The K-word (was sexism and division of labor)

[davewitley]

> Judy quoted The Jungle Book:

> >The 
> > girl sings, "Father's in the forest hunting, mother's cooking in 
> the 
> > home, I must go to fetch the water, 'till the day that I am 
> grown.... 
> > When I'm grown... I will have a handsome husband, and a daughter 
of 
> > my own; I'll send her to fetch the water; I'll be cooking in the 
> > home." (This is from memory, so it may not be exact.) 

That's more or less my memory too.  Judy's has now been demonstrated 
to be better than mine anyway.  The nameless girl acts like a 
manipulative stereotype, too, dropping her jug by pretended accident 
so Mowgli has to offer to pick it up.

Amy then commented:

> The problem with 
> portrayals like The Jungle Book's (Kipling again!) only kicks in 
> because they are so much the norm and we so seldom see the 
opposite. 

While I agree wholeheartedly with Amy's point here, I feel it is only 
fair to point out that, while Kipling may have committed many sins, 
even sexist ones ('A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a 
smoke' - did Freud comment on this line, I wonder?), he was not 
responsible for this particular distillation of '50s values.

That honour belongs to Walt Disney, whose screenplay writers invented 
this scene in the movie.

David, worried he's treading on Amanda's territory by pointing out 
book-movie confusion