1.31.2004
Rejuvenile - it ain't just another Moses sequel in Egypt
I was still too sick yesterday to even concentrate on a book for very long. Today I'm much better and have started into Tolstoy's Confessions. I think I am going to devour it.
But yesterday, having slept all day I wasn't good for much so I listened to a recent episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge. The host is a stuffy, pretentious guy, but they try to liven the show up with a little electronica or other semi-hip music, but it's no This American Life (all episodes of which I've already heard, so I had to find something else).
They do have interesting topics and interesting guests though. A lot of academics, but next to the host they sound pretty cool. Academics can be fun too ya know.
The show was about "kid culture" and how "being a kid has never been cooler" which sounds really silly coming out of this droll hyper-NPR voice. Almost a self-parody really. Anyway, it seems some dope somewhere caught on to what marketers have known for years--that people don't want to grow up--and wrote a book about it. Jim Fleming, the host, seems to have a particular aversion to care bears...it's almost creepy. I mean, yeah, they're cheesy and gimmicky but I thought that when I was a kid too.
He's also rather nonplussed by adults watching the cartoon network. Um, why is animation only for kids? I'm living in a whole country where this certainly is not the case. Of course I'm also living in a country that defines what they refer to as "rejuvenilism" (oh what a hideous coinage! god willing it will never make the dictionary). Cutesy images abound on everything from the endless phone charms (which I don't understand) to construction signs to giant frog-shaped trash bins.
Still, why the hard line between "kids'" and "adults'" entertainment? The best "kids'" entertainment is the stuff adults can stand to watch too--like sesame street. I still like the show. And muppets was for adults but kids liked it too. Too bad there aren't more shows that cross those boundaries.
(Okay, I feel a little bad that I was so hard on Fleming, since I do listen to his show sometimes and enjoy it. He's a good interviewer, he just needs to lighten up a little and stop sounding so bleedin' important.) (again pot::kettle)
More than anything, though, the problem I was seeing wasn't that adults may still like t-shirts or underwear with Grover (Cleveland--sorry) on them, but that these folks see this clear delineation between childhood and adulthood that's just much too strict. Kids are usually capable of a lot more maturity and intelligence than they are given credit for.
That's one rather controversial point that Marcel Danesi of the University of Toronto makes later in the show by noting the unnatural idea of "adolescence" in our society (wacky Canadians). According to him once kids are 13 or so they should be treated as legal adults, as they were in the past. He goes on a bit about how they ought to be able to join the military and so on, which is rather extreme. I guess I'd worry less about the kid who decided to do that than the guy at the other end of the gun. There's also the whole education issue he failed to address. It's one area where I suppose I do favor more paternalism. School's good for you, even though I could more or less have done without that agonizing senior year. But I don't see anything wrong with letting teens vote. And don't even get me started about parental consent and birth control issues. Fortunately my own mother trusted me enough to let me decide about such things on my own. You ROCK mom.
The middle segment of the show made about no sense. It's about adults liking kids music. Again, why so baffling? The more baffling question, I think, is why are so many kids programs so stupid? Why did Barney bastardize perfectly good folk songs into sickly sweet humorless earworms? I know what I'm talking about here, my sister was a tot at the time this stuff was big.
The real problem isn't kids not growing up fast enough. It's people thinking childhood is some idyllic time. It's not. It's just more black and white. The younger you are the more you're either in uncontrollable fits of glee or in utter world-shattering despair.
The last guest was brilliant. Maurice Sendak who recently illustrated the book Brundibar which is an adaptation of a Czech opera, and which was performed 55 times by children in Terezin, a Nazi model concentration camp. That's 55 different troupes of children performing for foreign guests to demonstrate how happy they were in camp and that these weren't "bad" places at all. 55 troupes who were then sent on to Auschwitz and the like. And the story is about kids confronting evil. Very creepy. Knowing that I think it would be a lot scarier for the parent reading the story (about kids competing with the tyrannical Brundibar in order to save their dying mother) than the kid hearing just the story.
Sendak also talks about being a Jewish kid in the 1920's and how "everyone knew" what was going on--how friends and relatives were disappearing. How his dad kept records of which villages had been hit. He describes how he grew up in this atmosphere of grief. But he doesn't see it as limited to himself or that time and place. He remembers feeling smaller and weaker than others as a child. I know as a kindergartener I thought 5th graders were pretty scary (my sister on the other hand, said "I've never seen a 5th grader"--it sounded like "I don't think they exist"--she's very matter-of-fact). And he tells the story of a little girl who witnessed 9/11 and softened the story intentionally for her parents. I've seen kids do that too--be very stoic because it's what the adults needed.
I do think kids are a lot tougher than adults. Partly because their capacity for abstract thought isn't totally developed yet, I suppose. But for whatever reason, they're not the fragile, delicate beings we build lots of protective walls around and they certainly don't need to be buried in beanie babies to fend off the shock and horror of adulthood.
No, kids aren't just little adults, but they're not aliens either. Just because they're entranced by crummy entertainment, doesn't mean it's good "kid entertainment". Nor do adults need to be stuffy humbugs who run in fear of stuffed animals.
