Growing up

I think I've finally figured out what this blog is about.  It's about growing up.

More specifically, its about the experience of growing up, of looking around and realizing that adulthood's maybe not as cool as you thought it was going to be, and all that stuff you were quick to lay behind as a teenager is actually awesome.

To that end, I will be taking a gander at children's things through jaded adult eyes.  Sometimes it will be pure nostalgia (and will probably relate to something my kids have been up to lately), and sometimes it will be a deeper look at something we took for granted as children, as I did with my Mermaids post.  (They won't all be that long, I promise.)

Now for a quick plug: a couple of things I never grew out of were gummi bears and those frosted animal crackers.  Laurel Bushman is a California based artist who makes awesome charms and pendants based on them and other nostalgia foods.  Check them out here.  Full disclosure: she's my sister.

Forget Christmas, Save Thanksgiving!

Is it just me, or did the major retailers kind of skip over Thanksgiving this year?  It seems that at Target, Walmart, Starbucks, and so on, the Christmas decorations went up the day before Halloween, and that the Turkey day paraphernalia was relegated to a discount table in the corner, if it was displayed at all.  Interest in the holiday seems lower than any time in my memory - it seems like Thanksgiving should simply be re-named "The Thursday Before Black Friday".

It's a shame, because it's always been a favorite holiday of mine, since I was a kid.  Sure, it's not Christmas, with all the toys toys toys and greed greed greed; or Halloween, with all the candy candy candy and greed greed greed.  But Thanksgiving serves as a nice buffer between those two carnivals of self-indulgence.  Everyone sits together at the table with their families (however they choose to define them) and share in the fundamental act of community, sharing a meal.

New Additions

Eamon Thomas, Born October 25, 2011.

On Mermaids

When you have a three year old girl, you find yourself re-watching a lot of movies you haven’t seen in a while, especially Disney. I saw The Little Mermaid when it first came out, in 1989 (I was seven) and liked it, though even then I was aware that it was intended more for girls than boys. Watching it again now, with an adult perspective, I’ve figured out why – and it’s more than just Disney’s incessant and slightly irritating marketing of the “Princess” concept.

The release of The Little Mermaid marked the beginning of what’s been called the Disney Renaissance, a series of films in which the study broke out of the slump it had been in since the seventies. The renaissance continued with Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. How long the streak continued depends on your opinion of movies like Mulan, Pocahontas, Tarzan and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but the core of the period is those first four films. The torch was largely passed to Pixar after Tarzan, and Disney started making stuff like Dinosaur and The Emperor's New Groove, meh.



Anybody else think she looks like
Kristen Stewart?

  Of the four, the best is arguably either Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King, but an informal poll of women in my life indicates that The Little Mermaid had the most long-term influence. It’s that influence that I want to explore here.  There is a considerable amount of analytical writing on the Disney oeuvre available online, and much of it takes a negative view of the films' influence, a prime example is this piece by Chey on Helium.com.  While I agree that early exposure to these cultural artifacts has an effect, I disagree with the view that these effects must be negative, and in se reinforce the "patriarchal myth".  The Little Mermaid’s power rests in buried psychosexual messages that ultimately provide a positive guide for adolescent girls’ development. To start with, the central event of the movie – Ariel’s transformation from mermaid to human – is a clear metaphor for sexual awakening. The important conflict is how that awakening is handled by Ariel and by those around her. It’s become a common game to spot supposed subliminal sexual messages buried in the frames of Disney movies – like the famous tower on Triton’s palace, or the dust that swirls around Simba in The Lion King. I’m not interested in such facile pastimes. Instead, I want to go deeper, and discuss symbolic and even archetypal characters and objects that give The Little Mermaid its intense hold on the imagination.



Generations

A piece on pbs.org (here) asks whether the economic destruction wrought by the profligacy of the last decade has created a new lost generation.  Unemployment among twenty-somethings is up, marriages are being delayed, and a huge number of young people are opting to live with their parents after leaving school.  Aside from the rather dubious designation of the "lost generation" (wasn't Hemingway a member of the last Lost Generation?), the piece hits a nerve with me.  Our twenties are when we define ourselves; we're away from the influence of our parents, and its time to decide what we're going to be and whether we're going to be great at it.

Places, and why we miss them

Anyone who's actually reading this may already know that we're expecting our second child. A boy. He's due at the end of October, but if he's anything like his sister, he'll come at the beginning of October. He'll be born here, in Phoenix.

The Curse of Coolness

It's been nearly a year since my last post. Thank god no one's actually reading this, or there'd be some disappointment going around. I promised stories from suicide row in my last post, and I'll get to that later on, along with the various comings and goings of life in general, and what's been happening these last eleven months. Big news: kid number two on the way! But that's also for another post.

What I want to talk about today is the problem of being cool. I was never cool in the sense that I was popular, or sought after, or a trend-setter. But I have, for a long time, tried to cultivate coolness. Ironic detachment. The ability to remain unruffled, and unmoved. And I'm realizing how much I missed in the process. How much we all miss, because our culture pushes cool to the point that I believe its hobbling the whole society.

I'll tell you what brings this up. In the last couple of months I've become a fan of Roger Ebert's website, especially his Great Movie essays, which are a biweekly feature. You can get the complete list here . Anyway, tonight I read his essay on Franco Zeferelli's Romeo & Juliet and thought "I bet Netflix has that available for streaming". Sure enough, they do.