The Dora Incident -- Photo(s) of the Week 11 Aug 2008
>> 11 August 2008
Title: "The Massacre at Durham"
Location: Durham, NC
Year: Aug 2008
Took a much needed vacation this past week with the family. Young children are hilarious to me; it's always amusing to me how short kids' attention spans are, while they simultaneously retain so much.
One of my nieces, Elise, is absolutely obsessed with "Dora the Explorer" (I'm convinced that no one, since the Nazis in the 30s and 40s, has conducted a more successful brainwashing and propaganda campaign than the creators of this show.¹ Children are infatuated with this cartoon character who, in my opinion, lacks the complexity needed to be a lead character for a successful TV series), to the point that she has her cousin, Alice, saying "Dora, Dora" when I'm pretty sure Alice has no idea who Dora is. I'm telling you: Propaganda.
Fascist conspiracy theories aside, Elise got rewarded with five crayons shaped like Dora for doing something right.
Five minutes into playing with them, she accidentally handled one of the Dora crayons too roughly and snapped its head off. "We have to fix Dora. We have to fix Dora" she kept imploring me. "Get scissors, get scissors. We have to fix Dora."
I didn't know what scissors had to do with piecing Dora back together, but I convinced Elise to cut (hah!) her losses and play with the remaining four Doras that remained intact.
30 minutes later, this scene greeted me:
The carnage was harrowing.
So much so that I expected Elise to look at me with contempt like Russell Crowe does at the crowd in Gladiator after that one fight scene where he killed like six guys, and then yell "Are you not entertained?! Are You Not Entertained?!" and then spit disgustedly and throw her sword to the ground. Something like that.
Instead, she moved on to playing with something else.
(Green Dora will walk again, albeit with a limp. The other four weren't so fortunate)
1 - That's RIGHT. I made that analogy. Hyperbole strikes again. If I don't post within a week, the Dora Gestapo found me.
6 ideas preached:
That is so funny. Casey is always saying, "My kids are never going to like that crap." It's amazing to see how kids become so entranced by Dora and Diego (her other cousin), and it's even more sad when you know the character's, songs, etc. almost as well as they do. Four months with my sister's kids and I was done for.
it truly is gruesome...just think what would have happened if you had granted her request for scissors. also...you totally compared your niece to Russel Crowe, not only that, Russel Crowe in GLADIATOR...i don't know exactly what to say to that...HOWEVER you get huge props for making the childrens franchise/fascist propaganda connection...but i pretty much love anything involving faschist propaganda so...
I would like everyone to know that we broke out the crayons again yesterday and Elise saw the Dora crayons again and said very concernedly, "Yellow Dora, are you ok?" I'm not sure if Maximus ever asked any of his victims how they were doing.
I superglued all the heads back on. Does superglue work on crayons and will it hold up to Elise's murderous tactics? Only time will tell.
I'm pretty sure that Alice was responsible for at least one of two of the Doras.
Hilarious.
hyperbole...always and excellent and effective tool...
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