In reading the introductory part of “No Future,” I kept thinking about a pop-culture representation of the need to ‘Save the Children,’ which Edelman lays at the foundation of politics and Western life: the 1964 Lyndon Johnson campaign ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKs-bTL-pRg) in which the little girl counts (incorrectly, nonetheless, which probably was done so as to make her more endearing to viewers) as she picks off petals from a daisy, and then a nuclear bomb blows up.
Essentially the message is: vote for Johnson because a vote for the other guy (Goldwater) is a vote to blow up the Children. I’m not kidding; the voice-over says: “these are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the darkness. We must either love each other, or we must die. Vote for President Johnson on November third, the stakes are too high for you to stay home.” (Sound like the Army of God as mentioned by Edelman?!)
This minute-long ad is loaded with so many of the points Edelman makes in the beginning of this week’s reading. This ad features the Child as the “figure for this compulsory investment in the misrecognition of figure,” (18) and the Child as standing in for the “fetishistic fixation of heteronormativity,” (21). Additionally, I found it rather alarming to note the extreme similarity between the words on the ad and the mission statement of the Army of God, which aims to “disrupt and ultimately destroy satan’s power to kill our children, God’s children.”
Just thought this was an interesting example at the intersection of politics and Children :D
...and to bring it into the present political moment, some nice YouTuber went ahead and updated the ad with a twist for 2008:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYk5MNjYhmk&feature=related
Pretty much everything e23 noted about the original applies to this copy. Moral of the story: special effects may be a little cleaner and rhetoric a tad less blatant, but really, nothing has changed in 43 years.
thats a hell of an advertisement
"A nation made for adult citizens has been replaced by one imagined for fetuses and children" (21). I love that quote by Lauren Berlant. This envisioned nation is one for a child who never progresses into adulthood. This child exists in a state of perpetual innocence. The nation is expected to base its actions on the future of the children. And yet no one seems to truly be envisioning the children as adults. Do we truly believe that our actions right now are going to produce a safer and more moral environment for future generations? The bombing of abortion centers is apparently "saving the children." There is a sense of incorruptibility about a child that must remain at the core of his/her essence. But for how long? When do children enter an age where they can be held accountable for their actions. When is it no longer necessary to save them from corruption. When can a child be held accountable for his/her queerness?
I also appreciated the Berlant quotation, although I may have misread it. Rather than being another case of the dominance of the child in public life, I read it as speaking toward the infantilization of the adult. I'm thinking here of seat-belt and helmet laws as well as, more arguably, drug laws - really anything that restricts the rights of the citizens in the name of their own safety. I'm not really sure what to make of this, how fruitful my misreading was, but I find the idea that just as public life is increasingly organized under the image of the child in mind, adults become increasingly viewed as children, intriguing. Thoughts?
-aha
Thats an interesting perspective that I did not think about. When one takes such a libertarian approach, one could argue that as adults, we feel a need to return to our state as children. Or perhaps, we never progressed form that infantile mode. While I have never opposed seat-belt laws, they are rather frivolous in their nature. Someone's decision to not wear a seatbelt is not harming anyone in the way that driving under the influence would. This imposition of personal safety is very similar to the rules we abide by while under our parents care. It is the role of the parents to do everything in their power to not let their children by physically injured. As much as they may oppose them, children do find security and comfort in the fact that someone is watching out for them. Citizens depend on government laws to shape them. They need to be told what to do so they can feel as though their lives are structured. So perhaps it is not out of the question to claim that adults' need to form a societal order for the future of the children is really just a desire to return to that place of obedience and innocence.