The War on Youth: A Modern Oedipal Tragedy
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Abstract
The Janus-faced angelic/monstrous child is deeply etched onto the popular imagination. Adult attitudes towards children can be typified as ambivalent-swinging between the dual images of the threatened child and the threatening child which mirror a fear/fantasy complex and which manifest in a confused and contradictory array of imagery, ideology, and policy. Literally emblematic poster children for the Missing Children's movement allow for a public show of concern and elicit calls for child protection which bolster America's self-image as caring and child-friendly, while the public voting record shows a steady tendency to gut the very social programs that would ensure the well being of millions of (faceless) children. Positive images of childhood and youth today appear stable, in fact, only in the imaginary past. There, good kids, nostalgic simulacra of now-aging Baby Boomers, live relatively uncomplicated and safe lives in the good old days that never were; the promise of the future insured by the uncontested adult-controlled social order.
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