aging / acting like an adult: the gravest offense in 21st-century American culture

per Frances McDormand, 57-year-old film actor and social critic:

“We are on red alert when it comes to how we are perceiving ourselves as a species,” she said. “There’s no desire to be an adult. Adulthood is not a goal. It’s not seen as a gift. Something happened culturally: No one is supposed to age past 45 — sartorially, cosmetically, attitudinally. Everybody dresses like a teenager. Everybody dyes their hair. Everybody is concerned about a smooth face.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/arts/frances-mcdormand-true-to-herself-in-hbos-olive-kitteridge.html

getting old sucks.

"Grave-est."

No one is supposed to age past 45

only into 30s so far but the state of my body tells me this may have some truth.

"There’s no desire to be an adult. Adulthood is not a goal. It’s not seen as a gift."

Being closer to death is an awfully strange goal/gift.

cf the verbing of adult, as discussed in some other thread

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510VK8Q1dbL.jpg

boomers are the worst (pt. 241038579376470137431 in a series)

tunnelvision, Eric. xp

Adults dressing for Halloween is a particularly dispiriting spectacle.

i.e. you need a layer of protective irony in order to even approach the subject these days (xp_

Adults dressing for Halloween is a particularly dispiriting spectacle.

― this horrible, rotten slog to rigor mortis (Dr Morbius)

how do you know those are costumes?

well i don't go to Williamsburg that often

Thought for sure this was going to be the inevitable Zellweger thread.

“I have not mutated myself in any way,” [McDormand] said. “Joel and I have this conversation a lot. He literally has to stop me physically from saying something to people — to friends who’ve had work. I’m so full of fear and rage about what they’ve done.”

Looking old, she said, should be a boast about experiences accrued and insights acquired, a triumphant signal “that you are someone who, beneath that white hair, has a card catalog of valuable information.”

xxp Yes, what kind of insane grownup enjoys costume parties, o tempora o mores, etc., etc., etc.

I mostly get bummed out by comic book movies, mostly because they seem to be growing in number at the expense of other types of films.

http://livinginmyownworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/dont-grow-up-its-a-trap.jpg

I long for the days of the early 90s, when grunge was full swing and i was in middle school and all the cool kids dressed like grandpas and grandmas.

no beef w/ adulthood but do i have to start tucking in my shirt when i'm not wearing a suit?

Also Fran McDormand should mind her own business. The sort of roles that she's sought out and been cast in throughout her career have not been those that the kinds of actresses who feel under pressure to get lots of surgery have gone after. And for that, she's fortunate.

Didn't we already go through this with Kim Novak?

I had the kind of depressing thought recently that adulthood might consist of the acceptance of and resignation to the fact that life is disappointing, whereas deferring adulthood is the anxious process of distracting yourself from and avoiding that ultimately inevitable conclusion. Sometimes I'm not sure which is better.

I've recently made the move from "life is disappointing" to "life is a disaster."

I really don't care much about the showbiz angle of FM's remarks, more the perpetual-adolescence angle re the general population. Really, you're going to Comic Con, and you've had pubic hair for how many years?

Wow, comics and sci-fi and fantasy are only for pre-teens, what an original line of argument. Why can't people focus on more adult things like big-boy stickball, I ask you?

Believing life is disappointing or a disaster can spring from a shitty childhood spent thinking things will get better as much as having dreams dashed. Either way it's a pose. I need to ask my parents' dog if life is a disappointment.

lock thread

Whats an adult

Lol @ big boy stickball btw

are you a big stickball boy or a little stickball boy?

let's not indulge someone who doesn't understand one of the most profoundly original and metaphorically rich manifestations of American culture ANYWAY ---

You are referring to comics there right

Morbs I sincerely high-five you for that post

Comic con is objectively horrible but not for the reasons you think imo

I hope when the Coens were involved in writing a screenplay for The Yiddish Policemen's Union they lectured Michael Chabon on what a juvenile he is.

I hope they lectured him on what a shitty writer he is

maybe i should've stuck with people making s'mores and having spelling bees in bars, huh

And then he fled to his room, cried and read "Superman" all afternoon.

xp. Maybe.

Gettin' paid big boy advance monies to write novels = adult, whatever they're about.

anyway a big part of my discomfiture with contemporary 'adult fun' is how all of it seems to be in quotation marks (like those!^), which is why the geekout over Twin Peaks v.2 reminded me that I very much liked but could never love v.1. A copy of a copy of a copy, despite all the surrealism / nightmarish modernist touches.

