Like mentioned, I had a hard time with this assignment for a few reasons. The first being that it is hard to make slight modifications that radically alter gender symbols, because they are just so thick and common. Second, because I had a direct need to keep the story making sense, if not always with the picture at least in the framework, as well as my idea that I still wanted it to read as a children's book. Third, because I wanted to support a child-like view of queerness that didn't in some way trivialize some aspect, or worse broach from lewd to stereotypical or pernicious.
First, the masculine vs. feminine encoding is almost inexorable in children's books. In that, and I think this can be pretty easily agreed with, children's books tend to encompass quite a lot more didacticism than more mature literature, there are many forced and normalized renditions of behavior and representation. Example, it would have been almost impossible to go through without utterly changing the entire picture on every page to remove distinctly "masculine" and "feminine" characteristics, especially from Mama and Papa Bear (recall, I had a Bearenstein bears book, titled Papa's Day Surprise). Papa is first shown, in his overalls, flannel shirt and boots with an axe, hacking down a tree. His shirt is even unbuttoned slightly down the front as if to indicate some display of chest hair. Which I have to believe is a joke, because it is a fur-covered BEAR. Mama on the other hand wears a polka dotted dress, matching bonnet, and is shown only in the garden and in the kitchen initially. The children are adorned in pink and blue respectively. This creates difficulties.
My second problem stems directly from the first. I could have changed every single picture so Mama had pants and the son wore a dress, but I wanted to take a more subtle attempt at subverting the fragility of these stereotypes. They proved iron-clad for quite a while. In an attempt to use all the material the book gave me, I finally chose to take the Papa's Day surprise in a much more literal way. Even in doing so, there were plenty of pages where I still couldn't alter anything worth doing. I chose, instead of making Mama bears dress into pants, to let "Mama" keep wearing a dress. But make "Mama" a man. Making Mama and Papa a homosexual couple with adopted children seemed a break though, but it still presented difficulties.
It was regardless, even in leaving most text the way it was as a representation of the ease of seeing a homosexual couple in the same situations as a heterosexual one, I had to hold back my incredibly dark sense of humor at times. Then there was the way I should have the kids react. I tried to take the opposite reaction in them than that of Samuel Delaney's daughter did, in his account. Through the lens of children as less jaded and culturally encrypted I wanted to reinforce the similarities that should be able to be seen in the situation, regardless of gender roles and sexuality of the parents.
Therefore, in regards to Delaney, I essentially tried to set up a view of acceptance in gender roles that is as closely related to the current discourse originally available in the book as possible. In showing the similarities in situation, discussion, dialogue, attitude and acceptance, I tried to establish a discursive expansion and the simplicity with which it can be enacted.
I really like what you did with your book Clyve. In working with the Bernstein bears, my initial reaction was to intervene in the gender encoding, but after a few pages of coloring Sister's overalls red and drawing lovely purple purses onto Papa's arm, I started to wonder if what I was doing was too simplistic or really productive to my purposes. When it was all said and done, Mama had a gun in some pictures while Papa had one in others, the purple purse became a communal family possession,and sister sometimes did wear pink as I attempted to destabilize the notion of gender norms. As I worked through the Butler reading for Monday, your method of intervention struck me as more useful. Most kids (and perhaps people in general) probably would be incredibly uncomfortable with the inability to easily recognize and differentiate gender, and though this could facilitate an interesting conversation, the pictures might ultimately detract from or compromise other messages i was trying to get across in my textual intervention. Displaying how dominant discourse could incorporate significant difference with less intervention than one might think is compelling, and I think the reaction of the children was well thought out considering such texts are models for behavior and thought.
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