CSotD: You don’t have to be a star, baby, to dance on my manhole cover
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One of the problems with making "Cul de Sac" the CSOTD is that Richard Thompson can contain an entire rant within, in this case, five panels. He leaves me little upon which to fulminate.
But not today.
In the real world, I edit a publication for middle-school students which often contains book and movie reviews. There is nothing funny about today's Cul de Sac.
"Ew" indeed.
Alice not only believes in herself, but I'm willing to believe that she also follows her dreams and achieves her goals.
Doesn't everybody?
The problem with all these character-building stories is that they reduce everything to character. People who believe in themselves (and follow their dreams) will achieve their goals.
It's a good message for someone who, for some transitory reason, is hesitating for a moment to believe in herself, but it piles guilt upon the head of anyone for whom a pep talk is insufficient.
It's bad enough when it's the uplifting story of a plucky disabled person who, because she believes in herself, follows her dream and achieves her goal of climbing Mt. Everest, because, for some plucky disabled people, getting out of bed and dressed without assistance might represent the same level of achievement.
They do need to believe in themselves, and maybe an example or two of achievement can help, but they don't need to have their noses continually rubbed in the stories of plucky SuperCrips, who, clearly, have a much greater reservoir of self-belief and are obviously more willing to follow their dreams and thereby achieve their goals.
But it's all around toxic when the story is set in the past and teaches the moral that, to use a common example, slaves who did not escape lacked character and could have been free if they had only believed in themselves. And followed their dreams.
Life is rarely that simple, and history never is, and sometimes people are stuck in rotten situations for reasons that are not, in point of fact, a reflection on their personal character.
The other problem is with these uplifting stories is that they suck.
But at least, by the time their audience is in middle school, they no longer require a parent to assist them in their suckiness.
Still, couldn't the creative types let the characters in their novels and movies actually go through real changes instead of simply learning to live up to philosophies that can be encapsulated on a bumpersticker or, when more complex, in a colored box to be posted on Facebook?
Or maybe they could just have their characters operate in a world where sometimes the problem is that you hang around with the wrong people and that what you really need is to find friends who don't insist that you live up to all those bumperstickers and who don't try to cram you into those insipid colored boxes.
Here's today's startlingly relevant ear worm:
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