I Want My Hat Back

Number 153

Title: I Want my Hat Back

Author: Jon Klassen

Summed up in one line: Bears, profane Barbies and the forgotten power of Japanese Noh theatre.

Overall, I: hear you saying, “hang on, this is a –picture book-! Are you that desperate to reach your GoodReads reading challenge goal now?”

Well to that I say: Yes, yes always and I already completed my goal, thanks!

I actually wasn’t going to review this at all, because it is a picture book, but a couple of things happened recently and crossed paths in my head and I thought of something quite interesting.

Let’s start with I Want My Hat Back. It’s very simple- a bear wants his hat back. He asks different animals and then in the end (spoilers!) he gets his hat back. And that summary of the plot does nothing to demonstrate how screamingly funny it is. I had a mild fit the first time I read it, and made gaspy gargling noises over it on the second run, which was immediately after the first. It’s just brilliant- the concept, the timing of the jokes, the art, the bear having an existential crisis over a little red hat. It. Is. Gold.

I nearly bought it for myself.

I REGRET NOT BUYING IT FOR MYSELF.

But if pressed to put my finger on –why- exactly it’s so hilarious, I think the answer is the art because it manages to just convey so damn much. Which for cartoons is impressive. It’s even more impressive when the characters have no mouths and remain in static positions throughout the whole book. The only difference is a slight widening or narrowing of eyes. On one page, the bear is tipped horizontal. That is IT for physical depictions of emotion. Just think about that for a moment- think about how much you rely on facial expressions to convey emotional meaning.

Now, I wouldn’t have anything more to add on this, if I hadn’t recently been watching a Youtube show called The Most Popular Girls in School. You can watch it here, but perhaps not a home or in front of impressionable people, vocally talented parrots, etc. It’s basically a rude version of Mean Girls, stop-animated with Barbie dolls and Kens. In the Making-of special, the creators talk about how they debated having mouth-flaps for the Barbies, but ditched that because it looked creepy and it was too much effort on top of filming and recording.

And, as it turns out, it would also be utterly unnecessary. It doesn’t actually matter that the characters all have a permanent pretty smile plastered on because there’s never any doubt what emotion is being presented. In fact you get a kind of face-blindness; you stop noticing the smile. Considering humans are hard-wired to focus on faces and in particular eye shapes and mouth movements- even down to subconsciously noticing micro-displays of emotions- this is a pretty weird effect.

However, it’s not a new one. I have a student who makes traditional Japanese theatre wigs for a living, and recently she’s swapped from making Kabuki wigs to making a set of Noh wigs. Both of these styles of theatre are somewhat in decline in recent years, particularly Noh. They are as difficult for Japanese people to understand as it is for the British to follow high Germanic operas, and young people especially simply aren’t interested. Noh is particularly hard to grasp because the aesthetics of the plays are so far removed from any other kind of art. The lines spoken by a character might not be their own, or might be suddenly from the viewpoint of a neutral narrator. Movements are heavily stylized and slow and to top it all, the actors usually wear carved wooden masks.

Noh is a protected but somewhat dying art. Kabuki does better, if only because the artists enjoy a kind of celeb status. Put it this way, if there’s a Justin Beiber for middle-aged artistically interested Japanese women, he’s probably treading the boards of a Kabuki theatre. Probably in drag, and there’s simply not as much fun to be had in Noh, although it was once considered the pinnacle of artistic expression.

So I’ll leave you with that thought; no pithy philosophical wisdom here, all I have is an observation, that believe it or not, in the grand scheme of the art-o-sphere, angry cartoon bears, crass barbies on You-Tube, and Japanese theatre have a surprising amount in common.

Also, go and read ‘I Want My Hat Back’ if you can. I promise, it’s worth it.

And: But if you can’t you can read an Avengers version of I Want My Hat Back here