Two Questions...

[leahbobet]

...both spawned by the never-ending parade of posts about how terrible Twilight is.*

1) So two major YA series hit big in the last ten years: Twilight and Harry Potter. In the early part of each series, you saw what can be charitably called low production values in terms of craft, plots that revolved around blatant wish-fulfillment, and wholesale rips of the tropes of already established subgenres. Potter is the poster child for mainstream acceptance. Twilight is excoriated regularly in newspapers, the internets, and local bookstores in reenactments of the Five Minutes' Hate.

What's the difference? What causes that?

I have my own theory, but I want to hear yours.


2) Where do people get the idea that exposing a child to a worldview or idea at all means the child will automatically agree with, adopt, and adhere to that worldview or idea?

Really, peoples. You met kids?


*Haven't read it, not gonna, no opinion on the matter.

Comments

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

The best (most interesting) comments I've read about Twilight have come from teen readers (or adults relaying the unalloyed views of a teen reader in their household) because it's clear those readers have agency and are making adjustments in their own minds about what appeals to them about the books and how they can enjoy those things while being aware of the things that they find less appealing.

So - yeah, agreeing with you about agency.



And now I further reflect that politically and worldview-wise, my views are very very like those of my parents. And my husband's like his. We're all left wing, although I'm the most religiously-inclined person in either of our families, an inclination I have had since a very young age. So I still dunno.

I just last month had an exchange with a relative who described, with a proud smile, how her son (a senior in high school) had "his own" political views (I think she meant he was rather more conservative than either of this parents). And I was, like, "I dunno, my kids have the same political views I do; maybe I did something wrong?"

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I am probably the most socially liberal person in my family. My parents have a lot of the baggage that comes from growing up part of a minority that suffered discrimination, but an invisible minority; so you could get professional careers, move to the suburbs, and rarely see a person who wasn't white inside a ten-minute drive. There's a suspicion of others that starts in your aunts and uncles having disappeared into the death camps and ends in not having to spend too much time with the next generation of Others.

My sister is considerably more conservative on several issues than they are.

And I suspect it's not wrong either way, as long as the person themself's had the leeway to make their own decision? But I am also somewhat of a laid-back relativist about these things, and I tend not to care about what other people are thinking or doing so long as it's not hurting anyone else.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

My husband's Jewish (I'm a convert), but his dad was a total McGovern supporter back in the day, and etc. Still, their people came over a bit earlier, the patriarch of the Russian branch got out in the back of a hay wagon after the 1905 revolution, and the Austria-Poland contingent not much later. So while they dealt with the typical American anti-Semitism, especially as in those days, there were no specific ties to relatives in Europe during WWII (although most--all?--of the young men of age served in the US military during the war). I wonder if that earlier immigration date makes a difference.

The larger extended family on both sides has a range of observance vs. assimilation. Overall those whose political leanings I know are center to left.