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| Monsters in the closet | | Neterati |
| Jai Arjun Singh / New Delhi Nov 07, 2009, 00:35 IST |
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During a visit to publishers’ offices in Germany earlier this year, I was impressed by the variety of literature available to young readers. Also noteworthy was the darkness of content — a reminder that this was the land of the Brothers Grimm — and the willingness to matter-of-factly deal with the realities of life. (The protagonist of one popular series was a child of divorced parents, his mother frequently referring to his absentee dad as a “monster” — a word that can have literal and metaphorical meaning in children’s writing.) It was acknowledged every now and then that books could be “harmful” to a young child, but only in the context of the quality of the paper they were printed on; publishers repeatedly assured us that they used only non-toxic material!
Naturally, we had a lot of fun discussing the conservatism of Indian parents, the widespread insistence on stories with neat little moral lessons as opposed to stories that allow a child's imagination to soar — or simply scare the living daylights out of them. “I’d like to see more horrible monsters in Indian children’s books,” said Zubaan editor Anita Roy, one of our contingent, “but what I’d really like to see is a story about a grandmother who’s a monster!”
Indian parents aren’t the only ones with highly charged protective instincts, judging by the controversy around the recent movie version of Maurice Sendak’s 1963 book Where the Wild Things Are. The book — about a moody little boy named Max who imagines, then enters a world full of fearsome beasts — was fairly dark (and immensely popular) in its own right, and the film version, directed by the maverick Spike Jonze, threatens to go further. Nervous parents in the US and the UK have voiced their concern; Sendak has politely suggested they can “go to hell”.
On the Guardian blog, an article by Sam Leith titled “Do you know what today’s kids need? Thumb amputation, that’s what” has inspired a juicy comments discussion (http://bit.ly/27jjrI). “Children who are allowed to confront monsters in their closets will be better prepared for a scary world,” says a commenter, “as adults, they will understand the moral/physical consequences for actions and non-actions.” On the other hand, some posters are so palpably gleeful about the need to keep kids disillusioned (“in a world falling apart, the last thing children need is a load of drivel that teaches them everything's hunky-dory”) that you wonder about their intentions.
“There are things we should protect our kids from — torture porn, high fructose corn syrup — but a tough dramatic narrative is not one of them,” adds the Awards Daily blog (http://bit.ly/puZ88). It’s almost refreshing to read something contrary, even if one doesn’t full agree with it. “Children over a certain age may get a ‘kick’ from scary stories, but I think we try to administer that kick to children too early,” says a commenter on Leith’s piece, “We’re too impatient for them to grow up. Sure, being scared is memorable — most people remember the day the bully cornered them on the way home from school, or the day they nearly drowned in a hotel swimming pool — but who’d wish those things on children?”
Equally interesting are the discussions that try to evaluate the effectiveness of the film instead of taking a moral position beforehand. On Facebook (http://bit.ly/3nNNYn), there’s a debate about whether Jonze captures the spirit of the book at all, and the Mom Squad blog (http://bit.ly/3KAR0j) gives it a thumbs down. “It was tedious and dull, straining at Jungian symbolism and too heavy handed in driving home the message of the wild things being part of Max’s psyche.” Can even the hardiest children deal with Jungian symbolism? That’s a whole new question.
(jaiarjun@gmail.com)
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