- Kim Newman, The Guardian
- Philip Hoare, The Guardian
- Tyler Dean, Tor
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Exposing Children to Horror, Harry Clarke, Exhuming Lady Stoneheart
- Kim Newman, The Guardian
- Philip Hoare, The Guardian
- Tyler Dean, Tor
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I think it must be part of the growing up process for kids to seek out "adult" media. Sometimes that's going to take the form of looking for content that violent or scary or gory or sexual, sometimes it's going to take the form of looking for content that seems "serious".
ReplyDeleteI read "The Bell Jar" and "Looking for Mr Goodbar" and "The Handmaid's Tale" as a teenager for the same reason I wanted "Advanced D&D" and turned up my nose at "Basic D&D" for the same reason I scoured my parents bookshelves and VHS collection for anything I thought they might say I was "too young for" or "not ready for yet" - they were all expressions of a longing to grow up.
I thought about this recently when I learned that the "Monstress" comic is technically considered YA, and it's there in the back of my mind whenever I see a VC Andrews novel on the YA shelves.
It must be. I would guess that looking for material--of any sort, really--that has been marked off as "not for kids" usually means kids will seek it out as a way of coming to understand the world. It's like initiating yourself in a mystery religion or seeking entrance to the Inner Temple.
DeleteI loooooooooove hearing about the things people got their hands on that were verboten! For me, it was fairly extreme horror movies at a young age and encountering Story of O as a teenager. I remember the first time I saw Clockwork Orange too; that felt like something I was not supposed to be laying eyes on.
It's funny what slips through the cracks in the YA market. I keep forgetting that Monstress is technically YA--that one really punches above its weight.
Yeah, it's like I was actively trying to turn myself into an adult by finding things that were "not for kids." I guess the specifics depend on what's in the house or available at the local library.
Delete"Clockwork Orange" was another from around that time. I think I read the book first and watched the movie in college. In retrospect, probably the most influential media were the things that revealed the existence of trans people It seems crazy to think now, but pre-internet, growing up in a small town, I genuinely thought that being transgender was something that could only happen in science fiction and that I was alone in feeling the way I did.
It's only recently that I actually feel like an adult, after an extended period of what scholars call "emerging adulthood." Sadly, the real marker of that for me has been observing my own reaction to someone killing kids. As a kid, (and "emerging adult") I thought that someone who killed a child was equally as bad a someone who killed an adult. As an adult, I see killing children as worse than killing adults. I say "sadly", because I know when I became a "full adult" because I know exactly which two mass shootings bookend this change in my perspective.
I have such vivid memories of catching CLockwork Orange on HBO really late at night (morning really) due to a bout of teenage insomnia. It felt like I had somehow stumbled onto a pirate broadcast.
DeleteI think I first became aware of trans people through that one Sandman storyline, of all things!