A small point, but with a bigger point lurking behind it:
I think there’s obviously a lot of truth to the idea that kids benefit from having desirable behavior modeled for them, but the demand to have it appear in media is a cheap substitute for the much more difficult thing that actually works https://t.co/fsgKMLao5s
— wanye (@wanyeburkett) October 20, 2024
As a child, I wasn’t interested in books and TV programmes that centred on children my own age. In fact, juvenile characters, supposedly there to be identified with, were generally distracting and off-putting, if not downright annoying, a thing that broke the spell. A phenomenon known to some as The Wesley Crusher Effect.
I remember being interested in astronauts, adventurers, superheroes or whatever. But being represented, in the ham-fisted modern sense, wasn’t an obvious factor. As noted in the thread linked above, the whole point of the exercise was to inhabit the minds of people who aren’t you, and whose circumstances therefore seem much more exciting.
As to the larger point – the much more difficult thing – it does rather suggest a parental lapse of some significance.
Note that I tried tagging both Smallish Bees and SmallishBees. Wasn’t sure if it was necessary to remove embedded spaces.
Star Treks Scotty was, in part, a comic opera Scotsman. But only in part and most importantly he wasn’t an identitarian pity object.
I assume you just copy their username as it appears by their comments. No space removal needed. If they’re registered, their username should turn into a maroon link. As mine did, above.
My interest in a character’s blackness, or Chinese-ness, or gayness or whatever, especially when framed as some state of being downtrodden, is very nearly zero. It’s all a bit one-note and predictable, and not much of a basis for sustained, engaging drama.
I doubt I’m alone in this regard.
Speaking misunderstanding what youngsters actually like, I recall reading the producers of Father Ted imagined that youngsters would like Dougal, when in fact it was, you guessed it, Father “drink!, girls!, feck!” Jack. But that would be an ecumenical matter.
Ah, generic moral squalor. You’d never tire of that
I’ve been thinking about this a bit, because “random street gang activity” was a common element in the early Spider-Man comics. Rescuing people from muggers in an alley was a staple B-plot. I’m trying to determine why it worked for Spidey but didn’t click with Milestone readers. It’s not like muggers in fedoras in New York back streets were the sort of thing the average midwestern teenager had more familiarity with, than, say, gang activity at the community centre.
The best I can come up with is that when Spidey encountered muggers, he beat the crap out of them and webbed them to a lamp post with a polite note to the local constabulary, whereas when Static Shock encountered gang members the plot usually ended up in some kind of social message about how kids needed to Just Say No to gangs. While I can understand the writers not wanting to portray gangs as a simple problem that can be solved by just electrocuting enough of them, to the average comic book reader it just makes the hero look like an ineffectual social worker.
Well, as a six-year-old, I can’t say I’d have been entertained by convoluted attempts to excuse sociopathy and criminal predation. The crap-beating sounds more fun, frankly, and more morally appropriate.