Japanse New-Girl Monkey Network
Adultishness, Childishness
OK, enough maudlin moanings about music (The Innocence Mission is good, though... makes you sad in a good way). People will start thinking I'm depressed (all three of them, plus the person who googled for "dark dungeon mistress").
Anyway, today's tenuous synchronicity: things for kids, things for adults. Apparently some people think there is a clear, easy line here, one that should never be crossed by either age group. Somehow I don't think Paul was referring specifically to forms of entertainment when he wrote, "When I became a man, I gave up childish ways" to the Corinthians, but then again, he was kind of a stuffy guy. Anyway, my point is, I'm obviously a playful person, I like silly things, but I also like serious things, and I really resent it when people start elucidating what I should and shouldn't like based on my age group.
Take, for example, this article I found on Blogdex the other day. It's an interesting piece, and it makes some good points, but it also comes across in a sort of nasty, superior tone that kids' stuff is for, well, kids, and it's beneath us adults to pay attention to it. Any adult who likes kid's stuff is clearly way too immature for their age. So why don't you grow up you thumbsucking loser?
Maybe I'm taking the article a bit personally. But as a person who loves Cartoon Network as much as she loves the ballet, I think this article is way oversimplified. Plus it uses lame made-up words like "kidult" and "adultescent." Shudder. I agree that there's a greater attitude that commitment and responsibility are only bad, stressful things in our modern western culture, and I agree that's unfortunate. I value commitment, and I try to live up to my responsibilities. But for crying out loud, loosen up Frank Furedi! Did you ever consider that there's maybe not a one-to-one cause/effect relationship between people collecting their favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figurines from when they were 10, and the fact that they are still living with their parents by age 22? I also don't like that he fails to clearly define what's acceptible adult behavior, apart from achieving financial independence from your parents. (I guess, as an adult, I should be mature enough to just know?)
I for one, like the idea that children's worlds and adult's worlds don't have to be so expansively distant from each other. Maybe if we categorized less, children could learn to be adults earlier. I think I turned out as well as I did because my parents treated me like an equal. They didn't condescend. The didn't relegate me to a child's world that was trivial and beneath their interests. They took me seriously. But they also met me on my terms, and played with me, and made silly faces, watched the Muppet Show with me (which, by the way, had plenty of jokes that were on an adult level, that at 6 or 7 went right over my head), and showed me that was OK for them to do. And maybe being an adult would be more appealing if it was OK for grownups to laugh at cartoons, and get excited about playing with toys, to be unselfconscious enough to sing out loud to themselves when they were in a good mood.
So anyway, apparently the state of Texas agrees with Furedi that certain things are for kids only and are taboo for adults. I saw on Neil Gaiman's blog and Blogdex that comic store owner Jesus Castillo was convicted because he was selling adult comic books to adults. But because his shop's near a school and everyone knows that comic books are clearly just for kids, then he was trying to corrupt their little minds with porno anime tentacle rape comics. This, for me, goes back to the whole "trivialize little kids" idea, but let me explain my logic. I think there's this link in the minds of people that since comics have pictures and not many words, their content is really simple and trivial and shallow, so of course kids like them and they're intended for kids because adults would be bored. Well, I'm an exceptional case, but I first read The Hobbit when I was six. And I think graphic novels and comics have the capacity to be just as complex as, say, Joyce's Ulysses, to be art forms. Not that all of them are, mind you. I'm not defending tentacle rape comics. I think they're a waste of trees. But the fact that this whole case (according to the article/post) hinged on this concept of "comics are for kids only" is reprehensible.
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