A Waste of Time

The burden of proof in the American justice system.

A lot of children’s literature is kind of creepy in retrospect, but we accept it when we’re kids without thinking about it much. I don’t think that really is indicative of any kind of intentional current through it, except that a lot of the “classic” children’s stories are naturally older, and mores and opinions on things have changed while the stories haven’t. The stories stay acceptable because, like I was saying, people read them and accept them when they’re too young to look at them ironically or sexually, and then they want their kids to read the same things they read when they were little, there’s some vague idea of tradition, so the stories don’t get retired. Which is a lot like the Bible. Christianity being, if you want to look at it that way, a religion of zombie worship with a tradition of ritualized cannibalism and a host of pagan ceremonies assimilated into an occasionally nonsensical patchwork, but if you pound it into kids when they’re too young to know better then, as adults, the whole creepy freakshow actually provides them with a sense of comfort and security. Anyway, that was kind of a tangent and kind of not, because my basic point was just gonna be to say that I find The Velveteen Rabbit to be especially creepy, but I still really like it.