This is what happens when you are watching the Care Bears movie in the background whilst planning your henna season, and the theme song, “Welcome to Care-a-Lot” comes on. You know, if you’re me.
First, you collect images of Care Bears and Katakhali dancers from Kerala:
https://www.pinterest.com/hennabyheather/welcome-to-kerala/
Then, you ask your friend whose family is from southern India how offensive this notion is on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being “don’t worry about it”, 5 being “kinda alright, but there are always people who will be mad about things even if you’re coming from a good place”, and 10 being “what the heck are you thinking, woman – do not do this!”. She reports that for her it’s a 1, and then polls cousins and they give it the thumbs up in general, with no one saying it’s above a 5 on their Cultural Misappropriation Assessment (CMA, tm) scale.
You proceed with sketching, realize that it needs to be all about the Care Bear face otherwise the joke gets lost, and then make the face Much Bigger and let the body be off the canvas. You pretend that that one watercolor class you took is enough to do this, and move ahead.
Eventually, after almost an entire day of pretty much obsessing only about this project, you come up with the image below – a visual joke with the smallest target demographic EVER. A joke for people who are or were ever obsessed enough with the Care Bears to know that their home is called Care-a-Lot, and perhaps that the theme song to the movie is “Welcome to Care-a-Lot”, who also are familiar with classical Indian dance of southern India, particularly Kathakali. So, basically just me and the one friend who I asked about its offensiveness level. If this amuses you at all, please leave a comment and let me know, because that will make my world a happier place and will also mean I didn’t do this pretty much for nothing. But if I just did if for my own amusement, that’s totally okay… because HEHEHEHEHEHE IT IS AMUSING!
Anyway – Welcome to Kerala!!!!!
And thanks, Rani for the consultation/research, and Peter for recording the movie because he loves me and knew I’d be happy to see it.
Welcome to Kerala – Care Bear Kathakali Dancer from Kerala / Care-a-Lot
