|
Post by queenzod on Sept 30, 2020 0:01:03 GMT
It’s only odd through the lens of our times. Imo, of course.
|
|
|
Post by sgev1977 on Sept 30, 2020 0:08:46 GMT
Sure there is something about that! But even in his time it was considered something peculiar. It was mostly interpreted in a positive way but clearly it was considered an eccentricity.
|
|
|
Post by queenzod on Sept 30, 2020 0:52:01 GMT
Well, speculation ain’t fact.
Maybe I’m just over sensitive to this issue, considering so many people these days have been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles. Look at Tom Hanks! He’s not even an eccentric. 😉
|
|
|
Post by dickens38 on Sept 30, 2020 1:40:12 GMT
I'm 54, and I love all of the Harry Potter books and movies! We had planned a trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Florida, back in May, but COVID happened. Maybe next year. I got the audiobook of Peter Pan from the library to listen to in the car with the kids, and was...surprised...how different the book was from the Disney movie, LOL Well I am much older than that and I love all of them. There were times when the story dragged on a bit, when Harry and Hermione were looking for Horcruxes without Ron. As a matter of fact, I am reading them again. Films were fun too.
|
|
|
Post by sgev1977 on Sept 30, 2020 1:51:16 GMT
With all respect to Americans, there is a culture of conspiracy theories around pedophilia and, in general, about witch hunting that seems to go very deep in their puritanical roots but I think the speculation around people like J. M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll is mainly because there is indeed an obsession with children and childhood in their work and personal lives. Maybe they weren't perverts but they were lonely men who had very close relationships with other's people's children and passionately wrote about them (and photographed them and made drawings of them, sometimes in the nude, in Carroll's case)
Barrie lost a brother when he was a child and there is this suggestion of the "lost boys", the ones who never become adults, are dead kids. And of course, the main adult in their world is Hook, a man who fears a crocodile with a clock inside its stomach. A monster who sounds like Time, in other words, the death itself. There is a lot of trauma in his work for children and all that pain in his fantastic supposedly innocent work made him an eccentric. I think that's why modern people speculate about his life.
|
|
|
Post by ellie on Sept 30, 2020 6:50:40 GMT
There is quite compelling evidence of inappropriate relationships with children in the cases of Barrie and Carroll - particularly Carroll. The Mark Twain thing also does sound rather strange. But obviously none of that can justifiably be extrapolated into a belief that all or most children’s writers have pedophile tendencies.
As for the current, arguably OTT, suspicions of pedophilia In general, I think that stems from the fact that there have in recent years been a number of highly publicised cases of sexual abuse of minors that was covered up for years involving various individuals and institutions. That tends to create heightened suspicion all round as a response.
,
|
|
|
Post by sgev1977 on Sept 30, 2020 11:09:40 GMT
Yes, the Me Too influenced it but it's also political. The USA is very divided right now and there is this belief that the "other", your enemy, is so bad that surely he or she is capable of the worst (and the "worst" is abusing children) then it's a puritanical culture that historically loves to hunt "witches" mixed with a deficient mental health system and the awful nature of Internet social networks. It's not exclusive of the USA but it's clearly stronger there.
|
|
|
Post by ellie on Sept 30, 2020 12:23:39 GMT
Yes, the Me Too influenced it but it's also political. The USA is very divided right now and there is this belief that the "other", your enemy, is so bad that surely he or she is capable of the worst (and the "worst" is abusing children) then it's a puritanical culture that historically loves to hunt "witches" mixed with a deficient mental health system and the awful nature of Internet social networks. It's not exclusive of the USA but it's clearly stronger there. I was thinking more of the cases that have cropped up in relatively recent years of child abuse within institutions such as the church and various sports. That plus there were a lot of cases unearthed in the UK following the revelations about the TV star Jimmy Saville’s long history of sexually abusing underage girls. All of that revealed a lot of abuse that had been either deliberately covered up or, in the case of Jimmy Saville, which many chose not to look into because he was such a big star in the UK. But yes, there is the other situation where the accusation is used for political gain rather than in the pursuit of justice.
|
|
|
Post by roverpup on Sept 30, 2020 13:03:42 GMT
Ellie said: "But obviously none of that can justifiably be extrapolated into a belief that all or most children’s writers have pedophile tendencies."
And that exactly was my point! So what if a even a dozen or more had trouble with forming adult relationships and/or had pedophile tendencies.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of children authors world wide and to be making such a blanket statement that they OFTEN were/are maladjusted in this manner is outrageous.
It's sophistry, pure and simple!
|
|
|
Post by mllemass on Sept 30, 2020 17:30:41 GMT
Since I seem to have started this, I want to clarify that I didn’t mean to say that all or even most children’s writers are pedophiles. And I certainly don’t think that! I was just repeating something I learned in my course almost 35 years ago. We only studied a few authors in my course. These days, you can find that information anywhere, but there was no internet back then so yes, we had to rely on our professors to teach us all sorts of things about the writers we were reading. I really never meant to upset anyone.
|
|