#and for all of the mythic discourse surrounding SW and the death of myth with the ending of the ST

[onewomancitadel]

The kidult genre in fandom reception

I'm going to be a bit polemic and say that I think the emergence of kidult entertainment (or the idea of the kidult genre in fandom reception) might be a mistake, for a few reasons I'll outline in this post, most of which is that I think children's media analysis and adult media analysis is incompatible. I'm wondering now how much of a relationship there is between kidult entertainment and flattened media discourse ('if you consume bad thing you are/do bad thing'). Because I think it's undisputed that what types of stories children grow up on really does matter, and parent/guardian-led exposure is really important (and more complicated because there's so much you can watch just at your fingertips; I used to have to sneak into my brother's room late at night where he had a TV to watch South Park) - conflating that with adult experience is unrealistic at best, though, because helping children become discerning adults is part of growing up, but by the time you're grown up, you should be a discerning adult.

The kidult genre is in a really weird position where it can't lean into the innocence of children's media and it can't lean into the nuance of adult media. It means you end up with this kind of sterile brightly-coloured farce, which is trying to be serious and unserious at the same time - a spoonfeeding narrative message is expected, but it should be of the adult type. It's what makes Steven Universe's narrative resolution - I haven't seen the show, but it was impossible to not be subjected to the controversy as a Tumblr user - make little sense to the audience that didn't like it, because there was an expectation of a kidult resolution addressing the themes and characters in a way they think it ought to have. Redemption of all of the villains is unrealistic and offensive to the kidult palate, because of the way direct (adult) allegory is read into the evil committed by the villains in the story, and there needs to be a realistic moral system to address that.

I believe that Steven Universe was a children's show, but it attracted a major teenage/adult audience who cultivated very different expectations from what I think the show was trying to be - and I think this is an Internet phenomenon only really possible through the way fandom works now, coinciding with a major shift in the way we conceive of fandom not just as a hobby but as political activity. I don't think it's inappropriate to be a fan of children's media as an adult at all - it's just expecting it to be adult is a problem.

I think it's obvious media meant for children does have adult resonance - but I really think that's more from the angle that there are ways of writing things for children that are smart, timeless, and emotional, and make you think about a different perspective (a child's especially). The Little Prince is one of the best examples that come to mind, but things like Beatrix Potter, fairytales in general meant for children, any Studio Ghibli film etc. are all obviously things that touch the heart in adults. However, if you apply the wrong lens of interpretation (why is this thing not nuanced in the way an adult property ought to be) - up to and including misinterpreting how children interpret metaphor - you're going to be very disappointed, but also flatten the purpose of storytelling for kids.

I don't mean to sound like I'm stating the obvious, but storytelling is really important for kids, and so I think it is actually quite a serious matter. What types of shows they watch and stories they read impact their early schooling (it can supplement preschool education), reading itself is necessary for developing literacy (and reading to children is really important), what sorts of lessons they derive are really important, and learning to consider things from how a child sees something versus how you as an adult see something is an exercise in empathy for the most vulnerable people population we're responsible for. That's part of my issue with kidult fandom reception/analysis, because it wants to erase a different perspective, whilst wanting to preserve a superficial aesthetic.

The point I was working towards is that kidult entertainment is where you get to preserve moral simplicity, where things feel safe and in control, but introduce an adult expectation of nuance and in some cases realistic literalism. It's something that I feel is untenable - I mean, look at the explosion online after Steven Universe - because moral simplicity and nuance don't really go together by nature. I don't think it's surprising the kidult genre has emerged (and to me, it feels like something that largely exists on fandom spaces, though one may argue about Voltron because that did really blur the boundary) because it addresses the emergent political and emotional needs at hand.

Children need to see things that reflect the strengths they need to get through life, through loneliness, through being bullied at school or having a hard family life, that sometimes they might do bad things and need help to do good things, and they need to learn how to encounter new things and deal with them. It's really just a completely different genre and necessary media analysis. It's something I'm less familiar with as I'm not certified in any childhood development, but I can't emphasise enough it really is a different beast from normal narrative criticism. Even then, I don't think the issue is as simplistic as people make it out to be online, even for adult consumption - but for kids, hopefully a responsible parent/guardian is involved, not someone fingerwagging behind a social media account.

Identifying where adult consumption of children's media - the kidult genre - crosses over with recent shifts in Internet discourse is really interesting, though. Maybe it's as simplistic as the Internet flattening nuance and contrarian opinions going wild. Maybe it's the need for moral certainty when things seem uncertain. I can't be certain myself.

I still think the kidult genre (that, again, I think exists more in fandom reception than necessarily in production) is ultimately untenable, and I might go so far as to say is a product of moral discourse and bad media analysis in fandom.

#stirring the pot #a post I ended up writing before posting another thing #because I was thinking about parents sharing that their children cried at the end of TROS because Ben was dead #and they couldn't understand why that when he became a good boy he had to die #when I read those I was like #wow Star Wars isn't about me at all #and the Original Trilogy was meant to be a fairytale for kids #who got to see a father do what he needed to do for his son #even when the son was a hero who cared #and was powerful #he still got looked after #and for all of the mythic discourse surrounding SW and the death of myth with the ending of the ST #it wasn't about any of us and it wasn't about useless idiots with YouTube accounts #who were offended Rey was a girl or Kylo Ren cried too much or that Rey was no one #it was about the children who needed a modern fairytale :(