on her wedding day, she looked around the church and hoped her father would turn up. My father said he was devastated not to have been invited to Gillian's wedding.'

Rosemary has also accused Enid of wrecking Hugh's literary career. 'Enid was capable of many vindictive things and she didn't want her former husband occupying a prominent position in London publishing, a world she dominated.
'My father had to file for bankruptcy in 1950 because he couldn't find work. She also put out a story that he was a drunk and an adulterer, and that he had made her life a misery.
'Incredibly, Enid even wrote to my mother three years after they had both remarried, saying: "I hope he doesn't ruin your life as he did mine."
'My father did drink, but it was in order to numb the pain. I never heard him criticise Enid. He would praise her remarkable talents.'
Certainly, Blyton is enjoying a renaissance. Disney UK is planning a new, animated feature called Famous 5: On The Case, in which the children of the original Five, and a dog, enjoy some new adventures.
She was also named Britain's best-loved author in a poll last month.
Imogen attributes her mother's success to the fact she 'wrote as a child with an adult's writing skills'.
Despite her private life, no amount of detraction will diminish Blyton as one of Britain's great writers who shaped millions of childhood imaginations. Although it may be harder for the adults they grew into to imagine what the creator of Noddy got up to in real life.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... z0WjPYxDNK

 

[rynner2]

The darker revelations, which will dissolve the image of Blyton conveyed by her 753 much-loved books, are part of a brilliant new television biopic, starring Helena Bonham Carter as the author.

Enid

Illuminating and surprising drama telling the story of arguably the most popular children's storyteller of all, Enid Blyton.

It reveals how Blyton became the writer who would capture more youthful imaginations than anyone else, following her career from ambitious, driven and as yet unpublished young woman to household name and moral guardian, while glimpsing her own childhood - a dark time, far from the carefree, happy idyll portrayed in her books.

Through marriages and children, the roles of Enid the wife (to Hugh and then Kenneth) and mother are portrayed, ones she struggled to fulfil while balancing them with her extraordinary output.

The film also uncovers a strong and resourceful woman; a woman who never really grew up; a woman who rewrote the endings of many chapters of her real life, sometimes with cruel and hurtful results; and a woman whose legacy has often been criticised but whose success cannot be argued with, who gave children the stories they wanted.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nxkm8/Enid/

 

[CuriousIdent]

I seem to recall seeing a documentary some years back, ion which one of her daughters was interviewed. I recall the testimony there being that she had been left feeling very disconnected from a mother who she felt did not have time for her own children. She also seemed to believe that her mother had certainly been involved in a lesbian relationship during her marriage.

I believe this was a Channel 4 documentary. Anybody elserecall this?

 

[Spudrick68]

I've got a book of family entertainment from the 1920's. It is an interesting book to look through. It has some songs, with the notes and the lyrics, so that the family can sit around the piano and have a good old sing song.

I was amazed to find the words to "Polly Wolly Doodle All Day" which included the following:

"I came to a river that I couldn't get accross
so I jumped on a nigger 'cos I thought he was a horse."!!!!

 

[Xanatic_]

I saw the local toy store here in Sweden has some gollywog dolls, with a manufacturing date of 2005.

 

[CuriousIdent]

I've got a book of family entertainment from the 1920's. It is an interesting book to look through. It has some songs, with the notes and the lyrics, so that the family can sit around the piano and have a good old sing song.

I was amazed to find the words to "Polly Wolly Doodle All Day" which included the following:

"I came to a river that I couldn't get accross
so I jumped on a nigger 'cos I thought he was a horse."!!!!

Ouch!

(thankfully) very different times.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Bamboozled

I've got a book of family entertainment from the 1920's. It is an interesting book to look through. It has some songs, with the notes and the lyrics, so that the family can sit around the piano and have a good old sing song.

I was amazed to find the words to "Polly Wolly Doodle All Day" which included the following:

"I came to a river that I couldn't get accross
so I jumped on a nigger 'cos I thought he was a horse."!!!!

Ouch!

(thankfully) very different times.

Yes. Once it was black face minstrels who sung such songs. Nowadays, it's only astute business men and rappers, like 50 Cent and Snoop Doggie Dog, who can get away with those sort of lyrics.

 

[myf13]

I was surprised to discover that the original lyrics for The Sun Has Got His Hat On includes

He’s been tanning niggers out in Timbuktu
Now he’s coming back to do the same to you

The line seems to have been changed at some point and now usually read peanuts instead of the offending N word.

 

[cranionaut]

Re: Bamboozled

I've got a book of family entertainment from the 1920's. It is an interesting book to look through. It has some songs, with the notes and the lyrics, so that the family can sit around the piano and have a good old sing song.

I was amazed to find the words to "Polly Wolly Doodle All Day" which included the following:

"I came to a river that I couldn't get accross
so I jumped on a nigger 'cos I thought he was a horse."!!!!

Ouch!

(thankfully) very different times.

Yes. Once it was black face minstrels who sung such songs. Nowadays, it's only astute business men and rappers, like 50 Cent and Snoop Doggie Dog, who can get away with those sort of lyrics.

Well I dont know about that , the porn industry certainly made good use of that line.

I think most black folk call each other the N word a lot - or at least as I heard it when around them, its when whites use it usually that it becomes racist .

Doesnt matter if the perons ( black or white ) is racist themselves of course.

 

[steve0606]

I am not racist in the slightest (I'm Welsh) but I'm not a PC idiot whatsoever - for example, between friends, I think its perfectly acceptable for two different ethnicities to rip each other on the other's stereotypical image / traits etc.

But it can be weird - for example, where I work I constantly get comments like (eg - someone brings in a cake) "Oh, just use your hands mate, I'm sure your used to that - they don't have plates or cutlery in the Valleys do they???"

Now I just laugh it off, but IMAGINE that being said to an African guy. And if there are double standards, then what is the point of having standards in the first place.