A bunch of men discussing a woman discussing ageing: Oh joy!

oh GOOD, the police are here

let's talk about men things then. sports, beer.

anything but PRIVILEGE

I would actually be very interested in anybody, even Morbius, coming up with a well-reasoned argument -- given their histories, places in American culture, the impetus of their creators, their usefulness as wish-fulfillment proxies for people of all ages, and associated spectacle -- of why baseball is "adult" and comic books are "not adult."

One that does not rely on "I like baseball but do not like comic books" btw.

Cosmetic surgery, Comic Con, big boy stickball...they're all just, like, the in-flight entertainment as we ride this plane called life into the void, man. Who am I to say that this dude in the seat next to me is ignoring oblivion in the wrong way, know what I'm sayin'? (smokes a marijuana joint)

puffs big boy joint

baseball is 'adult' because it is boring

lock board

A bunch of men discussing a woman discussing ageing: Oh joy!

― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Wednesday, October 22, 2014 3:43 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What a coincidence, I was thinking the exact same thing. But I kinda like the irony when anything related to privilege ends up as a conversation among like 5 white dudes and it's not worth anyone's time to get in between them.

baseball is 'adult' because it is boring

― sleepingbag, Wednesday, October 22, 2014 3:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True tho.

unless watched in an air conditioned stadium selling cocktaiils

PRIVILEGE: find another word (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

in orbit & Alfred, i won't even try.

Looking old, she said, should be a boast about experiences accrued and insights acquired, a triumphant signal “that you are someone who, beneath that white hair, has a card catalog of valuable information.”

is this really true? i mean, i still ask my dad about all kinds of practical things, but im not sure id consider him a fount of wisdom.

i know where that 'don't grow up. it's a trap' sign is!! it's a v good liquor store.

k thanks

shouldn't it be "an iPhone of valuable info"?

i must have missed the post itt where we tacked up the 'no girls allowed' sign, what exactly is making the women feel so alienated by the conversation? y'all just 'can't even' with the opinions of dudes anymore?

McDormand's quote in my first post isn't even gender-specific; what a horrible feminist

yeah this is one time where I am kind of shrugging at those comments? I mean we basically only used the quote as a jumping off point and nothing else in the thread really seems relevant to privilege or gendered aspects of aging to me? Maybe I just can't see it through my privilege blinders.

a triumphant signal “that you are someone who, beneath that white hair, has a card catalog of valuable information.”

http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Jon-Voight.jpg

the older i get the less faith i have in the "wisdom" of those older than i

a triumphant signal “that you are someone who, beneath that white hair, has a card catalog of valuable information.”

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Screen-Shot-2012-08-27-at-5.21.48-PM.png

Maybe the dressing like a teenager thing is more applicable to women's style/fashion, or maybe I've always been pretty square, but it's hard to envision "dressing your age" as a man outside of the Mad Men-y graduate from jeans to khakis to a suit and I don't wanna wear khakis.

I see a lot of men's style that I think looks kind of kiddulty.

I mean, I see guys my own age wearing football jerseys as everyday wear and ugly hats and stuff, but that's not really screaming teenager to me.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Hiking_in_Knee_Socks,_Sandals,_and_Cut-offs.jpg

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/v0mDnaESnrM/maxresdefault.jpg

ok, i see you guys are gonna be euthanizing us when the debt bomb comes; as you were

wow pHIL you found some pics of celebrity Republicans, CHRIST U GENIUS

http://images.telerama.fr/medias/2011/07/media_71134/michel-serres-n-etant-porteuse-d-aucun-sens-la-musique-les-possede-tous,M56369.jpg

^^^noted philosopher michel serres

Here is a picture of Jean-Luc Godard wearing a t-shirt under a suit jacket like he's on Miami Fucking Vice or something. Grow up!

http://www.filmlinc.com/page/-/130814_GodardMain.jpg

Look at these hipsters! Maybe one day they'll buy their shirts at a store for AD-ults.

http://images.starpulse.com/news/media/coenbros.jpg

A denim jacket at a black-tie affair? Study hall is THAT WAY, missy!

http://cdn2.crushable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/francesmcdormandtonsjacket.jpg

LOL 420 SMOKE WEED ERRYDAY

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--vNIXRR-o--/18es0ep9r3u8hjpg.jpg

omg the scales have fallen from my eyes

can Phil and I be joined as Official Board Enemies?

