What the Contemporary American can learn from “The Adventures of Curious George” (1984)
Screenshot from "Curious George Goes to the Hospital" on YouTube.
I recently remembered a VHS tape I watched during my childhood that contained “Frog and Toad are Friends” (1985), “Frog and Toad Together” (1987), “Morris goes to School” (1989), “Morris has a Cold” (1993), “Curious George” (1984), and “Curious George goes to the Hospital” (1982). These were all separate videos composed by John Clark Matthews. I have fond memories of watching these videos with my siblings when I was younger, and enjoyed watching them again on YouTube. However, as an American adult living in the 21st century, I feel there is a lot to be learned from these videos, particularly the Curious George videos.
Before reading further, I highly recommend watching the Curious George videos on YouTube. Here are the links: “Curious George.” “Curious George goes to the Hospital.” However, I have provided a brief synopsis of both videos:
“Curious George” - The man in the yellow hat goes to Africa, sees George, and decides to take him home to America. When they get home, George gets himself into all sorts of hijinks, including a call to the Fire Department. When the firefighters (all men) show up to the house, they see there is no fire and arrest George. He is taken to jail, escapes, and finds the man in the yellow hat by floating through the sky using a bunch of (stolen) balloons. The man in the yellow hat then takes George to the zoo, but George also somehow lives with the man in the yellow hat at the same time.
“Curious George goes to the Hospital” - George wakes up one morning and finds a box on the man in the yellow hat’s desk. He opens it and finds a puzzle, but does not know what a puzzle is and thinks the puzzle pieces are candy. He eats one, and gets a tummy ache later in the day. He has to go to the hospital for x-rays, and ends up staying at the hospital overnight. The children (mostly white) are excited to play with George and are not at all weirded out that a monkey is sleeping in the bed next to them in the hospital. George gets the puzzle piece removed and is able to go home with the man in the yellow hat.
Of course, it is a much different experience watching these videos as a child versus watching as an adult. I see the gender roles, the lack of diversity, and the personification of non-human beings, which is anthropocentric (human-centered) in nature.
Obviously, it is impossible to simply visit Africa, see a monkey, trap it in a sack, and take it home on a boat in today’s world. I am not sure what the laws were in the 1980s, but I doubt it was possible then either. This action taken by the man in the yellow hat was a little colonialist.
Also, it would not be nearly as accepted in society for a man to have a pet monkey, especially one that causes so much chaos. Even today, it is hard to have a monkey as a pet because not only is there pushback from government on what counts as a “pet,” but there is also pushback from people who do not believe monkeys (or any animal, for that matter) should be taken out of their natural habitat. The man with the yellow hat must be super rich to be able to take care of a pet monkey while nobody bats an eye.
The “Curious George” video also brings into question whether a monkey would actually be arrested and taken to jail–yes. If this article from Ranker is anything to go off of, a pet monkey named Mookie was put under house arrest for one month after biting someone. Another monkey in the town of Bahawalpur, Pakistan, was arrested after being suspected as a spy for India. I could not make this up if I tried.
So, monkeys can live in a house with people and be arrested, but what do we learn from any of this? Another complication lies in the, you guessed it, white-oriented, androcentric (male-centered) society George resides in. When George goes to the hospital, men are fulfilling their gender role as doctors, and the women are fulfilling their gender role as nurses. The boy and girl children as well as the Black and white children seem to play together while at the hospital, but the two main children in the video are Betsy and Steve. They are both white, and the Black children and nurses are never given a voice throughout the entire video.
The reason I say all this as a woman who wants justice for all people is because there is so much to be learned from it. Was John Clark Matthews aware he was perpetuating a white and male-oriented way of thinking? Probably not. Did he intend to do this in any capacity? Again, not likely. Do children learn to think this way from watching videos such as this? I have no idea, but I do think about how the subconscious processes information the conscious is not aware of. I wonder if watching videos like this that contain animals, though anthropocentric, actually helped people to see that humans are not so different from animals after all.
I still love these videos–I always will. They are part of my childhood no matter what angle I look at them with today. We should never stop watching videos like this so we can learn from them, and we must never stop teaching children about the ways of human life so that they may make a discovery such as the one I made while re-watching “Curious George” and “Curious George goes to the Hospital.”