Wednesday, August 25, 2010

WTF Waldo

It is not yet Banned Books Week but it is always book banning season, so I thought it was as good a time as any.  Also it is beach season & this one has a beach scene.

Where's Waldo et al are technically, after my time.  & as I have no children myself, they never really rolled back in.   Still, as a longtime fan of Heironymus Bosch & resident of the community that helped form James Rizzi, sooner or later I was bound to develop if not a taste, certainly a leaning towards them.  All that colorful human chaos.  More than once I have waited for someone/something passing the time in the children's room at the library flipping through a Waldo.

All of this probably makes me still-not-qualified to judge potential obscenity in a Where's Waldo picture book.  Lucky for me, another was not so hampered.  Someone, somewhere actually found the offensive image, reported it & now even my library has a post-banning version of the book.

Take a good long look at what was not considered bad enough to remove: the obnoxious behavior of kid jamming ice cream into a woman's back is not the bad thing.  Same kid with what just might be an erection.  Onlookers apparently enjoying woman's discomfort or kid's erection take your pick, also not worth censoring.  The only thing here that is harmful to children:  boobies.  You know, where ideally they go their nutrition for the first few months of life.  This might explain why the whole damn country is overweight, actually.

2 comments:

  1. I can imagine the artist had a lot of fun with that one. And what little boy hasn't drawn his own boobies when the hormones started raging.

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  2. In the original photo (which I have) she was tanning with her straps off and the boy puts the icecream on her back so she exposes the boobs. The entire left breast is visible. Titty included.

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