Well, generally I think people should dress the way they want to and have the interests and pastimes they want to, and where do our ideas about those things come from anyway?
But (having not read the full article) I am not going to say there is nothing to what she is saying. I think to me the more important aspect of it is the rejection or marginalization of actual older people and viewpoints and the emphasis on either actually being very young or seeming young whatever one's age. There is nothing wrong with an older person going to comic con or dressing supposedly younger but both being and seeming old (in whatever way that's defined) should be okay too.
Our culture has grown increasingly youth oriented and I do see a problem with that. I just don't think it's about how people dress or reading comic books or things like that. Those, to me, are not signs of maturity or wisdom. If anything isn't she judging by external appearances here?

But some people put on their "fun uniform" to do these age-anachronistic things...

I understand what a "Phil D level poster" is now

To follow up just one little thought from the essay, I guess it's possible we (and "we" as used here is a total moving target) don't invest older ppl with our cultural memory (as much?) anymore? To the extent that "we" ever really did, and this isn't just historical revisionism. But maybe it's fair to say we don't look to our elders to learn how to be. BUT also when older people believe that the world in the time of their youth was better than now, when their values are just references to the past, that outlook doesn't have a lot to offer younger generations? We shouldn't be surprised when young people pull away from that.

But I'm also feeling a tie-in to equality issues here--when one is part of a marginalized population that's fighting for greater equality it's easier to see how the past was worse for you if your concern group has made progress in your lifetime. And your priorities are future goals, which rest in the hands of the youth, so you're vitally invested in the future.

W/r/t young ppl: when you see yourself as being engaged in a struggle that's assigned to you by your identity, you're more likely to value the markers of that identity, things that tell you what it means to be a member of the group you identify with. And the "keepers" of those values are...the elders? Because they've seen more and can see furthest into the past to bring stories forward? There are prob good sociological explanations for elder reverence that I don't know to cite.

----

I have totally not even started to process the whole women's appearances and aging part of what McDormand was saying, no one should really be arguing about that given the wealth of discussion on the subject.

Isn't the fact that people over 30 or 40 read comic books 1) a fact of the comics industry evolving & maturing PR, esp. thanks to Internet 2) a sign of anti-agism in the culture?

As an over-40, I hope so! Older folk should be encouraged to do youthful things. They shouldn't be expected to wear bright blue eyeshadow or wear tiny shorts that show your ass.

People are living so long now it seems silly to expect them to start picking out wheelchairs for when they turn 70. I don't think that helps longevity!

I think there is an infantilism in the culture that some favor, but it is insulting to those in their twenties and thirties. For example there is too much music for fifteen-year-olds out there. I would think people that age who act more adult would get further in life.

Also - I'm pushing 50 and the older I get the more I feel that deterioration is evil. Fuck aging - it's evil and unfair. I blame no one for getting plastic surgery.

To follow up just one little thought from the essay, I guess it's possible we (and "we" as used here is a total moving target) don't invest older ppl with our cultural memory (as much?) anymore? To the extent that "we" ever really did, and this isn't just historical revisionism. But maybe it's fair to say we don't look to our elders to learn how to be. BUT also when older people believe that the world in the time of their youth was better than now, when their values are just references to the past, that outlook doesn't have a lot to offer younger generations?

Yes, which is why I posted the pictures of Voight and Jackson after Morbius -- presumably positively? -- quoted McDormand's Looking old, she said, should be a boast about experiences accrued and insights acquired, a triumphant signal “that you are someone who, beneath that white hair, has a card catalog of valuable information.”

Not only doesn't Morbius believe that as a general proposition ("Ask me about Hillary Clinton!") he'd be ceaseless in his mockery of anyone else who deployed it in an argument as a general proposition, especially if it was someone whose interests he disapproved of or who appeared to be having a better time in life than he does.

I don't know who any of those ppl are and I'm not in an argument with Morbius. I'm just trying to respond to the OP.

http://www.dummymag.com/media/img/cache/media/uploads/news/Warp_Tate_Rave_Rustie_Rollo_Jackson_750_418_90_s.jpg

xp fair enough. I think there's less to the OP than meets the eye.

Thought someone was going to post that funny image of Herzog at Comicon. I think he actually said he liked it.

