Happy 40th Birthday, Sesame Street

With the recent attempts to create tiers of citizenship and personhood by denying individuals their civil rights and ability to make decisions about their bodies, it is nice to remember one of the reasons why we have a generation that knows that it is wrong and believes that we can change our community for the better:



As Andi says, looking back it might not have been perfect, and has certainly disappointed us as adults, but thank you Sesame Street.

Thanks for teaching us about the alphabet and social responsibility through puppets. Even the ones that terrified me.

Where the Wild Things Are

Spoiler Alert

All of the hullabaloo about how Where the Wild Things Are is too scary for kids seems to have missed one key factor: it is far more boring than it is scary. During the showing we went to there were about six kids from about ages 6 to 10 sitting near us and by the time it got to the really violent sequences none of the kids were even looking at the screen because they (like me) had lost interest about five minutes after Max reached the island.

I am part of the multiple generations that grew up on the illustrations of Maurice Sendak. Granted we all remember the illustrations more than the story, and they did sort of terrify me, but I was still really excited to see it come to life. My husband and I were lucky enough to get to explore the Where the Wild Things Are exhibit at the Sony Metreon back in 2002. We were the only people there and made quite the rumpus because they really got it right - right down to the shading on the palm trees.

I was particularly excited for the movie because it was costumes and not CGI (at least mostly) - and in that aspect it certainly did not disappoint. But if all a movie has to offer is aesthetics you only really need to watch the trailer, which had all of the most visually appealing snippets, anyway.

As Jezebel noted, the book is short - really short. The part that has etched itself in our cultural memory is the illustrations (what the Metreon exhibit got oh-so right). So, maybe pretty landscapes and neat costumes are all we should expect. Unfortunately, however, I think the movie doesn't just not get the book right, it does it - and it's viewers - a disservice.

The sections that have been deemed too scary for kids are not scary because of the terrible teeth and claws. They are scary because Jonze and Eggers could not decide who the wild things were. Sendak based them on his foreign adult relatives (which is a whole other problem to dissect), but in the movie they are sometimes adults with romantic relationships and sometimes whiny children with hurt feelings.

Sure, part of the process of growing up is realizing that adults usually are whiny children with hurt feelings, but in this case those adults enact an abusive relationship. The wild things' size, knowledge of the island, and interpersonal relationships position them as adults through most of the film (as do their names typical of a generation older than Max), and while Max once or twice growls them into submission, he spends most of the movie watching them physically and emotionally hurt one another with the fear that they will harm him.

Then of course there is the infamous line, "I'll eat you up I love you so." The only emotion we have had up until that point is anger and insecurity, so what has come to be a marker of the movie's "take away" (that we love our children even if we must discipline them? That we love them despite their sometimes justified though inappropriately enacted anger? Your guess is as good as mine) is not actually in the movie. In perhaps the most disturbing and strange and wtf!?! moment in modern cinema, the character (KW) that says it does in fact eat him up in order to protect him.

But, if we decide to go with it as a metaphor based on the movie until that point, then it seems the lesson we are supposed to take away is that maternal figures (who KW is positioned as) will do anything to protect their child from an abusive father figure (Carol). Moreover, that kind of love is smothering since Max can't breathe and is pulled out covered in bile and spit, though the raccoon who is also hanging out there seems to be fine. Told you it was weird.

But again, the most disappointing part was that it was just plain boring. Once you have seen the costumes, learned that war games always end in tears, and watched the wild things whine and lose their tempers and hurt each others feelings in the exact same way five times, your mind wanders: In my husband's case, about the mother's agonizing worry over her child running away (the only part that diverged from the ten sentences of text, and the only part Sendak did not particularly like) and my related concern that Max must have been starving.

Of course Sendak seems to be really happy with the Jonze/Eggers interpretation of his beloved book, so maybe I should just "go to hell" and go see that other childrens book they have taken liberties with. But, I can't remember ever wanting to leave a movie half way through simply because I was bored. Nor have I left a movie disturbed by strange (lack-of) character development (no, more snow and dirt clod fights, but we can still throw rocks at owls?), and upset that I had just wasted all that time sitting there, since even crappy action movies keep your attention. Sadly, the only redeeming factor of the viewing was that we patronized our local historic theater.

Image via JSYK.

Cartoons Get Sexier - Except for Tinkerbell Who is a Lesbian

The sexification of the cartoon characters of my childhood is nothing new. Of course in the world of creepy marketing, by sexification I mean smaller torso's, giant heads, and inappropriate posturing...

First it was My Little Pony - that's right, ponies. Imaginary ponies, made sexier by raising the butt and giving them a come hither look:

Then it was Strawberry Shortcake. Somehow making her skirt longer made her creepy. Oh wait, I know it's that over the shoulder boudoir photo shoot vibe...

And then it was Rainbow Brite and her entourage, who hit puberty and became the primary colored lolitas:

Which is why I was actually excited when I saw the new version of Tinkerbell. Oh sure, she is still super skinny, blonde and suffering from lollipop syndrome, but what was once the most creepily sexual (and mute) cartoon character ever has had a reverse makeover. The only body modification she has undergone is having feet that are a bit larger so that she can walk now and has actually been given an outfit that won't flash her fairy bits.

