Dan Grantham
Growing up, I was infatuated with a blue anthropomorphic tank engine named Thomas, along with his friends Percy, James, Gordon and a host of others who inhabited the fictional Island of Sodor. This love affair lasted for much of my childhood, and the tender feelings re-emerged one Sunday in the summer of 2010 when, on a drive around the Cuyahoga National Park, I chanced upon a stupefyingly real life-sized model of Thomas set up at the park’s Scenic Railroad. While it was an enchanting reminder of my childhood, I have not aspired to be a train, eat coal or talk to other trains since the age of nine. After all, trains, like animals, trees and vegetables cannot talk.
I thus find it bothersome that in college, it continues to be acceptable to wax poetic about the profound nature of Walt Disney films, run around with a twig wand in your back pocket or conduct an Independent Study on modern American literature’s greatest achievement: “Twilight.” In other words, please try something new for a change.
Particularly bothersome is the tenacity of the most asinine childhood relic: the Disney Princess. Sure, everyone was, according to their parents, royalty when they were five, but if you wish to be treated like an adult, it is difficult to do so if your Facebook banner is Hipster Ariel. None of us will ever be royalty (unless you actually are), and moreover, we’re in college.
If you think I’m being pretentious, I’d be the first to agree with you. But hear me out: instead of clinging to the childhood that is no longer physically or legally yours, try exploring the wealth of PG, PG-13 and R-rated movies which you can now watch without hassle from your parent or guardian. Watch them not because they are more explicit, but because they are not always the corporate creation released for a consumer culture. Instead of watching Beauty and the Beast on a Sunday night, try Jean Cocteau’s version. We are, after all, at college to expand our minds for the future and not to relive our past.
If you still think I’m being unreasonable, riddle me this. Imagine you’re on a date with the guy or girl of your dreams. After a lovely, sophisticated date to Broken Rocks and a night of partying, imagine, after all those nice, collegiate hours spent together, you arrive back at your room. In horror, your date realizes that all horizontal and vertical surfaces in your dorm are covered with posters, sheets and blankets baring the likeness of Belle, Jasmine, Snow White, Cinderella, the Power Rangers or Hot Wheels. Personally, my first reaction would not be “how cute!” It’s more like, “really?”
Yes, I know, it is escapism, but it becomes exhausting when, year after year, we are taught that the world is not a Disney movie, but a horrific place where injustice, racism, elitism, sexism and inequality reign supreme. These relics of our childhoods may provide an escape from this reality, but more perniciously, they also minimalize this reality (“Pocahontas” for example). If you continue to run around with a crown on your head, still find yourself nursing a crush on the pink Power Ranger, occasionally cast spells to ward off Dementors or blow a train whistle to upon arrival at Lowry, please, for your impending adulthood, try something new. You might like it, and if you don’t, at least you’ve consumed something of value.