Isn't the fact that people over 30 or 40 read comic books 1) a fact of the comics industry evolving & maturing

this p much a separate issue but no that is absolutely not the case. the superhero comics industry's audience has basically calcified and been restricted to the same group of people who read comics in the 80s, and it has failed to expand beyond that to include new, younger generations of readers, often intentionally so (recalling Paul Pope being told that he could not actually write a Batman comic for children, it had to be geared towards 40yo men etc.) I'm speaking primarily here about the big two, obviously comics has a much broader market than that when it comes to non-superhero stuff which is (not coincidentally) also mostly specifically targeted at adults. Comics are largely not for kids anymore because a certain segment of the comics-buying audience is - and Morbz is correct here - composed primarily of arrested development types who want to consume their childhood pop iconography but with the window dressing of adult content (ie graphic sex and violence). These are vast generalizations, obviously, but on the whole this is how it looks to me.

I dunno - how " old" are these old people? I personally would care not to remember the Kennedy assassination and Vietnam. Not to mention some truly awful conduct in reaction to integration and the Civil Rights Movement.

Who are these old people who think things were better then?

Believing life is disappointing or a disaster can spring from a shitty childhood spent thinking things will get better as much as having dreams dashed. Either way it's a pose. I need to ask my parents' dog if life is a disappointment.

What exactly did your parents do to that dog?

I wasn't trying to consign everyone over 45 to days filled with shuffleboard and the Olive Garden, but just urging them to avoid this

http://www.technologytell.com/entertainment/files/2014/05/tumblr_mg1aevZBv71qefwfno1_500.jpg

Limp wrists?

Wth, shuffleboard is GREAT.

it's true all late night talk shows should be avoided

Phil D, your generalizations are bullshit ("he's saying ALL mature ppl are fonts of wisdom") and i don't care to engage

You never actually ~make~ an argument in any thread so I wouldn't expect this to be any different. Just a bunch of insinuating quotes and one-liners that you can back away from when needed.

I don't like reboots, but a good reboot of Freaky Friday would be Jodie Foster switches places with Lindsay Lohan and nobody notices any difference.

"Phil D" swaps with "Dr Morbius", ruins a screening of "The Bicycle Thief"

I don't agree with the policing and pressure to conform in either direction - pressure to seem as young as possible through surgery, clothes, taking up youth associated interests etc- or saying "You're old now, time to stop dressing like that /liking those things".
I understand the concern with what appears to be a lack of growth and development over the course of a lifetime but I don't think that's necessarily reflected in those things.
I also we need to careful in moving from observation of a social problem -ageism, undervaluing older people and perspectives - to criticism of individuals for what they seem to be embodying.

Frances more or less says that she is speaking out of fear and rage. Which might account for some of the more obvious limitations of her broad social critique.

http://www.awardsdaily.com/blog/2011/07/werner-herzog-and-comic-cons-collective-dreams/
Now that I've seen this image again he doesn't look grumpy at all.

kids really don't have a lot of power so I don't think it's the worst thing to have some amount of reservation on encroaching on their turf, and I do think nostalgia is inherently an impulse that trends towards right wing conservatism, but at the same time, old dudes skateboarding is pretty awesome
http://skateandannoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/old-atlantic.jpg

kids can't afford comic books now. plus, they only sell them at comic book stores and all the comic book stores closed.

they just play minecraft instead...

man, i didn't know underaero made the cover of the Atlantic

Just a bunch of insinuating quotes and one-liners

more than that, i need to get paid, or at least nab some Blu-rays

Not Buffy DVDs?

help the aged, and keep the non sequiturs in my wheelhouse

old people are the worst, why would you want to be old

Well, like my dad always says, getting old beats the alternative.

video games are worse than old people

Like at least 10 times worse

I don't think "nostalgia" is inherently reactionary. You may as well say that having good memories of anything makes you a repressive reactionary.

On the other hand if you say the truly awful 1990's were the best decade ever, no nothing reactionary or ignorant there.

For example, how is my mom fondly remembering sixties music "reactionary"? Should anything historic be disposed of? Why would anyone want to live in an old house, for example, or preserve anything?

it's a natural enough impulse to look at the past through a tinted lens, and even find some ways to glorify even the unpleasant parts. How come there aren't any civil war movies that are 3 hours of dysentery?
that's why it's important to fight nostalgia with unpleasant reminders like "sixties music was great but sinatra and sammy davis jr couldn't drink from the same water fountain" and "the civil war was mostly dysentery"

not sure how we wound up in nostalgia territory.

And if just liking things from one's youth is reactionary (or juvenile and regressive) why would that be more true of people whose youth occurred in the 1980s or 1990s than people whose youth occurred in say the 1940s? (Not sure anyone is making this argument but it seems implied?)
Maybe the things that are now associated with young people and immaturity in older people will come to be associated with old people - if it's true that, for example, kids don't read comic books anymore.

i read somewhere that in olden times people thought nostalgia was a disease and tried to cure it with trepanning or smelling salts and such things, so maybe that was a counterbalance against its weight for a while.

