aging / acting like an adult: the gravest offense in 21st-century American culture

let's not indulge someone who doesn't understand one of the most profoundly original and metaphorically rich manifestations of American culture ANYWAY ---

You are referring to comics there right

Morbs I sincerely high-five you for that post

Comic con is objectively horrible but not for the reasons you think imo

I hope when the Coens were involved in writing a screenplay for The Yiddish Policemen's Union they lectured Michael Chabon on what a juvenile he is.

I hope they lectured him on what a shitty writer he is

maybe i should've stuck with people making s'mores and having spelling bees in bars, huh

And then he fled to his room, cried and read "Superman" all afternoon.

xp. Maybe.

Gettin' paid big boy advance monies to write novels = adult, whatever they're about.

anyway a big part of my discomfiture with contemporary 'adult fun' is how all of it seems to be in quotation marks (like those!^), which is why the geekout over Twin Peaks v.2 reminded me that I very much liked but could never love v.1. A copy of a copy of a copy, despite all the surrealism / nightmarish modernist touches.

A bunch of men discussing a woman discussing ageing: Oh joy!

oh GOOD, the police are here

let's talk about men things then. sports, beer.

anything but PRIVILEGE

I would actually be very interested in anybody, even Morbius, coming up with a well-reasoned argument -- given their histories, places in American culture, the impetus of their creators, their usefulness as wish-fulfillment proxies for people of all ages, and associated spectacle -- of why baseball is "adult" and comic books are "not adult."

One that does not rely on "I like baseball but do not like comic books" btw.

Cosmetic surgery, Comic Con, big boy stickball...they're all just, like, the in-flight entertainment as we ride this plane called life into the void, man. Who am I to say that this dude in the seat next to me is ignoring oblivion in the wrong way, know what I'm sayin'? (smokes a marijuana joint)

puffs big boy joint

baseball is 'adult' because it is boring

lock board

A bunch of men discussing a woman discussing ageing: Oh joy!

― Jacques Lacan let me rock u; let me rock u, Jacques Lacan (Branwell with an N), Wednesday, October 22, 2014 3:43 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What a coincidence, I was thinking the exact same thing. But I kinda like the irony when anything related to privilege ends up as a conversation among like 5 white dudes and it's not worth anyone's time to get in between them.

baseball is 'adult' because it is boring

― sleepingbag, Wednesday, October 22, 2014 3:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True tho.

unless watched in an air conditioned stadium selling cocktaiils

PRIVILEGE: find another word (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

in orbit & Alfred, i won't even try.

Looking old, she said, should be a boast about experiences accrued and insights acquired, a triumphant signal “that you are someone who, beneath that white hair, has a card catalog of valuable information.”

is this really true? i mean, i still ask my dad about all kinds of practical things, but im not sure id consider him a fount of wisdom.

i know where that 'don't grow up. it's a trap' sign is!! it's a v good liquor store.

k thanks

shouldn't it be "an iPhone of valuable info"?

i must have missed the post itt where we tacked up the 'no girls allowed' sign, what exactly is making the women feel so alienated by the conversation? y'all just 'can't even' with the opinions of dudes anymore?

McDormand's quote in my first post isn't even gender-specific; what a horrible feminist

yeah this is one time where I am kind of shrugging at those comments? I mean we basically only used the quote as a jumping off point and nothing else in the thread really seems relevant to privilege or gendered aspects of aging to me? Maybe I just can't see it through my privilege blinders.

a triumphant signal “that you are someone who, beneath that white hair, has a card catalog of valuable information.”

http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Jon-Voight.jpg

the older i get the less faith i have in the "wisdom" of those older than i

a triumphant signal “that you are someone who, beneath that white hair, has a card catalog of valuable information.”

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Screen-Shot-2012-08-27-at-5.21.48-PM.png

Maybe the dressing like a teenager thing is more applicable to women's style/fashion, or maybe I've always been pretty square, but it's hard to envision "dressing your age" as a man outside of the Mad Men-y graduate from jeans to khakis to a suit and I don't wanna wear khakis.

I see a lot of men's style that I think looks kind of kiddulty.

