The right media at the right age

[resonant]

Tumblr is no place to have a conversation about anything, but in passing I saw tatsuuya.tumblr.com (whom I don't even know) say:, "I also like to think about media that you consumed at the Exact perfect time in your life for it." And I've been thinking about it all day.

For me:

MASH: Ages 10-15, on the couch, with my parents and my brother, in a weekly ritual that also included Coke (which we normally didn't get) and buttered popcorn. My mother was a bit worried that we were too young for the blood and the moral complexity, which made us really appreciate the blood and the moral complexity. Nobody in my family, including my veteran dad, had a word to say against the anti-war message; I was much older before I learned that there was any controversy about the concept that war was bad.

Samuel Delany's Dhalgren and Babel-17 and Stars In My Pockets Like Grains of Sand and assorted autobiographical essays, and Mary Renault's The Persian Boy: age 16. I already knew I wasn't straight, but these books gave me a bit of the vast complexity of desire and the necessity of figuring it out for yourself, and then figuring it out for you--plus-this-particular-partner, over and over again. It was very good for me to have experienced all that in fiction before I ever got involved in a real romance.

(Also I read Dhalgren four times between ages 16 and 18 -- this is a book that the cover blurb described as "an 800-page Joycean tour de force" -- and I have to wonder whether I would have stuck with it if I had picked it up when I had more things competing for my attention. Or when I had easier access to stories with sex in them that wouldn't have made me work quite so hard.)

By the time I finally got around to seeing Buffy, long after the show ended, I was probably too old to properly appreciate it as stories. It was immediately after I read Save the Cat, though, so it was perfect timing for my education in How Plot Works.

My best friend is very firmly atheist, but when her kids were small, she worried that by not taking them to church she was depriving them of the opportunity of learning moral reasoning*. So in her household they never missed an episode of Star Trek. So you could never say those kids didn't get the chance to talk about morals, even if the conclusion they came to was that that episode's approach was kind of screwed up.

What about you? What did you see/hear/read at just the right time?

* Given the way most churches are, they dodged a bullet there. And I say that as a person committed to attempting to practice Christianity.

Comments

[sara]

IDK, I read Dahlgren much later than that and I've never read anything that was quite as much like getting drunk.

[resonant]

Never been drunk - alcohol puts me to sleep - so this actually makes me feel less like I'm missing something.

I wasn't a very critical reader (didn't learn how to do that till I met the spouse) and in a weird way that helped with Dhalgren. I read it with an attitude that swung from "whoa" to "ick" but mostly hovered at "okaaaay..."

[isis]

I also was captivated by Dhalgren in my late teens and am not sure I would have read it through in my thirties.

[resonant]

I own the e-book but haven't tackled it yet. After all these years I still have the opening memorized. But it will tell you something about how much I missed in my understanding of it when I tell you that I read the Wikipedia summary and realized that in the intervening years I had managed to conflate Roger Calkins and George Harrison into one person.

[krait]

Mine's the Revolutionary Girl Utena anime! I saw it for the first time about... three years ago? So I'm basically 25 years late to this fandom, but it was the perfect time for me; if I'd watched it as a kid/teen, I don't think it would have the same intensity or held my interest, because half the stuff it's about would have gone over my head.

Shows about the hope and tragedy of childhood and the roles we reject or become have a lot more to examine when you're an adult.

[resonant]

Yes, they do - I wasn't able to enjoy the Hunger Games at all, despite the kidlet's urging, because they saw characters but all I was able to see was exploited children.

Not familiar with RGU beyond the name, though.

[krait]

RGU is... honestly, hard to describe, but think magical school with a dark secret, heavy on symbolism (and "symbolism"). There's a mix of fantastical and real elements - the students fight duels on a platform in the sky, swords come out of people's chests, and two characters are some kind of ageless anthropomorphised archetype, but on the other hand there's also kids struggling with grief, jealousy between friends and siblings, and a sexual predator/grooming situation presented quite realistically. There's also a whole lot going on with gender and stereotyped roles, in a very fairytale/'narrative' way tied to the symbolism and the fantasy elements.

[stranger]

I ran into Utena about 20 years ago, and was fascinated by the obviously symbolic and fairy-tale layers, but never could be satisfied with the resolution. Maybe that just means I never decoded the symbols very well. Also, at the time, the descriptions of it were mostly "it's like Rose of Versailles, which, um, no. The pictures might be similar, but the storyline is waaaayy different. So I've *seen* it, but whether I get anything but the surface even now, I really don't know. It's still food for thought.

Oh, yeah, the remake/sequel/commentary animated movie was equally weird, colorful and fascinating. I saw it once (a univ campus group pimped it as f/f, not that they're *wrong*), but haven't caught up with it.

[out_there]

Oh, yeah, the remake/sequel/commentary animated movie was equally weird, colorful and fascinating. I saw it once (a univ campus group pimped it as f/f, not that they're *wrong*), but haven't caught up with it.

It's not *wrong*, no, but if you go into that movie expecting a f/f romance you are going to be befuddled by the characters that receive no real introduction and that moment where the characters turn into cars. I feel like that's a movie that only makes sense if you've already seen the series and therefore can spot where the differences from that canon like. (It's like an AU fic. In theory, it's a story on it's own but in reality, it only works if you know canon and can appreciate the new setting.)

[krait]

Oh, wow, no, the only thing I can think of Utena having in common With Rose of Versaille is the art style and (nominally) a crossdressing blonde; tonally and thematically, they're very different. Character ages, setting, fantasy elements, purpose/message... there's not much overlap.

