Blog/Review: Contemporary Stories are Failing Kids (And Adults)
One of the little-known facts about J.R.R. Tolkien was that he absolutely despised Disney. So great was his hatred of Disney that he described it as “vulgar,” said that Walt Disney was “a cheat,” and even said that, at times, the animation gave him nausea. The reason for this wasn’t because he had an arbitrary hatred for the mouse running around on screen. Rather his hatred of Disney was two-fold, beginning when he saw the 1937 adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in theaters with C.S. Lewis. For one thing, he saw it as a total bastardization of the original tale published by the Grimm Brothers that was made purely for money’s sake. For another thing, he disliked how the movie shied away from the grimness of the source material. The dark aspects of fairytales were something that Tolkien greatly appreciated, as he was a staunch believer that if a story for children couldn’t also be enjoyed by adults, then it wasn’t worth writing. In fact, in his essay, On Fairy Stories, he bemoaned the fact that in recent years, fairy tales have largely been associated with children, leading to their infantilization, something Disney’s adaptation of Snow White added to.
If Tolkien had only lived to see the slop being pushed on our kids, his already heartfelt disgust towards the infantilization of fairytales and stories in general would have turned into the fury of a thousand suns.
The contemporary fairytales being pushed on kids today are excessively childish. If they aren’t stories that are based on existing intellectual properties (such as any number of Disney-owned franchises) it’s online entertainment such as the stuff on Disney+. Just think about the last time that you saw a kids’ show that treated kids like they were capable of thinking for themselves, that treated them as having the potential to grow past their current mindset. Bluey is one such show from what I’ve heard, but many of the shows out there treat kids as kids. They don’t treat them as young humans who are gradually maturing, navigating the complexities of growing up.
As an example, think about the difference between Miss Rachel and Mr. Rogers. Miss Rachel is known for her infantilized online persona aimed at teaching kids various lessons about things (including Left-wing politics for some reason.) Meanwhile, Mr. Rogers spoke to young kids as an adult. He came at it not as though he was trying to be one of them, but as a wise grandfather. He reached both kids and adults, something that Miss Rachel can’t do.
A similar contrast can be found in stories today versus stories written in the past. Even if you go back 10-20 years, kids’ stories were a lot heavier than they are today and could be enjoyed by any age bracket. For example, How to Train Your Dragon came out in 2010, and, while it primarily targeted kids, it had themes in it that went a lot deeper than one would think. It dealt with themes of courage, family expectations, trying to navigate growing up, etc. At one point, Stoic straight-up disowns Hiccup. The second movie that came out in 2014 had some heavy themes in it. However, fast forward to today, and even the third HTTYD movie felt dumbed down compared to the previous ones. Look at the spin-off show on Hulu, and the contrast is even more stark.
Additionally, many of the stories targeted towards kids and adults nowadays have become soulless cash-grabs, often grifting off of pre-existing franchises. To make things worse, the morals they teach are few and far between, if there even are any.
One example of this is Pixar’s newest movie, Hoppers. While it doesn’t have anything blatantly objectionable in it, a deep dive into the morals taught in the story and the political messaging is disturbing. The YouTuber, Real-Life Fake Wizard did a deep dive into the messaging subtly hidden throughout the movie and not only does it justify the main character’s terrible behavior as a Greta Thunberg-like environmental activist, but it also justifies killing people for the sake of the state.
https://youtu.be/YTlHS3vkECc
Remember this is a movie aimed towards children pushing an anti-human, Leftist agenda on them covered up with smiles and laughter.
On that note, one of the things that made stories in the past appealing to adults and children were the strong moral lessons that they taught and the characters overcoming bad situations. This was important as not only did these stories give children profound truths that they could be reminded of throughout life, but they also prepared them in some ways for the adult world. In that way, the stories got better as you grew up as you could now interpret them through a wiser, more experienced lens. Nowadays, however, our contemporary folklore is encountering a massive divide between kids’ stories and adult stories.
To illustrate this point, just recently I went to Walmart and checked out their book section with my mom. The kids’ section was a small area, with mainly coloring books and picture books based on various franchises, most of them owned by Disney. The rest of the book area was a handful of young adult novels such as The Hunger Games and a few Percy Jackson and the Olympians books scattered around (with the main one being the Nico x Will LGBTQ+ adventure) hidden amongst the books aimed towards adults.
Several of these books I recognized from the #booktube and #booktok community as having explicit content in them, with the most notable ones being the Court of Thorns and Roses series and the Fourth Wing series, both of which, I believe, have been banned in public schools. I also saw the sequel to the infamous book, Haunting Adeline, a book which has become known for its glorification of stalking, physical abuse, and rape (including penetration with a gun.)
I wish I was making this up. That isn’t even mentioning the trigger warning on the first page of the book.
This goes to show how not only have stories aimed towards kids lost the plot (often literally) of being appealing to children while also appealing to adults with the moral messaging and overall story, but the divide between adult literature and kids’ is growing vastly. Even with young adult novels intending to be the buffer zone between kids’ books and adult literature, you still often lack clear morals and a sense of good and evil. Often, you are even being exposed to – at best – softcore porn. These stories don’t help you grow up; they dumb you down by appealing not to a higher sense of morality, but to your base impulses.
While children’s literature used to be considered to be stories for adults told amongst the elders of the village that children were privy to, learning profound universal morals and values along the way, what could be considered as modern fairytales have lost the plot entirely. They have either become something to meet kids where they are at and, in some ways, keep them there, or their idea of adult doesn’t come from the morals within the tale, but rather the increasingly explicit lack thereof. In this way, neither kids nor adults are maturing by reading these tales. They’re only being corrupted to something animalistic.
Until next time,
M.J.
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