Melt with Me: Coming of Age and Other ’80s Perils
Autor Paul Crenshawen Limba Engleză Paperback – 14 oct 2023
At the intersection of 1980s pop culture, the Cold War, and the trials of coming of age sits Melt with Me. Paul Crenshaw takes up a range of topics from Star Wars to video games, Choose Your Own Adventure books to the Satanic Panic. Blending the personal with the historical, levity with gravity, Crenshaw shows how pop culture shaped those who grew up in 1980s America: how Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative drove fears of nuclear war, how professional wrestling taught us everyone was either a good guy or a bad guy, how Bugs Bunny cartoons reflected the absurdity of war and mutually assured destruction, and how video games taught young boys, in particular, that no matter how hard they tried to save it, the world would end itself. Reflecting on the decade and its dark influence on fear-based notions of nation and manhood, Crenshaw writes, “All this reminds me I’m still afraid of the same things I was afraid of as a child. Some days I think the movies are real and we’re watching the last hour of humanity. You’ll have to decide if there’s any hope.”
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814258828
ISBN-10: 0814258824
Pagini: 208
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.25 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Mad Creek Books
ISBN-10: 0814258824
Pagini: 208
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 15 mm
Greutate: 0.25 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Mad Creek Books
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Recenzii
“What a joy it was to relive my childhood with the wisdom and humor of one of our greatest essayists. I’ve never been more certain while reading a book that I will wear it out as thoroughly as the VHS tapes of my favorite 1980s movies.” —James Tate Hill, author of Blind Man’s Bluff
Notă biografică
Paul Crenshaw is the author of This One Will Hurt You and This We’ll Defend: A Noncombat Veteran on War and Its Aftermath. His essays and short stories have appeared in Best American Essays, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Brevity, Oxford American, Glimmer Train, and The Rumpus, among many other venues.
Extras
I still won't step on cracks so I don't break my mother's back. I still think the last one there is a rotten egg, that if I make a face too many times it'll freeze that way, that if I find a penny and pick it up, then all day long I'll have good luck.
I still believe you're only safe when you're touching home base, and I still cross my fingers to make something untrue. I still knock on wood to ward off bad luck, and I still hide under the covers some days in hopes the monsters won't find me.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but that only relates to diet. There's no superstition to keep the body safe, unless we count the covers over our heads, or how we have to change our faces so they don't freeze in fear. When a hearse passes by, I pull over to the side of the road, although maybe that's out of respect rather than superstition.
I also know that some days I have to pull over when the news comes on the radio and I'm reminded of all the things we believed as children: that monsters only come out at night, that the slowest among us would suffer some punishment, that there was such a thing as safe. We thought as children of the '80s that all the danger came from the sky, but even then we knew you couldn't dodge bullets, back when we formed our small fingers into handguns and aimed them at one another. Sometimes we used rocks or sticks, and sometimes we said we had shields, but despite the strange superstitions we subscribed to, we always knew we couldn't sidestep or shield ourselves, though we claimed to every time someone shot at us, scared as we were of dying. We always knew there was no getting up. That once we were hit, we were out of the game, stuck there in the dirt with the others already shot.
We can check the closet and beneath the bed, but monsters are never where we expect them to be. I never say "cross my heart and hope to die" anymore, nor do I wish a thousand needles in my eye. I never say "Bloody Mary" in front of a mirror and I never say "one, two, Freddy's coming for you," like in that old movie about a man killing kids, because the screams at schools are no longer laughter, the coverage on our computer screens more terrible than anything we ever imagined.
Growing up I always believed the world would end in the kind of fire that came from missiles, not machine guns. But I still believe blowing out candles grants a wish, so on my daughter's next birthday I'll whisper in her ear what to wish for. Then I'll give her a rabbit's foot. I'll search for four-leaf clovers. A horseshoe, a ladybug, the number seven sewn big over her shirt with bulletproof thread.
Because everything we learned as children was true. We know that parents can die from breaking if their children stand in the wrong spot. We know sticks and stones and broken bones hurt worse than words ever could, with the exception of "There's been a shooting at your son's school." We know the monsters are everywhere, and we know there's no place to hide that they can't find you.
I still believe you're only safe when you're touching home base, and I still cross my fingers to make something untrue. I still knock on wood to ward off bad luck, and I still hide under the covers some days in hopes the monsters won't find me.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but that only relates to diet. There's no superstition to keep the body safe, unless we count the covers over our heads, or how we have to change our faces so they don't freeze in fear. When a hearse passes by, I pull over to the side of the road, although maybe that's out of respect rather than superstition.
I also know that some days I have to pull over when the news comes on the radio and I'm reminded of all the things we believed as children: that monsters only come out at night, that the slowest among us would suffer some punishment, that there was such a thing as safe. We thought as children of the '80s that all the danger came from the sky, but even then we knew you couldn't dodge bullets, back when we formed our small fingers into handguns and aimed them at one another. Sometimes we used rocks or sticks, and sometimes we said we had shields, but despite the strange superstitions we subscribed to, we always knew we couldn't sidestep or shield ourselves, though we claimed to every time someone shot at us, scared as we were of dying. We always knew there was no getting up. That once we were hit, we were out of the game, stuck there in the dirt with the others already shot.
We can check the closet and beneath the bed, but monsters are never where we expect them to be. I never say "cross my heart and hope to die" anymore, nor do I wish a thousand needles in my eye. I never say "Bloody Mary" in front of a mirror and I never say "one, two, Freddy's coming for you," like in that old movie about a man killing kids, because the screams at schools are no longer laughter, the coverage on our computer screens more terrible than anything we ever imagined.
Growing up I always believed the world would end in the kind of fire that came from missiles, not machine guns. But I still believe blowing out candles grants a wish, so on my daughter's next birthday I'll whisper in her ear what to wish for. Then I'll give her a rabbit's foot. I'll search for four-leaf clovers. A horseshoe, a ladybug, the number seven sewn big over her shirt with bulletproof thread.
Because everything we learned as children was true. We know that parents can die from breaking if their children stand in the wrong spot. We know sticks and stones and broken bones hurt worse than words ever could, with the exception of "There's been a shooting at your son's school." We know the monsters are everywhere, and we know there's no place to hide that they can't find you.
Cuprins
Choose Your Own Adventure for '80s Kids Satanic Panic Star Wars Left Turn at Albuquerque The Full Moon Candy Cigarettes Professional Wrestling Is Real Arc Missile Command Morgue Step on a Crack When Buckwheat Got Shot Red Shirt Guy Is Going to Die The Other Place New Words for the New World Breakdown Dead Baby Cold Cola Wars Optimism Right Here, Right Now Cold The Sadness Scale, as Measured by Stars and Whales
Descriere
Personal and historical essays about how pop culture and the Cold War shaped the fears and dreams of those coming of age in the 1980s.