The trouble with today's best sellers is not the fantastical yet somehow realistic worlds they inhabit but rather the fact that "the safety zones are rapidly vanishing as adult anxieties edge out childhood fantasy." Furthermore Tatrar points out that the dangerous yet enchantingly magical world displayed in Carroll and Barrie's Alice in Wonderland has been replaced by dangerous worlds without a lick of enchantment. Is it troublesome that parents let their young children read The Harry Potter series after author J.K. Rowling described it as a story "about death"? What about allowing your child to delve into the post-apocalyptic world of The Hunger Games where children are forced to kill one another for sport? These books are accepted by parents because they are well-written, engaging, and clearly fiction, but are children really able to understand what is acceptable if they are reading these books at such a susceptible age? Furthermore, these books seemed to have proved that their content is really for an older audience as many of the series most loyal fans are young to mid adults. However mature the fan base of the the series are it does not detract from the fact the books are mainly being marketing to children and placed in the young adult section of libraries and book stores.
I think the answer to this problem won't be solved through censorship of these books, but rather through a program best explained by author Henry Jenkins called media literacy. Instead of implementing programs that help people make sense of the messages and subtext presented in the media, a concept which Jenkins is strongly in favor of, programs could be implemented in grade schools to help children and young adults make sense of the messages and subtext presented in books. Programs like this would help children and young adults better understand why the fictional worlds presented in Harry Potter and The Hunger Games are fictional because while children may grasp that witches and wizards are not real they may not understand why so many innocent people are being killed.
As someone who considers Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to be my favorite books, I would argue that it is not all rainbows and butterflies. There are a lot of very heavy subtle themes in Alice in Wonderland that young children may not pick up on...but that doesn't mean they aren't there. There are many other classic books with very heavy themes regarding life and death too...I wouldn't say it's changed a lot...but thats something interesting to consider.
ReplyDeleteEmily - I am not disagreeing with you that the subject matter of Alice and Wonderland has heavier themes, rather I was drawing attention to the fact that books nowadays aren't so subtle with the darker themes and simply broadcast notions of hate and death instead of finessing and underscoring content as seen in Alice in Wonderland.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really interesting point that you're making, Katy. Parents are so consumed with what their children are watching on television or playing with video games. I know that the Harry Potter books are really dark and even gave me nightmares when I was reading them. I think that parents should definitely rethink monitoring what book their children read more heavily.
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