re: The Death of Adulthood in American Culture - AO Scott

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His big hole, for me, that while Scott tries to examine the whole of culture starting from the conception of the US, he's making the assumptions that the state being achieved in culture now is "right," or "here to stay." In all this talk of upheaval the only natural next step is...another upheaval. Even if this "post-patriarchal =" culture becomes the norm, we're only destined to look at post-patriarchy as post-patriarchy and find ways to subvert it again.

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Everyone always thinks Now is The End of History. It's not. It's the middle, like it always has been. To people in the future, this is just the past. I think he's based his argument upon a total fallacy, not to mention I think he's only paying lip service to breaking down the patriarchy because that's what you say in the right kind of company. He wants the patriarchy precisely because he is part of it, and benefits from it -- he is a culture writer for the NY Times.

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At the same time, even modern stories are trending toward interconnected myth-like structure, that's about as adult as you can get. He simply leaves out too many pieces to make a complete examination.

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Forget a complete examination, he never gets off the ground. The idea that there are no adult characters or themes on netowrk TV required some extreme linguistic jujitsu to recontextualize Louie, and he outright ignored Orange is the New Black (and House of Cards).

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It's a good thing, but I think this is at least one of the places where he gets close to something to say. Look, I mean there has to be a REASON why we see more postponed adulthood (guilty here). While it's good, it just may effect culture in some way. With all of these things happening kids are getting married later, owning houses later, having kids later, etc.

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Yes, but that's also a different argument. He argued there is NO adulthood, not a delayed one. And this could be an interesting argument, but I think the answer is more along these lines: we rob children of their childhood through parental over-worry and over-scheduling. Kids are under immense pressure from an early age to be a future success, and many of their activities are calculated to get them into the best schools or whatnot. By the time a middle class kid graduates college, this is the first time that child gets to have unstructured play without fear of consequence. These aren't prolonged childhoods, they are delayed.

There's also the economic factors that young people are priced out of "starter homes" and are saddled with crushing student loan debt. But that ventures into other topics, and is not his argument - the "Death of Adulthood".

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He keeps saying adulthood, and I think he means authority, hence my first point about the idea of "upheaval," or revolt. Adulthood and authority or related, but different concepts. America isn't combative because it doesn't like. So while i think he's right in that America has always been fixating on this idea, he's got the wrong form of the idea. It's authority. (Generally seen to be the patriarchy, but see above, we're bound to go at it again.)

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Which still makes no sense because, as he points out in his own article, American art has historically idealized chafing under authority. That's a cultural norm dating back to our creation myth.

When has authority ever been portrayed universally positive in American culture? Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the very first American authors, and his most famous work is ridiculing authority (The Scarlet Letter). This isn't a devolution of American culture, this is the starting point?

But I think AO Scott is trying to say we're all juvenile because we like comic book fare, YA literature, and gross out comedies. I'd point out that comic books have long since surpassed its beginnings as juvenile fare with a simplistic world view. Comic book films, like any other kind of film, can go in any direction and be as a deep or as shallow as its creators desire. I've already told him to get bent over YA literature, which I stand by. As for gross out humor... well, poop jokes date back to The Canterbury tales. Shakespeare liked poop jokes. Hell, one of the few surviving plays from Ancient Greece is one extended dick joke (Lysistrate).

The idea that adulthood means being staid, boring, and deferential of authority is patently false. Art has always railed against authority, particularly American art. And even "serious" works of art have delighted in poop and dick jokes, and simply raising the middle finger and saying frick You. It was a film by a "serious" director that first used the word "frick" (MASH, Altman).

Being juvenile is part of being an adult. Even wearing flip flops when its hot outside, despite his sneering disapproval.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers." -- Plato's Republic