I mean, I see guys my own age wearing football jerseys as everyday wear and ugly hats and stuff, but that's not really screaming teenager to me.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Hiking_in_Knee_Socks,_Sandals,_and_Cut-offs.jpg

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/v0mDnaESnrM/maxresdefault.jpg

ok, i see you guys are gonna be euthanizing us when the debt bomb comes; as you were

wow pHIL you found some pics of celebrity Republicans, CHRIST U GENIUS

http://images.telerama.fr/medias/2011/07/media_71134/michel-serres-n-etant-porteuse-d-aucun-sens-la-musique-les-possede-tous,M56369.jpg

^^^noted philosopher michel serres

Here is a picture of Jean-Luc Godard wearing a t-shirt under a suit jacket like he's on Miami Fucking Vice or something. Grow up!

http://www.filmlinc.com/page/-/130814_GodardMain.jpg

Look at these hipsters! Maybe one day they'll buy their shirts at a store for AD-ults.

http://images.starpulse.com/news/media/coenbros.jpg

A denim jacket at a black-tie affair? Study hall is THAT WAY, missy!

http://cdn2.crushable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/francesmcdormandtonsjacket.jpg

LOL 420 SMOKE WEED ERRYDAY

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--vNIXRR-o--/18es0ep9r3u8hjpg.jpg

omg the scales have fallen from my eyes

can Phil and I be joined as Official Board Enemies?

Well, generally I think people should dress the way they want to and have the interests and pastimes they want to, and where do our ideas about those things come from anyway?
But (having not read the full article) I am not going to say there is nothing to what she is saying. I think to me the more important aspect of it is the rejection or marginalization of actual older people and viewpoints and the emphasis on either actually being very young or seeming young whatever one's age. There is nothing wrong with an older person going to comic con or dressing supposedly younger but both being and seeming old (in whatever way that's defined) should be okay too.
Our culture has grown increasingly youth oriented and I do see a problem with that. I just don't think it's about how people dress or reading comic books or things like that. Those, to me, are not signs of maturity or wisdom. If anything isn't she judging by external appearances here?

But some people put on their "fun uniform" to do these age-anachronistic things...

I understand what a "Phil D level poster" is now

To follow up just one little thought from the essay, I guess it's possible we (and "we" as used here is a total moving target) don't invest older ppl with our cultural memory (as much?) anymore? To the extent that "we" ever really did, and this isn't just historical revisionism. But maybe it's fair to say we don't look to our elders to learn how to be. BUT also when older people believe that the world in the time of their youth was better than now, when their values are just references to the past, that outlook doesn't have a lot to offer younger generations? We shouldn't be surprised when young people pull away from that.

But I'm also feeling a tie-in to equality issues here--when one is part of a marginalized population that's fighting for greater equality it's easier to see how the past was worse for you if your concern group has made progress in your lifetime. And your priorities are future goals, which rest in the hands of the youth, so you're vitally invested in the future.

W/r/t young ppl: when you see yourself as being engaged in a struggle that's assigned to you by your identity, you're more likely to value the markers of that identity, things that tell you what it means to be a member of the group you identify with. And the "keepers" of those values are...the elders? Because they've seen more and can see furthest into the past to bring stories forward? There are prob good sociological explanations for elder reverence that I don't know to cite.

----

I have totally not even started to process the whole women's appearances and aging part of what McDormand was saying, no one should really be arguing about that given the wealth of discussion on the subject.

I know one kid whose mom literally never tells her "no". Like, the mom has expressed this to me as one of her principles of parenting. (I have watched as kid has grown into a whiney slack-jawed weirdo fwiw)

http://static.tvgcdn.net/MediaBin/Galleries/Shows/G_L/Lit_Lp/Louie/season3/louie-30.jpg

Sorry if I seemed judgmental - I'm not. I think most of my peers raise their children that way. It's just so different from my own childhood. My Dad worked in Gary, Indiana and we often had to drive through there so we had to have frequent talks about why there is inequality, why so many black people were poor. It was important to my parents that we didn't get bad ideas from the media. Something I'd like the next generation to learn. I think my parents were exemplary people but I don't expect everyone to be that way.

we had to have frequent talks about why there is inequality

I have those talks with my kids too! But I want it coming from me, not through a story in the paper or god help me TV news that he comes across without me.

