The Cute and the Cool

Download or Read eBook The Cute and the Cool PDF written by Gary Cross and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-04-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
The Cute and the Cool
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 268
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780190288860
ISBN-13 : 0190288868
Rating : 4/5 (60 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Cute and the Cool by : Gary Cross

Book excerpt: The twentieth century was, by any reckoning, the age of the child in America. Today, we pay homage at the altar of childhood, heaping endless goods on the young, reveling in memories of a more innocent time, and finding solace in the softly backlit memories of our earliest years. We are, the proclamation goes, just big kids at heart. And, accordingly, we delight in prolonging and inflating the childhood experiences of our offspring. In images of the naughty but nice Buster Brown and the coquettish but sweet Shirley Temple, Americans at mid-century offered up a fantastic world of treats, toys, and stories, creating a new image of the child as "cute." Holidays such as Christmas and Halloween became blockbuster affairs, vehicles to fuel the bedazzled and wondrous innocence of the adorable child. All this, Gary Cross illustrates, reflected the preoccupations of a more gentle and affluent culture, but it also served to liberate adults from their rational and often tedious worlds of work and responsibility. But trouble soon entered paradise. The "cute" turned into "cool" as children, following their parental example, embraced the gift of fantasy and unrestrained desire to rebel against the saccharine excesses of wondrous innocence in deliberate pursuit of the anti-cute. Movies, comic books, and video games beckoned to children with the allures of an often violent, sexualized, and increasingly harsh worldview. Unwitting and resistant accomplices to this commercial transformation of childhood, adults sought-over and over again, in repeated and predictable cycles-to rein in these threats in a largely futile jeremiad to preserve the old order. Thus, the cute child-deliberately manufactured and cultivated--has ironically fostered a profoundly troubled ambivalence toward youth and child rearing today. Expertly weaving his way through the cultural artifacts, commercial currents, and parenting anxieties of the previous century, Gary Cross offers a vibrant and entirely fresh portrait of the forces that have defined American childhood.


The Cute and the Cool Related Books

The Cute and the Cool
Language: en
Pages: 284
Authors: Gary Cross
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-04-01 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The twentieth century was, by any reckoning, the age of the child in America. Today, we pay homage at the altar of childhood, heaping endless goods on the young
The Cute and the Cool
Language: en
Pages: 268
Authors: Gary Cross
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-04-01 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The twentieth century was, by any reckoning, the age of the child in America. Today, we pay homage at the altar of childhood, heaping endless goods on the young
Be Cool Be Nice
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: The Be Cool Be Nice Movement
Categories: Juvenile Nonfiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-10-17 - Publisher: BuzzPop

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Be Cool Be NiceĀ® (BCBN) is not just a book . . . it is mandatory reading for boys and girls, men and women, and anyone with a smartphone. Be Cool Be Nice launc
Jared's Cool-Out Space
Language: en
Pages: 30
Authors: Jane Nelsen
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-11-01 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Our Aesthetic Categories
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Sianne Ngai
Categories: Aesthetics, Modern
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012 - Publisher:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture, dominating the look of its art and commodities as well as our ways of speaking about the am