But, Oh Noes! That means she is a lesbian. Yep, if your kid puts leggings and boots on under that mini dress, she is gonna grow up to like the ladies. But, hey, at least she won't be freezing her faerie ass off.

Tinkerbell image from Alas! A Blog, My Little Pony images from Celebrate Your Naughtiness (though not when it comes to ponies), Strawberry Shortcake from Annie.in.MN, Rainbow Brite from Jezebel.

Princess Vader

When my niece turned three I was faced with the ultimate aunt dilemma: give in to the suggestion that her gifts be princess themed, or start prepping her early for her feminist awakening. I chose the somewhat subversive middle ground. A sparkly pink soccer ball (athletics!), a pink keyboard (music is good for the brain!), and a princess costume - it was blue and it involved LED's in the skirt (technology!). Yes, we spoil our niece and nephew every chance we get.

At one point in the day, after presents had been opened and everyone was high on sugar, she had the costume on over her jeans while we played something more akin to keep-away than soccer. My brother-in-law turned to me and said, "that is result of the work you do. A little girl choosing to be a princess in jeans and a soccer player."

Of course, the fact that she and I can wear jeans and play sports is thanks to generations before us, but it makes me ridiculously happy when kids independently subvert the giant and pervasive structure of gendered binaries. Which is why this made my day:


And not just because my sister (who carried around playschool cowboys in a gold lame purse) always wanted to play Skelator, Stripe, and Darth Vader to my She-Ra, Gizmo and Princess Leia.

Image via Cake Wrecks.

Thanks for the (Do Wah) Diddies

Last night we were driving home listening to NPR (no, we don't own a Volvo or a Subaru) and found out that songwriter Ellie Greenwich had died.

I always hate it when you don't know how amazing someone is until they have passed. This is true for Greenwich because for better or worse, her catchy fun songs were what helped create the pop star state of music. The woman could write. Hot damn could she write, but most of us never knew her name. I am, however, grateful for her contribution to music. Not only are the songs catchy, but most of them are written in my alto range, which means I can sing my heart out to them, like my husband and I did in the car (and into the house) last night.

Sure, most of them were about boys (and all the heteronormative trappings therein), but she seemed to have some pretty smart thoughts on that:

I think, no matter how much of a feminist one claims to be…Lord knows, if you go by my songs, and the way my personal life has gone, you'd say, "Oh my, this lady was dreaming." It didn't exactly happen the way I was writing it. However, I would have liked it to have gone that way. I am a very firm believer in equality, women and men: if you can do the job, by all means go ahead and do it. But I still feel it would be nice if that romance can be there, birds could sing if you fell in love, and you could hear violins. I think that would be really terrific.

One of them was also used for one of my favorite movies ever. So with out further ado:

Lets Talk About Sex, Baby

Yep, in one post I managed to discuss withdrawal, semen and sex without a rubber on an award-winning website.

But, as part of the generation who was educated about sex after the outbreak of AIDS and before the insanity of abstinence-only sex-ed, all this talk of unprotected sex makes me nervous. Particularly, because of the existence of abstinence-only "educators" that will use any excuse to rail about the effectiveness of condoms.

I'm also not a big fan of evolutionary psychology, and using science to argue that there is only one right way to have sex.

(that's right...not one, but two, references to mid-90's lady groups)

I am a child of the 80's

Which is why I feel I must share that this was the first cassette I ever bought with my allowance:


I also started this blog because I tell stories over an over again like someone 30 years my senior - if I write them down, maybe I will stop telling them. So here are two you may or may not have heard.

One
After buying said cassette, I had it in my walkman (yes, kids, a walkman) that I would listen to while on the swings - Graceland was my other choice for this activity.

One night my dad stole borrowed my walkman to go for a run. Ten minutes later he came running through the door and said to anyone that would hear him:

What is this shit!?!

Evidently, he was not expecting Vincent Price to narrate his night-time run through the neighborhood.

Granted, this was maybe four or five years after Thriller had been released, but while we owned the record, I don't think my dad ever listened to it and we didn't have MTV (I wouldn't see the full length video until I was in high school). It would also not be the last time he asked that about my musical taste.

I am going to guess that the reason I decided to buy Thriller, years after it was released, is because this next story is indicative of just how ingrained the King of Pop was into many a young psyche.

Two
In kindergarten we were paired with 6th graders who were supposed to act as our "mentors." Mine was a boy - not at all weird and awkward, right?

They were also our "secret" santas during our holiday party. I don't have any memories about my mentor other than a vague uncomfortableness around a boy that seemed infinitely older than me, except for what he gave me. I opened a small white box and inside was a sparkly, gleaming, totally rad and wonderful, tiny, white glove pin.

Mind you, we did not have MTV. I don't remember watching Michael Jackson on TV, ever, but I certainly remember Captain EO. I put the lid back on the box and sat on it for the rest of the party. I knew the minute I set it down it would be gone forever. I also never wore it for fear of losing such an amazing present. Lord knows where it is now.