ILE could be improved if members received complimentary smelling salts on joining.

Yo, don't all be stupid, nostalgia for your OWN past is not the same as thinking that the future would be better if it were more like the past as you, specifically, remember it.

One tends to lead to the other, though, despite george lucas constant attempts to punish that kind of thinking.

To the extent that nostalgia can be viewed as fond reflection upon that which buffered trauma in one's past, the allure is fairly understandable. To the extent that trauma was insufficiently buffered in one's past, feelings of repulsion toward nostalgia as a concept might also be understandable.

IDK about comics/fantasy, but this is certainly a bad month for making the case that gaming is "adult"

So, in the article in question McDormand is, in one photo, wearing a boys style short sleeved plaid shirt and in another, a young womans style blue dress and dyed black hair. What even is she trying to say?

My take: get tae fuck, if I want to like the simspsons and dye my hair and wear tartan minis and drink lke a fish when I'm 55-60, I'll fuckin well do so. Age be damned.

I fucking hate the eternal adolescence everyone under about 38 seems to have settled into; particularly bad in San Francisco. There was almost a good article about this in the Chronicle but it was actually just a puff promo for an indoor golf place.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3157/3423714878_9650276329.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3413/3422907497_4493a6d059.jpg

looney tunes were aimed at adults mostly, weren't they?

is it possible to talk about how "no one wants to be an adult" without being so self-congratulatory?

we must keep our promise to our seniors and honor our seniors

just my $0.02

looney tunes were aimed at adults mostly, weren't they?

Pretty sure, yeah:
http://youtu.be/EK4j88PvLyg

is it possible to talk about how "no one wants to be an adult" without being so self-congratulatory?

not really. I suppose it might be possible to talk about it as being just depressing and hopeless, but you'd need to be awfully bleak about it to crush out any spark of self-congratulation.

how many 25-30 year olds are you acquainted with (apart from ilx)?

I thought self-congratulation on being an adult was the consolation prize for being an adult.

gee maybe there are some reasons why people in their 20s and 30s aren't buying houses and having kids in 2014 beyond their nostalgia for cartoons no hmm can't think of any

Frances McDormand follow-up interview: "Buy a house!"

Well yes, there are immediate economic reasons, and there are also longer term cultural shifts, the widespread acceptance of birth control, the increased number of women entering the workforce and/or getting college and post-college degrees, the triumph of individualism, the philosophy of treating life as a chance to accrue experiences, improvements in fertility treatments (though these still lag a little behind everything else), changes in what is seen as financially necessary to raise a child (since people can no longer assume that their kids will manage without a college degree). So no, I don't think it's just the post-financial-crisis malaise, although that's a part of it.

infantilization, market-reinforced, is the problem imo not not growing up, children are fully fledged people, people are better if they can be childlike. childishness via late cap panic mode vs. childlikeness via wisdom ov ages. other than that the solution is to kill babies and reduce the human population by half in 100 years obv.

xp But there is also the decline of the *idea* of adulthood as an aspirational goal. Maybe in reality a 25-year-old single person working full time is no less "adult" than his/her counterpart in the past, but the concept of adulthood is not marketed the way it used to be, like it's not a selling point, whereas being sort of bumbling and immature and *not quite having this adulthood thing figured out* is a popular theme in tv/film/advertising.

Terry Gross told Lena Dunham that she kind of couldn't get over the idea of a show by and about 20-something females called "Girls," because in her day it was so important to be called "women" and to be taken seriously -- obviously this is partly a matter of where feminism is at today but it also says something about views of adulthood.

girls is the opposite of 'boys' but it is also the opposite of 'guys'. it's kinda awkward these days to call a 19 y/o a man (or a boy)

The opposite of "guys" is "gals" or "dolls" according to the OED. #actually

Right and I think it's probably actually a sign of progress in some ways that a woman identifying as a feminist eels like she can use the title "Girls" and still be "taken seriously." But at the same time, the fact that it's "awkward" to call 19-year-olds, or even 22-year-olds "men" and "women" just underscores the point.

HE VAS MY BOYFRIEND!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sWp3ide2Gl8/URMLt6kJ48I/AAAAAAAAAiY/T-uvbYqiABQ/s1600/frau-blucher.jpg

where does 'boi' fit in here

very snugly

on my...

