my dreadful mixed feelings over reasons my son is crying tumblr

 So there's this tumblr called 'reasons my son is crying.' It somehow exploded everywhere, apparently in the last 48 hours, because suddenly it's all over the place. Of course I went and read it, and was delighted and amused and followed it on my tumblr page. And then this morning:

reasonsmysoniscrying:

We mic’ed him up for Good Morning America.

And BAM just like that I suddenly feel less pleased with this tumblr. I felt/feel a little weird when people use their young children in such a public way - this kid is too young, really, to consent with full knowledge of what he’s consenting to, but at least on the internet there’s a (very thin) layer between the Kid and the Audience. The Kid’s “performance” (i.e., crying) happens ‘offstage,’ so to speak - there’s no microphone, no other people intervening or influencing, it’s just the not-so-much-privacy of his own family and their own camera. but when you add in things like a live studio audience, a crew, interviewers, a set - then you’ve created an artificial and highly manipulated and manipulative arena, and the Kid is On Stage and being used by multiple adults. It turns a mostly-private emotional reaction into a public performance, and performances aren't about the performer so much as they are about the audience, especially, I think, when the performer is a kid (cf. Shirley Temple, every child on 'Toddlers & Tiaras,' etc).

The premise of ‘reasons my son is crying’ is kind of interesting in addition to being funny - I don’t find it “cute” at all, but I do like the way it records the incredible frustrations of being small and quasi-helpless and inexperienced/untutored in the world. To us, maybe it’s funny that a kid would cry because he can’t run naked into Times Square, but the Kid presumably doesn’t know why he’s dreaming the impossible dream there.

I often tell my students that being a little kid is hard - the world isn’t sized for you, you have very little actual freedom and autonomy, you can’t pour your own juice or milk, there are monsters under the bed. You don’t know yet that your hand will get burned if you touch the stove when it’s on. You learn everything the hard way, or experience a world of what appear to be irrational restrictions. It’s this sense of difficulty that ‘reasons my son is crying’ captures that I like.
But I don’t like converting that into a sideshow - it’s already perilously close to being reproachably exploitative. I mean, would YOU want someone taking a photo every time you cried or felt frustrated, and posting it on tumblr for all the world to see? What if you couldn’t say no? what if you couldn’t say yes, either?
I am always, constantly suspicious of performing/trick children, and more suspicious of them in the age of “reality” media, where a kid might not even know or realize he’s being turned into a performer. And so this tumblr - and its transformation into a viral! media! sensation! meme! - makes me uncomfortable now.
[And that doesn’t even begin to address the fact that i suspect you’d see a VERRRRY different public reaction if the evidently continually crying child wasn’t white.]

I should say that I don't think this Kid's parent(s) are being neglectful or abusive or even truly exploitative. I think the original idea is actually quite clever, and I like that you (or I) can read the "reasons" in multiple registers. I'm not especially concerned that this Kid evidently cries constantly. I do think we as a culture are way too quick to embrace emotion-as-spectacle/entertainment, and I think we absolutely make a hash out of the way we treat child performers. I also think we use children, in our culture, in all kinds of ways that aren't really about the kid, or aren't in the kid's best interest. Even more than that, I think it's really easy to turn your kid into a vehicle for money and/or fame - again, the story of virtually every child star demonstrates this - and in this modern world, I can't think of a better example than the Gosselins, who originally appeared in a one-off TLC show about quintuplets and sextuplets. Easy to see how you could agree to doing this, a kind of documentary, and get paid a bit - with eight kids, who wouldn't need the extra cash? And then the reality show - you think, 'great, we can set up college funds for each of the kids,' and/or 'we'll give it a try,' and/or 'this could be fun.' And then you're on tabloids and having a very ugly very public divorce and running through money like water and oh hey, turns out reality-tv 'star' children aren't protected by the kinds of laws (like Jackie's law) whereby some portion of their earnings have to be banked in trust for them, untouched by their parents.

