The Elephant in the Room

You know, I had to really think the other day about why I loved Babar as a cub. I had the opportunity to re-read it recently, and it was fairly disturbing. Let's go over it, shall we?

1) Babar's mother gets shot.

Okay, it's not unusual to have a one-parent family, even back in The Day when The Story of Babar ws written. However, elephants are a pack-oriented species; where are all the other elephants when this happens? Poor little Babar runs away and ends up in what I assume is France, owing to the illustrations of the local clothing (after 3 days, by the way... did he run across the water? He lives in Africa, you'll recall). The hunter who kills his mother gets no comeuppance.

2) The locals take no special notice that Babar is an elephant.

Okay, combined with Issue 1) above, this becomes especially problematic for me. A human hunter goes out and shoots Babar's mother. If we assume that in this Alternate Earth, elephants are regarded as fellow sentient beings, was this kiling an assassination? Nobody seems to mind that all of a sudden there's this young elephant wandering around the city, shopping and driving.


3) Babar says "I want some clothes".

This is as implausible as Martians wanting our women. Sexual deviants aside, we typically don't lust after species other than our own. Following, then, why does Babar want clothing? He's certainly never worn any, nor even seen them among the other elephants. Oh, let's also not forget the deus ex machina of the Old Lady (who apparently deserves no other name), who just hands over her purse for Babar to use to buy clothes. Later, we even find out that "She gives him whatever he wants." What in the name of the Twelve Bastards is going on here?

By this point, I needed to de-flea myself and take a cognitive break while I sorted out my assumptions of the universe. I'll return to these issues in the next post, but let me tell you: I'm freaked out.

If I had a pair of eyes on the back of my head for each time
You forgot to take out all the things you forgot to talk about
When you took a bite out of my spine
I would have a lot of eyes on me by this time
Wouldn't I wouldn't that be just fine
-- "Letterbox", They Might Be Giants