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Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:01 am| Quote: |
| Five fall into the abyss
Lucy Mangan Saturday March 29, 2008 The Guardian Look, I stayed quiet when, a couple of months ago, the revamped Mr Men series was unveiled and Mr Strong had changed from a square to a triangle, Mr Fussy had been transformed into Mr Pernickety (presumably in case our undereducated ankle biters weren't feeling the sting of their illiteracy enough) and Mr Rude had not only been invented from scratch but made - the saints preserve us - French. But now they are messing with true childhood icons. Disney has remade the Famous Five in the modern child's image. The new Five are the offspring of the original quintet (yes, apparently George grew out of it), so Julian's son Max is an adventure-sports-mad 13-year-old hanging out with Dick's laptop-wielding son, Dylan, who spends his geeky-yet-hot-yet-cool days tracking the markets to make his fortune. George, whose passionate love of the solitude and safety of Kirrin Island has been misread as an unquenchable thirst for travel and adventure, has an Anglo-Indian daughter called Jyoti (abbreviated to Jo, lest she panic the people of Peoria) who will be the gang's leader. Anne - who has transformed from bracken-bunching helpmeet to California art dealer - has spawned Malibu mall rat Allie who would rather txt hr frnds thn gthr eggz n bunz 4 T. Timmy, you will be relieved to hear, is still a dog. Their first adventure involves unmasking a phoney environmentalist who is running a DVD bootlegging operation from Shelter Island. Naturally, the bulk of my objections derive from the fact that I am a reactionary old fart who spends her evenings designing underground lead-lined homes in which I could live out the rest of my days without the hell-born modern world intruding. But I also believe the assumptions that underpin these remodelling quests deserve to be unpicked from time to time - the main one being that children want, or should be provided with, only entertainment that reflects their own reality. The books - and the moments within those books - that I glommed on to as a child were those that revealed that the world I knew was not immutable. That it was once different; that times had changed for better and for worse, and probably would again. CS Lewis, referring in Prince Caspian to "whatever grapes your people may have", constructed in six words a window on to another time, place, language, class and outlook. The Ingalls children's excitement over their single-piece-of-candy-and-a-tin-mug at Christmas sent me reeling at the thought of how much times had changed in a hundred little years and introduced me to the concept that context might be all. Dimsie, the Marlows and the Chalet School heroines articulated the vanishing ideas of moral duty and the honour of the school, and although I never got to demonstrate either - not being able to play lacrosse, never mind with a fractured leg, and the shortage of clifftop rescue opportunities in the Lewisham borough - it was good to know they had once existed, and the knowledge afforded a valuable glimpse into the minds of grandparents and teachers whose thinking had been moulded by such strange notions. I know that Disney's latest travesty - I mean, version - will make no discernible difference to the speed with which we and our grotty juvenile population seem to be sliding into the abyss, but the impulse behind it contributes to the intellectual and imaginative impoverishment that greases our way. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a series of lead-lined chambers to build. |
Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:11 amPosted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:18 amPosted: Tue May 13, 2008 1:37 pm
at the reference to lack of opportunity for clifftop rescues in
Lewisham. I used to get very put out about the fact that CS/Enid
Blyton-type adventures just never happened at our school/house!
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