The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children's Culture.(Book Review)

The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children's Culture

Gary Cross. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Gary Cross has emerged as one of our most thoughtful and prolific writers on the subject of children's culture in America. His latest work, The Cute and the Cool, demonstrates copious research and a breadth of knowledge in a slim, readable volume.

"Western society seems to require an image of purity," writes Cross. "When the feminist revolution of the 1960s and 1970s removed that burden from women, it was shifted to the child" (6). Thus, we value childhood innocence and cuteness, hoping to shield the young from early maturity. We fear threats to childhood innocence in the forms of social changes, sex offenders, and media. At the same time, our children are growing up faster than ever before, fascinated by a world of consumerism that encourages them to be cool, cynical, and rebellious. This contradiction, "sheltered innocence" versus "wondrous innocence," lies at the heart of the book. Cross characterizes his argument as follows:

 
       Children today are protected from premature contact with the 
       calculating world of work and markets but are also invited to 
       delight in the continuously changing offerings of the consumer 
       market. They are sheltered from dysfunctional desire and shaped 
       into productive citizens in school, church, and other improving 
       institutions but also are encouraged to express personal longings 
       through consumption. Children are pushed back and forth between 
       these two definitions of their innocence, to the confusion and 
       frustration of all. (42) 

A historian, Cross does a fine job of chronicling the concept of innocence in America, addressing its reflection in various elements of popular culture, including toys, storybooks, movies, ...