In other words, "news blinders" doesn't mean "raising kids to think nothing is bad in the world," but it does mean "kids don't have to know details about beheadings and rape." I did go into a lot of detail about Curt Schilling's mouth cancer the other night, though, because I really do kind of want him to be scared of tobacco.

By the age of 8, I had enough historical perspective to understand exactly what it meant when one of my classmates called me a nigger, so it kind of baffles me to see that others in my putative peer group aren't making sure their kids understand at a young age how America is and how they can make it a better place.

i have nothing to do with anything & have no children but, yeah: i think blackout is a weird angle on this, given that kids won't be blissfully ignorant or sensitively primed of what's what but exposed to the crazy creative writing interpretation & storytelling of other kids, non-stop, w/o factchecks. i am e-mailing everybody's kids my own personal wikipedia playlist of the worst ten things that happened in the twenty first century, if you want to opt out hit me up at my inactive ilx webmail address asap

Well, in my case, the eight-year-old who had to look up 'rape' in the dictionary because of the news became the 12-year-old who, when told about a possible local prowler/rapist, suggested that maybe the answer to that was not 'women and girls, stay inside' but 'if a man is this possible local prowler, why not tell all the men to stay indoors instead?'

Granted, the news ran under some kind of fairness doctrine at the time...

Well, I just got back from dinner with my brother & his two kids, where we wandered into exactly this discussion. Kids are seven and four and a half. Of course our adult convo turned to the news, and we were talking about a woman I knew who got shot, then I apologized because kids were present. Smart eight year old goes, "I heard that! Strangers are bad people!" Then his mom told me 7 year old insists on watching the news, he esp follows the Malaysia flight story. Of course his mom is a flight attendant & they fly all of the time so they have to think about aircraft disasters.

I asked his parents if they let him watch news and they said he insists, but they're indulgent sort - again, afraid their kids will be the goody two shoes at school. Being Italian that's kind of a no no. Kid is so well-versed in the headlines I can understand why some parents would be alarmed. Have to admit, I laughed my ass of at how street smart and sassy he is.

it kind of baffles me to see that others in my putative peer group aren't making sure their kids understand at a young age how America is and how they can make it a better place.

dunno how personally I should take this but a) 6 and 8 are v different ages and b) racial epithets and their relationship to mass murder are things that are framed by a historical perspective that is a bit different from "random people may murder you at school for no reason at all", which is what I specifically took issue w re: tailhook and talking about it w my daughter.

I've definitely been thinking for a long time about having my kids learn less/later about the holocaust than I did. I think it's perfectly understandable why a generation that was closer to it felt it so important to emphasize so much, but the effect is an outsized sense of insecurity in the world that probably doesn't match up with what it's like to be Jewish in 2014 in America.

We've covered slavery, racism, ww2, the palestinian/israeli conflict, egypt, benghazi, russia invading the ukraine, FDR/the great depression, mlk/malcolm x/civil rights movement, gandhi, police brutality.. I am ok w leaving some of the grislier details of hiroshima, the holocaust, lynchings, etc for a later date

how does one explain benghazi to a little kid

It was on NPR all the time for awhile so we looked up where it was on a map, I explained what an embassy was and how diff't groups were fighting to be in charge of the country etc.

did you teach the controversy

Kids are so smart, we forget what a seven or eight year old is capable of! Vietnam and kids is such a unique subject, it was a national trauma in a way today's wars aren't - for whatever reason. It was discussed in the churches!

weren't they sending kids not that much older off to vietnam to fight?

wonder when original topic will resurface

have you noticed a change of subject?

yeah im not that far gone

Thought this might be the appropriate thread but not sure
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/william-shakespeare-culture-war-highbrow-lowbrow-94733/

bummed that this thread wasn't bumped because the Star Wars thread has almost 1000 new answers

pointing out that shakespeare has for hundreds of years been an essential part of mass/pop/whatever culture in the english speaking world to make a something something something point about sneering intellectuals is on some _trenchant social commentary_ shit

life is too short to read the stuff that noah berlatsky writes