"See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," the old adage goes. But Curious George has taken his mouth-covering morality too far in the other direction, posing for nationally distributed religious pamphlets and getting in BIG trouble with his publisher, Houghton Mifflin.
The publishing house filed suit Tuesday with a U.S. evangelical organization for copyright infringement of Curious George. Yes, Curious George is apparently the newest and silliest convert of "Jews for Jesus."
The religious group based in San Francisco has the worldwide Jewish community pretty much pissed off not only because they teach that Jesus is the Messiah (not a popular view among most followers of Judaism) but because they've got a monkey in striped pajamas doing it.
For being sued by a publishing giant such as Houghton Mifflin, "Jews for Jesus" is surprisingly shameless about violating the Curious George's copyright and personal belief system.
Susan Perlman, associate director of "Jews for Jesus," defended her group's portrayal of George reading the Bible as "pop-culture parody" and claimed in a pitiably bad pun that the defendants "are not looking for trouble ... we think Curious George would like it too."
I bet Houghton Mifflin wishes there were additional damages rendered for speaking on behalf of others' imaginary monkeys in red and white-striped pajamas.
You, as discerning longtime readers of both Curious George and the State Press, can learn several lessons from this suit, whatever the outcome may be:
* If you must claim children's book characters, especially those referred to as "silly little monkey," as converts to your faith and fellow believers, you probably ought to reexamine your doctrine more carefully.
* A publisher's "sense of humor" tends to go down the drain really fast when the copyright on a storybook character that has sold over 20 million copies and reels in over $100 million in revenue annually, is at stake.
* Is speaking on behalf of a children's book primate about his religious preferences a particularly good PR stint for your proselytizing group or, perhaps more importantly, the act of a totally rational human being?
This entire incident begs the question: Is this what it seems to be on the surface, just a simple case of copyright infringement - a group of unorthodox and slightly off-their-rocker believers plastering the mug of a lovable monkey on some religious tracts and spraying them across the Big Apple?
Or, is this actually a case of a monkey and his moral convictions? Is George trying to use his fame to pawn his piety off on us? After all, many celebrities have used their fame to preach about their spiritual convictions and political beliefs (and to sell knock-off cologne and ab-machines on infomercials, but that's besides the point).
Maybe Curious George is tired of living a lie, tired of pretending to be the agnostic primate that we all presume him to be, tired of hiding the fact that all his single-syllable foibles are really done for "the Man in the Yellow Hat."
Maybe a "silly little monkey" like George is onto something here. Perhaps it's time storybook characters stop all their politically correct nonsense and publicly embrace their faith and religious heritage.
Think what freedom of religious expression in children's books could do to fiction! Just stick some points on top of his famous hat and the secular feline in Cat in the Hat becomes Cat in the Mitre. The Berenstain Bears' dinnertime never cuts into Brother's rehearsal of the Torah in Brother Bear's Bar Mitzvah. And the newest blockbuster in the Harry Potter series could be: The Baptismal Font of the Forest.
So, the next time you see a Bible-reading monkey on the street, don't laugh, but don't take his pamphlet either. If we can learn one lesson from Curious George and his evangelical antics, it's to stay out of trouble.
Katie Petersen is a journalism and English sophomore. Reach her at limerick132@hotmail.com.
