Image from Coce

The cute and the cool : wondrous innocence and modern American children's culture / Gary Cross.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2004Description: 259 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0195156668
  • 9780195156669
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 305.231 21
LOC classification:
  • HQ783 .C74 2004
Contents:
Ch. 1. The Irony of Innocence -- Ch. 2. The Two Faces of Innocence -- Ch. 3. The Cute Kid: Images of a Wondrous Childhood -- Ch. 4. Holidays and New Rituals of Innocence -- Ch. 5. Gremlin Child: How the Cute Became the Cool -- Ch. 6. Setting the Boundaries of Innocence -- Ch. 7. Rethinking Innocence.
Review: "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 patenting anxieties of the previous century, Gary Cross offers a vibrant and entirely fresh portrait of the forces that have defined American childhood."--BOOK JACKET.
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Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode
Book City Campus City Campus Main Collection 305.231 CRO (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 1 Available A259972B

Includes bibliographical references (pages 209-243) and index.

Ch. 1. The Irony of Innocence -- Ch. 2. The Two Faces of Innocence -- Ch. 3. The Cute Kid: Images of a Wondrous Childhood -- Ch. 4. Holidays and New Rituals of Innocence -- Ch. 5. Gremlin Child: How the Cute Became the Cool -- Ch. 6. Setting the Boundaries of Innocence -- Ch. 7. Rethinking Innocence.

"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 patenting anxieties of the previous century, Gary Cross offers a vibrant and entirely fresh portrait of the forces that have defined American childhood."--BOOK JACKET.

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