Rich and "perfect" kids have always existed in the world of children's literature, but have traditionally served as cruel, snobby foils (think Draco Malfoy, Nellie Olsen, Veruca Salt, and all their pompous cousins) for the tenacious, fair-minded protagonists. Occasionally, one of these spoiled brats will get something of a redemption edit in the course of the narrative — an unhappy home life, a sudden urge to do the right thing — but for the most part, the function of the wealthy in these stories is simple: to drive home the essential decency and integrity of the main character, with whom the audience is meant to identify. But in the New Children's Literature it's the hapless middle-classes — the normal kids — who ruin the fun, through either graceless social-climbing or trenchantly decrying the excess and shallowness that make being wealthy so delicious, so desirable, so sympathetic.
There seems to be a conspicuous sense of timeliness to this, when the gap between rich and poor in America is wider than at any time in modern history. After all, isn't it the tiresome middle class that's been whining for the past seven years about their college loans and inadequate health care?
About the shrinking job market and rising housing costs — not to mention the bursting of the sub-prime mortgage bubble that threatens to leave everybody in America homeless or something? Why must they spoil everybody's fun? Can't they simply take a hint and disappear?
Not without a fight, if the latest campaign rhetoric is to believed. So let's start winning hearts and minds from the ground up, and by that I mean the people who are closest to the ground.
Ignore the ridiculous warning that says the episodes "may not suit the needs of today's preschool child."
Young children may not yet be reading these paeans to wealth, but they're not immune to the zeitgeist.
Don't worry — you don't have to send your kids to boarding school in North Korea to save them from total subservience to the gods of greed.
By all means, give them Gossip Girl, but rescue all those Carter-era stories of latchkey kids and public school and Native American girls abandoned on islands off the coast of California as well. For the littler ones, dust off Free To Be You and Me. Pick up the newly issued DVDs of the old Sesame Street — and ignore the ridiculous warning that appears at the beginning of the series saying that the episodes are intended for adults and "may not suit the needs of today's preschool child." Just what are they trying to protect kids from? America's most famous children's television program is a show essentially about urban, inner-city kids, playing, learning, leading fulfilling lives. A stunning rebuke to failed schools and failed policies, to snobbery and classism. A powerful reminder of a different time — when even a poor kid could be on TV.
©2008 Rachel Shukert and Nerve Media
Article photo: Amanda Keeys
About the Author
|
|
Related Articles
|
|
|
|
-
by Jean Railla
Why today's women are choosing to have babies alone.
-
by Miriam Axel-Lute
Official advice about lead poisoning is either too scary or not scary enough.
-
by Kathi Alexander
Is "child-centered" parenting producing a generation of brats?
|