I'm not saying the Kid who is crying is going down that path. Probably he isn't. Probably he's just a kid, with average-affluent parent(s) who are kind of amused by the whole thing. Probably he'll grow up and be kind of mortified at these crying-kid photos, and not much more.

But in the meantime, the tumblr - and now the national tv appearances - raise some interesting and, I think, important questions/issues about how we view and use children in a variety of kinds of media. There's no Jackie's law for social media, there are no protections (and I am thinking primarily of economic/ financial protections) in place for child "stars" of tumblr or instagram or their parents' blogs or youtube.

There are also - and I do think this is very important - lots of reasons to cry when you're a very small child, and those reasons should be taken seriously by the wider culture when we think about children and childhood, even though in the moment, those reasons might be exasperating or just plain hilarious.

now you've made me angry

Waiting in line at the grocery store, I saw this issue of Newsweek on the stand. I was trying to figure out who the woman playing soccer was, and then I noticed the smaller headline above her.

And I got angry. Really, really angry.

18-35? You are GENERATION SCREWED!

My very first coherent thought, once the bubbles of red rage subsided, was "What an awful thing to say!"

I keep coming back to this as I try to sort out just why I'm so angry and what to do about it - how to translate my anger into something like policy or philosophy or even just a personal opinion. And ultimately, it's that this is an awful thing to say.

How would you like to be told you were "Generation Screwed"? How would you like to be told that when you're 22, just finished college, struggling to find a job? Or when you're 26 and you've been out of school for several years and are working a menial job that barely pays the bills, because there's nothing else? How would you like to be told that your 18-year-old child, who you're about to pack off to school, is screwed?

The meanness of this is breathtaking. It's the exclamation point at the end that really does it, I think - there's something kind of gleeful about the declaration - you're screwed! ha!
Actually, what that assertion should mean is, if you're over 35, you need to take a good long look at what you've done to contribute to the screwing-over of the people coming up behind you. If you've done the kind of damage that leaves over 22% of the population "screwed," then you ought to be Generation Ashamed.

I won't bother finding examples of Bright Young People Making A Difference. Those stories are boring, and they distract us from real problems. You can always find instances of people succeeding when others are struggling, and usually the main keys to their success are luck, luck, luck, and privilege. Nor do I need to point out all the things working against this cohort - those statistics are easy enough to find (un/underemployment, etc etc etc).

What I will say is: telling 22%+ of the population that they're screwed is appallingly mean-spirited and irresponsible. It works to cast that cohort in a position either of despair or fault, neither of which is helpful to anyone. What kind of future can you imagine when you're told your entire generation is screwed? Especially when you've been raised, and lived your whole life, being told that You Can Achieve Anything, if you Just Work Hard Enough. Or if you've been told that Education Is The Key, so you take on student loans, only to be told after graduation that - you're screwed! (oh, that exclamation point is making my blood boil).

That headline ought to say: How we've screwed the 18-35 generation.
Or, even more productively, How to help 18-35 year olds

Mean-spiritedness aside, the you're screwed headline absolves anyone of responsibility - it isn't passive voice but it might as well be. It's wildly unproductive, too - when faced with a problem, pointing out the problem isn't helpful. It's like an onlooker standing on the sidewalk and saying: You're trapped in a burning building! when what he should be doing is calling 911, and looking for other ways to help.

The media's habit of crapping on teenagers has, I've noticed, been creeping upward in age. It's not just teenagers, it's early twentysomethings, it's "millennials," it's ages 18-35.  The rhetoric of reproach and scolding tone hasn't changed, though the fear is less prominent in the talk about post-teenaged young people. Now, the discourse is no longer about how dangerous and irresponsible the young people are, it's about how they're just hopeless and screwed and, maybe, just maybe, deserve it. Borrowing all that student loan money? Irresponsible! Not able to pay your bills? Well, why do you think you should live well? There's a misplaced recrimination here for a perceived sense of entitlement, I think - as if millions of un and underemployed young people are really just whining about not being able to borrow the car on Friday night.