I'll forever be grateful to the movie just for the existence of a bumper sticker I saw one, which read, "My other car is Utena." :D

[out_there]

I saw RGU at 19/20, which was a good age for me, I think. Most of the symbolism made a narrative sense to me, even if some of the details got missed. But having said that, it is fascinating to go back now and see some of the essay/analysis videos on YouTube about it because it's one of those shows that had so much emotion and feeling going on -- and the depth of that is really quite lovely.

I suspect I'd enjoy it just as much watching it as an adult now.

[adafrog]

When I was younger I read a lot of fiction books about horses. The only one I could never get through was Secretariat. I put it away, then a few years later I found it again, and read right through it. That was more like the right time for the book.

[stranger]

Same on Mary Renault, Last of the Wine, Charioteer, and so on, and Persian Boy when it showed up a few years later. I was 18 and figuring things out pretty slowly, and books like that helped a lot. Most of Delaney didn't help at all because his kinks are so Definitely Not Mine, but I did have the moral reasoning by then to get to: he's OK, I'm OK, just not the same.

Russ's When It Changed and Female Man came along in the same few years, when I was at college, having the usual crises and picking up on 70s feminism, and that was a good time for them and me. Even better were the essays in Magic Mommas, when I'd graduated and had time for fandom and finding slash, since one essay was all about slash and they were all about how female experience fit into a barely-feminist world.

The original Star Wars trilogy showed up then, too, by which time I knew enough to love the space opera and relish the SF/fantasy/religion meld, and also wonder why if Leia was Luke's twin, why wasn't she a candidate for the Other Hope? When fandom was haring after Han Solo and even Boba Fett like lemmings.

[minoanmiss]

Thirded on Mary Renault. I read The Last Of The Wine at 14 and then rummaged the library for everything they had. I found the contemporary novels boring except for The Charioteer, but gloried in the Ancient Greek ones. And, having been raised in a fundamentalist church, I credit Mary Renault with providing the antivenom to the homophobia I'd been taught.

Also, LeGuin, at around the same age, for an infinite number of reasons. Her works made my mind larger, is the best summation I can come up with.

[azurelunatic]

I read Cyteen around age 14-15, hoping for Cyber Teenagers, and getting a discussion on how to handle being extremely smart in an environment that was actively fucking you up, how to keep your head down, how to commit to the trouble you were getting into, how to remain human in the face of Field Too Wide, how to cope with betrayal from a parent, how to separate my sense of self from the memes I consumed, why a fully adult mentor screwing a late-teenage protege is bad bad news, the way technical consent can overlap with traumatizing experiences, and extremely crucially, how to cope with fucking hormones. It continued to save my ass through early adulthood.

[jesse_the_k]

Yessssss! I wish I'd read Cyteen when I was a teenager. (It was wonderful enough when I inhaled it age 50!)

[out_there]

I think probably childhood stories stand out most to me. "The Paperbag Princess" as a very wee thing, because I accepted that as a wonderful story and it's only looking back as an adult that I can see how much I possibly imprinted on a fairytale that had the princess wearing whatever clothes she could find, using intelligence to outsmart a dragon and save her prince, and then deal with the patriarchal pressure of beauty standards by refusing to marry the prince and going off on adventures herself. I loved Disney as much as the next girl, but the idea of having adventures on your own was important to me.

Roald Dahl's Matilda. In primary school, I read that every year. I was a voracious reader as a child and was reading adult novels by 12, but Matilda was a story I adored. (I read most of Roald Dahl's kids books and liked them all, but Matilda I liked enough to keep re-reading.) Basically, a very smart, quite girl who reads early and spends more time with books than people? Yes, of course I related to that. And then, of course, Matilda is the hero -- her parents and headmistress are horrible people, and Matilda's the one who steps forward and saves her sweet teacher. (So, yeah, female heros who protect others? I have a type.)

Terry Pratchett, which friends introduced me to at 14 was perfect for me. Here were stories that were easy to read and funny and lighthearted, that also said something about the world. Here was proof that there were great and fun novels that didn't have to be hard work or a complete slog, didn't have to have strong violence or deaths. Here were stories that you could read multiple times and still snigger, that you could share with people and enjoy. (It was a combination of finding books that were so much fun to read, and also finding a very small friendship group with other bookworms. I have fond memories of the three of us sitting in the shade, all reading our own books and occasionally sharing great paragraphs with each other. In some ways, I can see how that sense of friendship set the tone for later fannish friendships -- the sharing common fictional loves and spending time doing solitary pastimes in company).

You know what else? Kenneth Brannagh's four-hour Hamlet at 16. I truly believe that movie is best appreciated by an emotional teenager who will sob at the ending. As an adult, I think I'm less emotionally moved by stories, I don't get swept away by them, but watching that in the cinema with a friend was wonderful at that moment in time.

[indywind]

I’m finding this really interesting to think about... and pretty difficult to answer, to distinguish between things that affected me memorably but would have done so anytime, and things that just clicked because they met me where and when I found them. I think possibly The Man Without A Face (the novella by Isabelle Holland, not the movie by Mel Gibson loosely based on it) and Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg, which I first read as a young teen in the middle of my own coming out. My identity would probably have evolved differently without that as an early touchstone.

[tingler]

We just did a complete rewatch of MASH, all eleven seasons. Hard to believe that "War is bad" is a controversial message, but it's a very strange world we live in. I've only read Dhalgren once, though I'm pretty sure I was at a similar age as you. Didn't really *get* it, but definitely felt like I was a little stoned afterwards. (Hmm, maybe should try it again!)

I often feel as though I let my kids down by not trying harder to expose them to more Star Trek, especially TOS, when they were little. It wasn't easy to get access to then, but I do wish I had tried harder.