Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

STUDIES - András Tarnóc: "Who is Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" Reflections of Political Correctness in a Distorted Mirror.

Having blown off the house of slicks, the wolves build a vacation complex with all the obligatory politically incorrect attractions. "Native curio shops" provide a devalued and commercialized version of minority culture, "dolphin shows" remove animals from their natural habitat, and force them to perform tricks against their will. At this point Garner pokes fun again at one of his favorite targets, environmental and animal rights activists, who view human-animal relations in a framework of victims and villains. This perspective is demonstrated by the recent drive to exchange the term "zoo keeper" for "wildlife friend," or the tendency to assign zoos such new picturesque names as "animalcatraz" and "zulag" (Beard 108). When the wolf attempts to blow away the brick house his effort results in death, "a massive heart attack brought on from eating too many fatty foods"

—a demise statistically very typical of white males. The manner of the wolfs death also serves as a parody of PC's rejection of meat eating, viewed as a practice that forces the perpetrator "to commit cruelty to nonhuman beings" (Beard 97). The next event is a revolution in which mainstream American culture is displaced in favor of a minority civilization. The end result is an Utopia where the pigs live in a world of "free education, universal health care and affordable housing for everyone." This world, in addition to being an antithesis to the present U.S., where due to the constraints imposed by the development of liberal capitalism these goals are almost unattainable, is also a mockery of PC's afore-mentioned image of the Euro-American worldview. Garner's version is an exercise in bias-free writing or writing to implant social virtue. The race, gender and class-centered mindset of PC is bent on the elimination of all bias from communication and these efforts can lead to judging literature upon intended social value over artistic merit Consequently a type of criticism emerges declaring Uncle Tom's Cabin a better book for its purported arousal of indignation over slavery than Melville's Moby Dick viewed as a commemoration of a laundry list of cruelties to animals (Hughes 113). The tale explores the limits of PC behavior. PC aims to eliminate any kind of bias from the public sphere. It assumes that all types of bias are harmful regardless of the element of inborn prejudice or the need to 131