The hell of this all is that the younger end of the 18-35 range don't know they're screwed, and won't believe it when they're told. I saw this with my (fairly privileged) freshmen last fall; they all dismissed the Occupy Wall Street concerns dealing with young people's issues (underemployment, low pay, crushing student debt), and confidently told me that all you had to do was work hard and want a job badly enough, and you'd get it.
They have no idea what's coming.

The real problems to be solved are large and bulky and systemic, just the kind that no one ever wants to deal with. These problems are also ones brought about by the policies and practices of our beloved blessed baby boomers, who appear to be a group of people unable to either accept blame or let someone else sit at the table to work things out.

In a way, though, 18-35 year-olds have always been generation screwed, because - as I have said before, and will continue to say - there is just about no one advocating for them. Once children stop being little, the children's advocacy groups lose interest in them, and then no one cares for a couple of decades, until you become a soccer mom or member of the AARP.
And in the meanwhile, you're screwed, while the very people who screwed you point fingers gleefully.

breaking newsflash that will shock you shockingly

The New York Times has this incredible newsflash: many adults are buying The Hunger Games books - for themselves to read!!!!!!!

I know. Give yourself a moment. Maybe a sip of brandy, or cold water to revive your shocked senses. It IS kind of hard to believe, isn't it, that adults might buy books for young adults or children, for their own reading pleasure? Who would think that adults - and we all know how sophisticated American adults are, with their fondness for football and FoxNews and "Real Housewives" programs - would lower themselves to voluntarily read a trilogy of very smart, well-written books about politics and war and morality?
Actually, maybe it IS surprising that adults are reading these books, since most of America seems unable to confront these issues in real life.
But a good book is a good book is a good book, and after all, we routinely make young adults read "grown-up" books (please see any high school reading list) - why not flip it around? I do wish that media would stop behaving as if it's noteworthy that adults are reading books for younger readers, or at least stop presenting this as if it's something shocking! and surprising! and wow!  Because it's not. It really, really isn't. And - since the article invokes them, I might as well do it too - I think Harry Potter and those heinous Twilight "books" have proven, in eleven different books, eleven different releases, that adults read YA books.

Have you recovered yet?

The article accompanying this bombshell brings us tired tropes and the inevitable Harry Potter comparisons (the inevitability of these comparisons is really getting me down; I loved the HP books, but I am feeling sick to the teeth with them). Intrepid and evidently ill-read NYTimes writer Susan Dominus refers to Katniss as having angst like an S.E. Hinton character, which is a travesty in itself; Katniss's "angst" revolves primarily around providing food and money for her mother and younger sister; then, later, about keeping herself and/or Peeta alive. Worry about the availability of the necessities of life does not qualify, in my book, as angst. Further, Hinton's characters are all - well - dreamy caricatures, the kind of sensitive yet tough, emotional yet rough boys who populate hetero girls' daydreams and don't exist in too very many other places in reality.

We also get a description of Collins (her fine features and long, flowing hair), along with this chestnut: "Her life story may be less dramatic than the rags-to-riches tales of Rowling and Meyer — neither had published anything before their best-selling successes..."

Sigh. Neither Rowling nor Meyer (as in Stephenie, as in perpetrator of Twilight) were at anything like "rags" before their riches came along. Meyer seems to have grown up fairly middle-class; she attended Brigham Young University, got her BA, and married her husband. She was a full-time mom when she wrote Twilight. Rowling, of course, worked at a variety of jobs, including teaching in Portugal, before returning to Edinburgh to write her first manuscript and work towards a teaching certificate. The "rags" in Rowling's story comes, I suppose, from the fact that in the year she was writing and taking courses toward the teaching certificate, she was on the dole. I view this as being not terribly different than my own situation: working toward my degree, taking out student loans to pay for housing, etc. The difference is that Scotland, like most of the Western world, has a reasonable attitude toward public assistance. You don't have to be eating trash from a gutter to receive it, and you don't have to slink around in shame if you accept it.
Either way, neither Meyer nor Rowling was ever in rags, and neither was Collins (who, among other things, received an MFA in writing and worked as a writer on several children's television programs).

