false 1129084 1 The twentieth century was, by any reckoning, the age of the child in America. Today, we pay homage at the altar of childhood, heaping endless goods on the young, reveling in memories of a more innocent time, and finding solace in the softly backlit memories of our earliest years. We are, the proclamation goes, just big kids at heart. And, accordingly, we delight in prolonging and inflating the childhood experiences of our offspring. In images of the naughty but nice Buster Brown and the coquettish but sweet Shirley Temple, Americans at mid-century offered up a fantastic world of treats, toys, and stories, creating a new image of the child as "cute." Holidays such as Christmas and Halloween became blockbuster affairs, vehicles to fuel the bedazzled and wondrous innocence of the adorable child. All this, Gary Cross illustrates, reflected the preoccupations of a more gentle and affluent culture, but it also served to liberate adults from their rational and often tedious worlds of work and responsibility. But trouble soon entered paradise. The "cute" turned into "cool" as children, following their parental example, embraced the gift of fantasy and unrestrained desire to rebel against the saccharine excesses of wondrous innocence in deliberate pursuit of the anti-cute. Movies, comic books, and video games beckoned to children with the allures of an often violent, sexualized, and increasingly harsh worldview. Unwitting and resistant accomplices to this commercial transformation of childhood, adults sought-over and over again, in repeated and predictable cycles-to rein in these threats in a largely futile jeremiad to preserve the old order. Thus, the cute child-deliberately manufactured and cultivated--has ironically fostered a profoundly troubled ambivalence toward youth and child rearing today. Expertly weaving his way through the cultural artifacts, commercial currents, and parenting anxieties of the previous century, Gary Cross offers a vibrant and entirely fresh portrait of the forces that have defined American childhood. 1116264 1 4 2004 The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children's Culture total:2|5:1|4:1| 2 9 10 0 0 0 false false Mon Mar 16 13:18:44 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 16 13:18:44 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Feb 04 13:40:04 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 04 13:40:04 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Tue Feb 03 08:41:46 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 03 08:41:46 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sun Feb 01 13:16:13 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 01 13:16:13 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jan 30 13:18:17 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 30 13:18:17 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Tue Dec 23 05:45:41 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 23 05:45:41 -0800 2008 0 0 false false Wed Apr 09 17:35:46 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 09 17:36:26 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Tue Apr 08 16:18:42 -0700 2008 Tue Apr 08 16:18:42 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Thu Mar 27 07:36:41 -0700 2008 Thu Mar 27 07:36:41 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Mon Mar 17 12:30:52 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 17 12:31:05 -0700 2008