Fascinating questions tho. Did "boi" start getting used when men started using "boy"?

feel like this current obsession with boundary lines between childhood and adulthood is a small moment in the history of what is a domestic accessory invention of industrialization, the victorian construction of childhood and innocence. before this happened it's not that children were expected to act like adults but that children were adults and vice versa, there was more of a fluid continuity accessible at most age points and less of a need to boundary police based on certain stages of life when certain modes of consumption become signs of advancement. obviously there's a variance wrt this based on cultural context but i think the general trend holds over the last 200-300 years. the contemporary infatuation with a rearview moment when supposed "adulthood" or control was achieved by an unvariegated mass of besuited citizenry is about what it longs for now in an age where the construction of narratives of cultural cohesiveness is increasingly laid bare. it is itself another form of "childishness", or culturally encouraged ideology, a sign that someone has entered a stage of "serious" consumptive participation in american society and declared their allegiance to whatever state of the art pastime is the real activity of this stage besides all the blah-blah about how immature all of us are now. see shia labeouf.

sounds right to me

Good post

I do think there's a kind of atavism at large wrt the way people engage with things, but I wouldn't want to start in on the things they choose to engage with not being ~adult~ enough no matter how rmde I feel about there always being 20 threads of people talking about what superhero movies are coming out two years from now, because that way lies "fucking embarrassing m8" & is a bit, well, embarrassing

Like you end up a man who uses the phrase "diaper drinkers" while self-righteously spluttering about how people are enjoying things that you have deemed too juvenile

yeah good post, xp, and also not only consumerism but our education system is infantilizing -- at least 14 years of being given little autonomy and few responsibilities that seem connected to anything "real" as opposed to an abstract grading system. Agrarian "children" were more adult-like because they had roles more similar to those of adults in their work by the time they were in the low double-digit ages.

eh i'm not so sure agrarian children are or "were" more "adult-like". i mean they are or "were" certainly more screwed over than suburban children. i guess i'm saying the child vs. adult rhetoric is a complete fabrication that needs to be looked at from the pov of who is saying it, that's where the revealing information is.

I'm kind of pro ending child labor even if there's a youth culture boundary police as a result

how many 25-30 year olds are you acquainted with (apart from ilx)?

Most of my nieces and nephews have crossed the boundary into their 30s by now, and my daughter, although 28, is hardly typical, so there's only a couple in that cohort atm. However, I suspect you conceive of the topic "no one wants to be an adult" in more limited terms than I was.

How 25-30 year old talk about themselves is not what I meant to address. I rather doubt that most 25-30 year olds are looking at thirty-somethings with young children and complacently discussing how lovely it is that none of them wants to accept adult responsibility, but would rather go out drinking every night, or pointing at their parents and calmly noticing that they are regressing toward childhood, barely able to take care of themselves because they're so caught up in distractions and confusion. Or speaking approvingly of sixty and seventy year olds going to raves.

infantilization, market-reinforced, is the problem imo not not growing up, children are fully fledged people, people are better if they can be childlike. childishness via late cap panic mode vs. childlikeness via wisdom ov ages. other than that the solution is to kill babies and reduce the human population by half in 100 years obv.

― mattresslessness, Thursday, October 23, 2014 10:29 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As kids today say...THIS

I do worry about the message people send to their children today that toys and gadgets grow on trees.

When I was a kid, with memories of immigration and the depression, and the age of assassinations, Vietnam, genocide in Africa - all of these were cited as reasons why my brother and I couldn't have a toy.

It was like, "no you can't have Barbie Dream House - look at this article on Cambodia!" I try not to be pessimistic but I see little evidence that parents do this anymore.

"you can't have that toy because I don't make enough money" is my time-honored excuse

"that toy is fucking stupid, no way am I buying that for you" also comes in handy

you can't have that toy because we hate you is worth a try once just to see the reaction

"That toy is f-ing stupid" is at least exposing your children to critical thought. Parents I encounter today are downright paranoid about exposing children to anything "negative". I think this is a very real tendency and a BAD idea. Esp. bad and embarrassing in this age of terror.

Children under the islamic state have no such toys, the koran forbids it.

FWIW my parents were kind of political, admittedly - but it seemed more common in the Vietnam era, esp. if your folks opposed the war. I'm grateful for that. being exposed to that culture is worth more than Barbie's Corvette. YMMV.

Parents I encounter today are downright paranoid about exposing children to anything "negative".

haha perhaps this belongs on the "judge other people's parenting" thread but I know one kid whose mom literally never tells her "no". Like, the mom has expressed this to me as one of her principles of parenting. (I have watched as kid has grown into a whiney slack-jawed weirdo fwiw)

On visits, I'm not allowed to watch the TV news (even the NewsHour) when the niece (almost 8) is in the room. I had a toy pistol and watched Vietnam news when i was her age.