I hate the rags-to-riches myth, for a number of reasons. First, it's not true. None of these women were lounging in the diamond-encrusted lap of luxury, but none of them were living on the street or in true distress over where their next meal would come from. Second, I think it somehow obscures and glamorizes the work and craft of writing (okay, except where Meyer is concerned; you cannot convince me there's any real craft going on in Twilight, no artistry - and I have read the novel twice).
And finally, I simply oppose the rags-to-riches myth on general principles. I think it's unrealistic and counterproductive; it lionizes the wealthy as deserving of their wealth, and it similarly denigrates the poor for not having the gumption to become wealthy.

Dominus also refers to a New Yorker piece from Laura Miller, which I have not read, but which evidently suggests that The Hunger Games is "a fever-dream allegory of the adolescent social experience," a description or analysis that makes me want to throw up.
I do think The Hunger Games trilogy is doing something both interesting and important with regard to adolescence, but "fever-dream allegory" is not that something. For me, every single time I've read any of the three books, what strikes me most are the political and economic critiques. The way that war is figured, the way that power is figured, the way that corruption and decadence are figured; the way the book thinks of reality television and consolidation of power and complicity and superficiality and ignorance about the broken backs on which one's luxury rests - this is what the trilogy is about.
It is NOT an allegory (which, in its strictest definition, requires consistent one-to-one correlations of symbols and meanings). The brutality of the arenas is not a good analog for the brutality of the school locker room, or the school cafeteria, and I am committed to believing in the brutality of both of those. That is: I believe, deeply and sincerely, that high school is a miserable hell full of pitfalls and dangers and humiliations that are unparalleled in the "adult" world. But even I can't make the allegoric leap from gladiatorial arena to high school hallway.
This quote from Miller - or Dominus's use of it, anyway - sells short the very important work of the trilogy, which is not a happy set of books. The last pages of Mockingjay are chilling rather than consoling or uplifting. I wrote my opinion of Mockingjay right after it was published (I read it in a day) - that opinion is here.
Here's how I wrapped up my reading of Mockingjay, and the trilogy as a whole:

The dead stay dead, the broken remain broken. There is no recovery, there is no "getting over" the Hunger Games and their aftermath. This is not a book about glorious happiness arising from the ashes of difficult struggle. We're not left on a happy note, at all - we're left with the Hunger Games, with the reminder of the terrible possibilities in the world. We're left with the fact that terrible things happen, and scar us for life. That sometimes, the nightmares never, ever end.

The way both Dominus and Miller seem to handle the texts tries to cover this over, with suggested allegories and backpedaling references to history and to the author's biography. Suzanne Collins, who I am beginning to admire more and more, despite her gushing over the decision to cast Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, resists this; Dominus quotes her saying "I don’t write about adolescence ... I write about war. For adolescents." This is entirely to Collins's credit, and should be unsurprising to anyone who has read her trilogy (at least anyone who wasn't primarily concerned with whether Team Peeta or Team Gale would win out - and as always, I recall with very deep fondness, the class of undergrads who were revolted when I mentioned the "team" language circulating around the book; those kids said "I'm Team Katniss").

I do wish the Times or someone would hire - even as freelancing contractors - people who really and truly know the field of children's and YA literature, to write about that literature. It deserves better contextualization that it's given by writers like Dominus and Miller, for all the good they may be at their jobs (an assessment I am not capable of making). Besides, there's a glut of smart PhDs or PhDs-to-be out there, lusting for a chance to earn a wage based on their years of hard work and study and reading and writing.

Good writers about books are almost as important as good writers of books. This is true for adult fiction, for nonfiction, for poetry - and it is most certainly also true of children's and young adult literature.