Care bears: CARE!
Boo.
But yesterday, having slept all day I wasn't good for much so I listened to a recent episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge. The host is a stuffy, pretentious guy, but they try to liven the show up with a little electronica or other semi-hip music, but it's no This American Life (all episodes of which I've already heard, so I had to find something else).
They do have interesting topics and interesting guests though. A lot of academics, but next to the host they sound pretty cool. Academics can be fun too ya know.
The show was about "kid culture" and how "being a kid has never been cooler" which sounds really silly coming out of this droll hyper-NPR voice. Almost a self-parody really. Anyway, it seems some dope somewhere caught on to what marketers have known for years--that people don't want to grow up--and wrote a book about it. Jim Fleming, the host, seems to have a particular aversion to care bears...it's almost creepy. I mean, yeah, they're cheesy and gimmicky but I thought that when I was a kid too. He's also rather nonplussed by adults watching the cartoon network. Um, why is animation only for kids? I'm living in a whole country where this certainly is not the case. Of course I'm also living in a country that defines what they refer to as "rejuvenilism" (oh what a hideous coinage! god willing it will never make the dictionary). Cutesy images abound on everything from the endless phone charms (which I don't understand) to construction signs to giant frog-shaped trash bins.
Still, why the hard line between "kids'" and "adults'" entertainment? The best "kids'" entertainment is the stuff adults can stand to watch too--like sesame street. I still like the show. And muppets was for adults but kids liked it too. Too bad there aren't more shows that cross those boundaries.
(Okay, I feel a little bad that I was so hard on Fleming, since I do listen to his show sometimes and enjoy it. He's a good interviewer, he just needs to lighten up a little and stop sounding so bleedin' important.) (again pot::kettle)
More than anything, though, the problem I was seeing wasn't that adults may still like t-shirts or underwear with Grover (Cleveland--sorry) on them, but that these folks see this clear delineation between childhood and adulthood that's just much too strict. Kids are usually capable of a lot more maturity and intelligence than they are given credit for.
That's one rather controversial point that Marcel Danesi of the University of Toronto makes later in the show by noting the unnatural idea of "adolescence" in our society (wacky Canadians). According to him once kids are 13 or so they should be treated as legal adults, as they were in the past. He goes on a bit about how they ought to be able to join the military and so on, which is rather extreme. I guess I'd worry less about the kid who decided to do that than the guy at the other end of the gun. There's also the whole education issue he failed to address. It's one area where I suppose I do favor more paternalism. School's good for you, even though I could more or less have done without that agonizing senior year. But I don't see anything wrong with letting teens vote. And don't even get me started about parental consent and birth control issues. Fortunately my own mother trusted me enough to let me decide about such things on my own. You ROCK mom.
The middle segment of the show made about no sense. It's about adults liking kids music. Again, why so baffling? The more baffling question, I think, is why are so many kids programs so stupid? Why did Barney bastardize perfectly good folk songs into sickly sweet humorless earworms? I know what I'm talking about here, my sister was a tot at the time this stuff was big.
The real problem isn't kids not growing up fast enough. It's people thinking childhood is some idyllic time. It's not. It's just more black and white. The younger you are the more you're either in uncontrollable fits of glee or in utter world-shattering despair.
The last guest was brilliant. Maurice Sendak who recently illustrated the book Brundibar which is an adaptation of a Czech opera, and which was performed 55 times by children in Terezin, a Nazi model concentration camp. That's 55 different troupes of children performing for foreign guests to demonstrate how happy they were in camp and that these weren't "bad" places at all. 55 troupes who were then sent on to Auschwitz and the like. And the story is about kids confronting evil. Very creepy. Knowing that I think it would be a lot scarier for the parent reading the story (about kids competing with the tyrannical Brundibar in order to save their dying mother) than the kid hearing just the story.Sendak also talks about being a Jewish kid in the 1920's and how "everyone knew" what was going on--how friends and relatives were disappearing. How his dad kept records of which villages had been hit. He describes how he grew up in this atmosphere of grief. But he doesn't see it as limited to himself or that time and place. He remembers feeling smaller and weaker than others as a child. I know as a kindergartener I thought 5th graders were pretty scary (my sister on the other hand, said "I've never seen a 5th grader"--it sounded like "I don't think they exist"--she's very matter-of-fact). And he tells the story of a little girl who witnessed 9/11 and softened the story intentionally for her parents. I've seen kids do that too--be very stoic because it's what the adults needed.
I do think kids are a lot tougher than adults. Partly because their capacity for abstract thought isn't totally developed yet, I suppose. But for whatever reason, they're not the fragile, delicate beings we build lots of protective walls around and they certainly don't need to be buried in beanie babies to fend off the shock and horror of adulthood.
No, kids aren't just little adults, but they're not aliens either. Just because they're entranced by crummy entertainment, doesn't mean it's good "kid entertainment". Nor do adults need to be stuffy humbugs who run in fear of stuffed animals.
Care bears: CARE!
Boo.
