In which I, the Anti Wanker, wank the LA Times

[author_by_night]

This is the offending article.

 I want you to claim you're reading it to make sure it's OK for your kids, or your future kids, or even, if you have to, for kids in general.

You know, some of us aren't sure it is. The books aren't exactly "Little bunny foo foo", you know.

 read 50 pages of the first "Harry Potter" book, and it seemed witty, imaginative and fast-paced. It also seemed like it was for children. It's about wizards and magic cats and evil stepparents, and has a reading-level that is only slightly above this column.

Ah, that was the first. Which, I will admit, was juvenile. But have you never gone to a bookstore and noticed the rest seem pretty long? (Oh, and it's his aunt and uncle, not stepparents).

I'm sorry you were born too late for J.K. Rowling, but you had your C.S. Lewis and E.B. White and J.R.R. Tolkien. Isn't it a clue that you should be ashamed of reading these books past puberty when the adults who write them are hiding their first names?

Um... have you ever picked up a LOTR book? There's no way on earth a six year old could follow those. (Perhaps the Hobbit if they were really good readers, but not the rest).

After a generation of boomers choosing to remain in a state of stunted adolescence — wearing jeans, smoking pot and cranking their BMW stereos to blast Eminem songs they clearly don't like — the next generation has opted for a stunted toddlerhood. Adults see "Finding Nemo" without bothering with the socially accepted ruse of dragging an unwilling 11-year-old nephew along. Grown men play video games and couples go to Disneyworld on their honeymoon, often for reasons other than having sex in Cinderella's castle with the dwarfs watching.

So? Maybe we like the innocence.

In addition to Mama Ida claiming that one of the kids was hard to understand because she might have been English and referring to the special effects as "scenery," my grandmothers eventually made the one cogent point that other reviewers missed: The story is stupid if you're over 13.

Okay, Mr. Bigshot I-Know-Everything-About-Literature, tell me this: how many movies have been as good as the actual books?

I love how he doesn't seem to have done any research as to why people like the books. I wouldn't mind, except he goes into how we're all stupid, blah blah blah. If he's going to make generalizations, research.

Comments

[frankieb-sq87.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I love it when people condemn things without really knowing the first thing about it.

Do you think he read anything past the first fifty pages of SS? Somehow I would bet my stock in Time Warner and all my Disney Dollars that he didn't.

[redlightspecia1.livejournal.com]

Please, why read something when it is so much more fun (and easier) just to rip the people that enjoy something and call them stupid. Silly girl! Reading is work! :rolleyes:

[frankieb-sq87.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yes, yes, forgot that point. Silly me.

I keep hoping he meant it as a scathing satire instead of a pathetic attack on the fandom it reads as. Either way, it was a rather pathetic cry for attention on his part.

[redlightspecia1.livejournal.com]

After forcing myself to read (see! it is hard work!) a couple more of his columns, I actually do believe that it was a pathetic attack on the fandom. What a wank.

"Oh look, something is popular. I'll bash it and the people who like it, proving my infinite coolness."

[frankieb-sq87.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I couldn't bring myself to read drivel this morning. I read enough from the Fandom Wank yesterday, I couldn't bring myself to read more wankiness before breakfast.