Eccentric Flower:199901/comfort food and childish pleasures

twenty-two january

comfort food and childish pleasures

Hmm. All right, this is as good a place to start as any.

Jette's entry from yesterday is probably a prerequisite too.

The writers of Sesame Street are far cleverer than those of, say, Friends, so why shouldn't I enjoy that program more? I don't enjoy most children's movies because quite frankly, they suck -- but when they're good they're certainly as good as certain films that are nominated for prestigious awards. I didn't much like Titanic but I was in tears by the end of A Little Princess (the 1995 version), and you know I rarely cry over movies.

I think the problem is simple: We put children's literature, movies, etc. into a lower class because they are for children. We do not give the writers, directors, etc. the credit that we give to those who produce adult-oriented work. Sesame Street has been around for 30 years, longer than any sitcom, and nearly as long as 60 Minutes. L. Frank Baum does not appear on lists of great fantasists of the 20th century. I don't recall any children's books in that bogus "Top 100 novels of the twentieth century" list that those idiots came up with. [That would be the Modern Library List. Their readers' poll also included no children's literature. Looking at the Radcliffe response list, however, I notice Charlotte's Web, Winnie The Pooh, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. You go, girls.]

How many children's films did you see on the AFI Top 100 films list? Although any list that leaves Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitch off is obviously flawed. [I was way off here. The list includes at least three films made with children in mind, and several more that would be acceptable to show to children. I still think the list bites, though.]

It's the same problem the science fiction and fantasy genre has, and probably worse. No one takes it seriously.

I'll be referring to those items, so you'd better go have a look. There'll be a quiz.

Today Aussie talks about the joys of comfort food - Jello and egg salad. Gourmet magazine, as I noted to Jette above, has devoted their entire issue this month to comfort foods - although they don't necessarily put it that way; maybe they're scared they'll offend their drizzled-in-balsamic-vinegar readership.

Beth adores kid's films, kid's books, and kidthings. Jette does too. My friend Eric collects children's books and I have been known to purchase one or two myself. At the moment I'm shopping for pieces of the Alfred Hitchcock Three Investigators series - fortunately they're still in print. I just bought my very own copy of The I Hate Mathematics Book! after recommending it to everyone for years ... and during the same trip I made sure to get the latest book by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith - a take on Aesop called Squids will be Squids.

Even Kymm, whom I never suspected had any interest in this range at all, admitted to joining the Betsy/Tacy list recently.

(I think I left an E out of that, didn't I? Sorry.)

As Tom Bodett said: What is the $64 question, and why does it cost so much?

My $64 question today is: Does all this mean something? Something bigger than all of us? Are we, in short, representative of some sort of (gasp) trend?

David's cartoon is wonderful, as they always are (do you mean to tell me you aren't a regular Ozy and Millie reader yet?) I linked to it above because it was about comfort food ... but while I'm thinking about it ... have you noticed that many of the best cartoons around are about being childlike, or wanting to be childlike?

Calvin and Hobbes was arguably the cartoon that spoke the most to people in our age group, the people hovering around age thirty (I will not use that odious term). This wasn't just because it was high-quality work; the choice of subject matter was significant.

Most of us in this age group can sing an embarrassing amount of Schoolhouse Rock songs from memory. Many of us are the same age as Sesame Street and cannot envision a world without it. Memorabilia - what amounts to fan merchandise - for both shows are hot sellers. Why, I myself recently bought Jette a copy of Sesame Street Unpaved as a gift. Of course, I read the whole thing before I mailed it to her.

Comfort food. There are many fine restaurants in Newton. Yet the one I need to make regular pilgrimages to, the one I will take half-hour drives or forty-five minute trolley rides to visit, is a humble "luncheonette" (their words) which serves the likes of pancakes and breakfast specials and mashed potatoes and meatloaf. Why is this?

Jette provided some theories (above). They're good theories, and I agree with everything she said. But I also suspect there may be something more at work here, a layer she didn't mention.

I hate to be cynical about this, but I worry that a lot of this embracing of things childlike is a rejection of the current world. That the world has become so intolerable (or at the very least, so stressful) that we are, en masse, turning our backs on it - at least in our private time.

This idea bothers me.

I don't have a problem with childlike things. I'm fundamentally childlike; ask Nonelvis. It's how I stay happy and carefree. But it does concern me that we may all be turning to escapism when we might be doing better to change the things we don't like.

I mean, in some cases children's books and films reflect a world so simple that it can never really exist - granted - but there are a lot of changes that we could make, collectively, that would bring this society much closer to the ideals we love to read about. It just takes concerted work.

I worry that by fleeing into the child's universe, we're only making it less likely we'll want to spend any length of time in the real one.

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