Blaming the world's ills on ... Mr. Rogers? Are you joking? And since when was Mr. Rogers's message ever a message of entitlement? News flash: everyone is intrinsically special in his or her own way. That's a plain fact. Maybe Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street's messages of acceptance are the reason minorities today have more civil rights and people from my generation can elect someone like Barack Obama?
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
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This is not so surprising. For one thing, I think this is an old news story I've seen before. ^^; But for a second thing ...
Just yesterday, I was thinking about the split down the middle regarding beliefs about police officers, i.e. there are those who believe that some people go into law enforcement because they want to right wrongs and fight for justice and then there are those who believe that there are no such officers and/or that all police officers are fascist pigs who go into law enforcement because they derive a sick pleasure from telling others how to run their affairs.
From this cliché observation, my mind then made the logical jump to criticism of super heroes, i.e. it occurred to me that there are probably some extreme-hippie families who raise their kids to reject Superman and other so-called "super heroes" because they are nothing more than overpowered, overglamorized police officers, i.e. super heroes, too, are fascist pigs who enforce their will onto others.
The point is, if a hippie can raise his kids to hate Superman, I'm pretty sure a neo-con can raise his kids to hate Mr. Rogers.
SuiginChou: It's interesting that you should say that, because in the early days of the popularity of comic book superheroes (the 40s and 50s) there was some intellectual criticism of them, tying them into authoritarianism, commercialism, etc., some even comparing their use of symbols (like Superman's "S-Shield") to idolatry, or even similar to then-contemporary use of symbols by the Nazi Party. From Bradford W. Wright's Comic Book Nation:
"[Gershon] Legman despised all kinds of comic books, but he targeted superheroes in particular. Echoing the familiar charge that Superman was a fascist figure, he claimed that superheroes had given 'every American child a complete course in paranoid megalomania such as no German child ever had, a total conviction of the morality of force such as no Nazi could even aspire to.' ... The liberal reviewer in the New Republic found Legman's arguments on this point especially compelling and compared the implications of vigilante superheroes to the 'paranoia of the present loyalty crusade,' being waged against suspected communists in the government."
An interesting piece of American cultural history that is not often discussed.
Interesting, Sean. In the end, I'm of the opinion that a fair balance is needed here: I think it's ridiculous to suggest that heroism is deplorable fascism, i.e. to right another's wrongs is by definition to impose one's will on him and is therefore a terribly fascist thing to do. I also think that imposition of one's will over another's is not good 100% of the time, either. A balance has to be struck.
When are we going to put Big Bird on trial for teaching kids it's OK to make mistakes?
I'm pissed. They wait until the man is dead and then start blasting him. I'm mad.
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