Also the parents have somehow kept the Sandy Hook shooting (20 miles away?) a secret from her (or so they tell me).

xp

i have heard one acquaintance (unchilded) consistently espouse this view to a friend of mine (twinned) and idk how you don't just brain someone like that with the nearest fucking manhole cover or something

Also the parents have somehow kept the Sandy Hook shooting (20 miles away?) a secret from her (or so they tell me).

my kid listens to NPR sometimes so she picks up some stuff but this... I don't blame the parents for this. I'm p bummed I have to decide what age is appropriate for me to tell my child that she might get randomly murdered when she goes to school.

I mean how would you convince your child to keep going to school after that

'odds are low, the risk is worth it'

'here let me show you an actuarial chart'

don't recommend quoting from

generation limbo: 20-somethings today, debt, unemployment, the questionable value of a college education

My mother would always let us stay up if we wanted to watch the news, but only if it was the news. Seriously cannot fathom parents who put news blinders on their kids. My mom also put the dictionary under the TV in case a new word (like 'rape', for example, which I remember hearing for the first time when I was eight) needed to be defined, so she could avoid an awkward conversation. She was also very good at WE CAN'T AFFORD IT. We couldn't. This is why I started baby-sitting for neighbours when I was 11.

lol TV news is garbage why would I let my child watch that

now that she can read a whole new range of info is available to her, which I am excited to share

well in my day we had Cronkite

apparently kid asked what happened to Martin Luther King not long ago

mom: "a man shot him"

child stares

(i'm sure that's the digest version)

oh look: http://www.sfgate.com/local/article/2-dead-several-injured-in-school-shooting-in-5845525.php

xp TV news was brilliant in the '70s.

My sister was an eighties kid and by that time the talks on Vietnam or genocide had been replaced with cable television cartoons. Sis turned out okay, but she is less aggressive and competitive than her older sibs.

Everybody dyes their hair? How is that a problem?

Seriously cannot fathom parents who put news blinders on their kids

I do this; what's so unfathomable about it? As far as I know, my 9-year-old doesn't know about school shootings. We talk about things that I don't think will feel personal to him; like, he knows Russia is invading Ukraine. I don't think he knows that ISIS beheads people, or what rape is, or the details of what happened in the Holocaust, and I'm OK with that for now. I don't think it'll make it impossible for him to be an adult.

Obviously I don't think this is what everyone should do with their kids, but it's what I do.

Yeah you gotta draw lines about what will traumatize them vs. what they are capable of treating as an abstraction

like yeah my daughter knows who Hitler was and that he hated Jews (thanks art history books about Marc Chagall lol) but she doesn't know people were shoved into ovens

I think she's a little young to grasp that there was a whole culture of people who happily mass murdered people like her

and if you said people were shoved into ovens it would just sound like a fairy tale

One thing about getting older (I am not yet 30 btw) is beginning to see things detach themselves from the age brackets I think they should be in, floating off, and reattaching to points in people's lives where I wouldn't expect them. Clothes, ways of talking, music, have been doing this weird dance for the last five years now.

Maybe that's always been going on, or has it sped up recently?

I used to be freaked out by adults with braces but i guess invisalign fixed that?

Parents I encounter today are downright paranoid about exposing children to anything "negative".

fuckin kids today -- when i was their age we went to bed each night in fear of soviet first strikes amirite

actually i do remember taking comfort from the fact that where i lived was probably within vaporizing range of a likely target and thus no 'on the beach' bullshit

I guess it depends on how much violence your child will be directly exposed to - something tells me that people who live near gang shootings can't exactly shield their children.

There are gang shootings in my neighborhood. My children are not aware of them because of when/where they tend to take place (v late at night, close to major thoroughfares like Mission St) also there are no gang members in our family.

there was a hs student killed by another student recently but that is p rare. She heard about it because the victim had recently graduated her school and had siblings still going there. So there were assemblies/discussions about it w the student body.

