So. I showed this to a friend, who commented on how it hadn't aged well, which got me to thinking about comic books. These stories were, after all, written for kids. I can well picture writers going to their kids, "Well, what do you want superboy to do?" and then writing out the replies as stories. The intent was to entertain children in an age when children were the audience of comic books. Shocking, I know, but it did exist. Granted, I do wonder what the artists thought upon getting these scripts ....
All of which gets me wondering about children's fiction and how it
shouldn't age well. The genre is written to entertain children and what children like alters from decade to decade, often depending on what adults believe the children want, marketing and so forth. I imagine most children's stories of this era that class as pop culture would fare as poorly in the future.
Yeah, but some things may take on other qualities that give it lasting enjoyment for future generations.
ReplyDeleteLike, parachute pants were hilarious, what, 5 minutes after they were popular, and will probably continue to be hilarious for a very, very long time ;)
True :) And the character of superboy/man has outlasted that (awesomely) weird era. In the specific, a lot of what becomes 'literature' (as children's fic) is mostly stuff that resonates to universals -- family, feelings etc. that -- which a lot of stuff written purely as/for entertainment doesn't reach in the same way. It's essentially how many popular entertainers/writers of the past are entirely forgotten in the future. What people want from fiction changes, or perhaps what they're led to believe they want ....
DeleteIt would be funny to make a conspiracy theory around that.