wild rumpuses since 1989

School makes you so busy. I hate that.

So, because this blog is [going to be?] mainly about childhood anyway, and also because it's my blog and I get to say what I want, this is going to be about Where the Wild Things Are, the movie as directed by Spike Jonze in 2009 and not the amazing, long-beloved book by Maurice Sendak (who, incidentally, is one of my heroes).

Let's be honest, the fact that Maurice Sendak is one of my heroes means that I had a really strong opinion going in. I mean ,last semester one of my best friends and I got really excited about the fact that you can watch Really Rosie on youtube and now I'm listening to to Chicken Soup With Rice and I'm pretty hungry. So, I kind of wanted the movie to be great! and fantastic! and all those exclamatory praises!

I'd heard it was supposed to be nostalgic, reminiscent of childhood, etc. But you know what? I didn't really get that feel. Like at all. Mostly, I felt like I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Which, hey, is totally what childhood was like for me a lot of the time, so maybe that's exactly what Spike Jonze was trying to get across? But really I think he was trying to do this whole idealization of childhood thing, and that it didn't really work out. It's a trend, actually! I'm not the only twenty-year-old out there elongating and idealizing childhood to death. That is what I really want to talk about.

The trend of "childhood is AWESOME and we are going to sentimentalize it to DEATH" is not actually new or anything--I've already written, like, two papers for different classes about how the Victorians were all about putting childhood on a pedastal, and back before reading kidlit was childish and unclassy (so before young adult was a genre, probably), there were Victorian dudes with crazy mustaches going, "Oh, I say, Henry, have you read the new A.A. Milne yet? That Winnie the Pooh is such a jolly sort of fellow, wouldn't you say?" At which point, Henry, after taking a sip of tea, would reply, "Right you are, George, my friend! Ol' Tigger is quite my favorite, though--and did you know? The most wonderful thing about Tiggers is that he's the only one!"

I'm totally lying. Winnie the Pooh didn't exist until 1926. But Peter Rabbit? Man, that was, like, the pinnacle of all literature. Victorians dressed up in blue shirts and no pants for Halloween, except for the guy who dressed up like MacGregor. Everyone hates that guy, even now.

WHAT AM I EVEN TALKING ABOUT. Oh yeah. Nostalgia! Maurice Sendak! A lot of a very particular subculture of teenagers and twentysomethings have been all over this new movie version of this book that was ubiquitous when this generation were children. I remember the first time it was read to me. I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way. But you know the part of the movie that I liked best? The trailer. The trailer was great! The trailer made me cry, and it had a really great Arcade Fire song on it!

The movie? The movie itself, while being really delightful and funny at points, was weird and unintelligible and it was packed with so much over-your-head metaphor so that something that should have been dedicated to the nostalgia of lost childhood lost its innocence and I guess anything that could resemble sentimentality. And that could be okay! Not every piece of children's media has to be dripping with good morals and neat, saccharine endings where everyone gets a glass of milk to go with their square, balanced meal. God knows I've read His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman) enough time to lose that idea of children's stories. But Where the Wild Things as written by Maurice Sendak, inasmuch as it was about anything, was about being angry, being so fully and completely angry and frustrated with the injustice of life that you want to run away and have a place where everything goes exactly the way you want it to... and then going home after realizing there is no place better than home, even when your mother thinks you're a wild thing.

The movie was so much unhappier and more unsatisfying than that. In the book, Max wants a place where everyone loves him best of all. K.W. ends up quoting the line "oh, please don't go, I'll eat you up, I love you so"--she and Carol are the ones who love him best of all, but he goes through so much trying to make everyone love him... and in the end, I don't know if the Wild Things really loved Max at all. They were trying to make Carol feel better.

The other day, in the class I'm writing this for, the professor noted that I really like juvenile fiction. I really do. I check out picture books from the public library, and I'm pretty sure the only books meant for adults on my bookshelf here at Bryn Mawr are books I had to read for class, and a Philipa Gregory book. Oh, and a non-fiction book called Sex With Kings, all about royal mistresses in history (i.e. awesome). But truthfully, I like ALL kinds of children's media. I like Disney Channel original movies and every now and then I watch an episode of Hey, Arnold! on YouTube. My favorite movie of 2009 was Disney's The Princess and the Frog (well, that, and Whip It). I used to work at Build-a-Bear. So I am all about the idealization of childhood, and I think it is fun, and great! But I would like for other people to think about the way I do--as something FUN, not something to be metaphorized and made dark with the tarnish of movies that I hate.