I know one kid whose mom literally never tells her "no". Like, the mom has expressed this to me as one of her principles of parenting. (I have watched as kid has grown into a whiney slack-jawed weirdo fwiw)

http://static.tvgcdn.net/MediaBin/Galleries/Shows/G_L/Lit_Lp/Louie/season3/louie-30.jpg

Sorry if I seemed judgmental - I'm not. I think most of my peers raise their children that way. It's just so different from my own childhood. My Dad worked in Gary, Indiana and we often had to drive through there so we had to have frequent talks about why there is inequality, why so many black people were poor. It was important to my parents that we didn't get bad ideas from the media. Something I'd like the next generation to learn. I think my parents were exemplary people but I don't expect everyone to be that way.

we had to have frequent talks about why there is inequality

I have those talks with my kids too! But I want it coming from me, not through a story in the paper or god help me TV news that he comes across without me.

In other words, "news blinders" doesn't mean "raising kids to think nothing is bad in the world," but it does mean "kids don't have to know details about beheadings and rape." I did go into a lot of detail about Curt Schilling's mouth cancer the other night, though, because I really do kind of want him to be scared of tobacco.

By the age of 8, I had enough historical perspective to understand exactly what it meant when one of my classmates called me a nigger, so it kind of baffles me to see that others in my putative peer group aren't making sure their kids understand at a young age how America is and how they can make it a better place.

i have nothing to do with anything & have no children but, yeah: i think blackout is a weird angle on this, given that kids won't be blissfully ignorant or sensitively primed of what's what but exposed to the crazy creative writing interpretation & storytelling of other kids, non-stop, w/o factchecks. i am e-mailing everybody's kids my own personal wikipedia playlist of the worst ten things that happened in the twenty first century, if you want to opt out hit me up at my inactive ilx webmail address asap

Well, in my case, the eight-year-old who had to look up 'rape' in the dictionary because of the news became the 12-year-old who, when told about a possible local prowler/rapist, suggested that maybe the answer to that was not 'women and girls, stay inside' but 'if a man is this possible local prowler, why not tell all the men to stay indoors instead?'

Granted, the news ran under some kind of fairness doctrine at the time...

Well, I just got back from dinner with my brother & his two kids, where we wandered into exactly this discussion. Kids are seven and four and a half. Of course our adult convo turned to the news, and we were talking about a woman I knew who got shot, then I apologized because kids were present. Smart eight year old goes, "I heard that! Strangers are bad people!" Then his mom told me 7 year old insists on watching the news, he esp follows the Malaysia flight story. Of course his mom is a flight attendant & they fly all of the time so they have to think about aircraft disasters.

I asked his parents if they let him watch news and they said he insists, but they're indulgent sort - again, afraid their kids will be the goody two shoes at school. Being Italian that's kind of a no no. Kid is so well-versed in the headlines I can understand why some parents would be alarmed. Have to admit, I laughed my ass of at how street smart and sassy he is.

it kind of baffles me to see that others in my putative peer group aren't making sure their kids understand at a young age how America is and how they can make it a better place.

dunno how personally I should take this but a) 6 and 8 are v different ages and b) racial epithets and their relationship to mass murder are things that are framed by a historical perspective that is a bit different from "random people may murder you at school for no reason at all", which is what I specifically took issue w re: tailhook and talking about it w my daughter.

I've definitely been thinking for a long time about having my kids learn less/later about the holocaust than I did. I think it's perfectly understandable why a generation that was closer to it felt it so important to emphasize so much, but the effect is an outsized sense of insecurity in the world that probably doesn't match up with what it's like to be Jewish in 2014 in America.

We've covered slavery, racism, ww2, the palestinian/israeli conflict, egypt, benghazi, russia invading the ukraine, FDR/the great depression, mlk/malcolm x/civil rights movement, gandhi, police brutality.. I am ok w leaving some of the grislier details of hiroshima, the holocaust, lynchings, etc for a later date

how does one explain benghazi to a little kid

It was on NPR all the time for awhile so we looked up where it was on a map, I explained what an embassy was and how diff't groups were fighting to be in charge of the country etc.

did you teach the controversy

Kids are so smart, we forget what a seven or eight year old is capable of! Vietnam and kids is such a unique subject, it was a national trauma in a way today's wars aren't - for whatever reason. It was discussed in the churches!

weren't they sending kids not that much older off to vietnam to fight?

wonder when original topic will resurface

have you noticed a change of subject?

yeah im not that far gone

Thought this might be the appropriate thread but not sure
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/william-shakespeare-culture-war-highbrow-lowbrow-94733/

bummed that this thread wasn't bumped because the Star Wars thread has almost 1000 new answers

pointing out that shakespeare has for hundreds of years been an essential part of mass/pop/whatever culture in the english speaking world to make a something something something point about sneering intellectuals is on some _trenchant social commentary_ shit

life is too short to read the stuff that noah berlatsky writes