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Originally Posted by Kane
bah, i'm not gonna register for some shit just to read that.
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fixing.
Here's the article.
Handbasket cases
Pop culture insinuates that teens are writing their own tickets to hell
By REBECCA DELANEY
Special to The Star
I n case you missed the memo: American youth has officially gone to hell in a handbasket.
Yep. We’re revolting creatures … immoral little demons writhing around in our own wayward, promiscuous ways.
In fact, teenagers have become so wretched that we’ve collectively managed to spur the whole “global warming” phenomenon. Don’t let the meteorologists and scientists fool you. They’ll claim the Earth’s temperature is rising because of something really far-fetched like pollution. But we know better. The Earth’s really getting warmer because we teens have gotten so awful that the heat from our hellish ways is emanating from our sin-soaked bodies. Apparently too much sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll will melt the polar ice caps.
In case you missed the second memo: I’m just kidding — for the most part.
Let me clarify. I’ve just finished reading Paul Ruditis’ new novel, Rainbow Party, a supposedly cautionary tale about life, love, relationships and the perils of oral sex. In case you’re out of the neurotic parents’ and/or teen-lingo loop, a “rainbow party” refers to a party where girls each wear a different color of lipstick and take turns performing oral sex on male partygoers. The term entered the suburban lexicon after it was discussed on an episode of “Oprah” dedicated to revealing the “secret language” of teens.
I was admittedly a little biased against the book before I even started reading it (I took one look at the author’s name and decided “paulruditis” sounded a little too much like an STD), but the novel is, in short, bad. The “caution” implied in “cautionary tale” is definitely there: Many of the party’s invitees grow so uneasy that relationships crumble and the party falls apart before it actually takes place … conveniently preventing the further spread of a massive oral gonorrhea outbreak in the school.
The real problem lies in the fact that Rainbow Party, supposedly geared for an audience ages 14 and up, is so thinly written, poorly developed and fundamentally contradictory in its semipornographic details (i.e. fairly vivid sex scenes) that any worthwhile message is canceled out.
Oddly enough, the whole rainbow party concept is, as far as I know, suburban legend. File it under the ever-expanding “parental hysteria” category. Last time I checked, high school orgies weren’t trendy.
Parents can breathe a sigh of relief because we, your children, are safe for the time being. If we really are headed to hell in a handbasket, it probably has nothing to do with a rainbow party.
Adults have enough to be panicked about — war, poverty, taxes, health care and Supreme Court justices — without hyperventilating over isolated phenomena blown unfortunately out of proportion in books or on “Oprah.” (Although, side note: I still love you, Oprah, even if you inspire the occasional “serious talk” between my mother and me.)
Alas, society thrives on controversy, and what with all our self-discovery and exploration, we teens are such a threatening species we might as well be branded with a label reading, “Hi, we’re volatile. Project all your irrational fears inspired by sensationalized accounts of teenage moral destruction on us!”
Maybe the entertainment industry — novels, films, TV and the Internet alike — should combine forces to create a “teens-are-naughty-and-self-destructive” committee. That way, they could combine forces to create a sort of hypocritical superhero agency full of hollow “cautionary” material to save teens the world over from being lured into morally destructive behavior.
Of course, if the agency were really effective, the entire entertainment business would fall apart. After all, it’s the types of publishers who print Rainbow Party who also print the Gossip Girl series — books in which sex is a central theme, glorified rather than discouraged.
And so we’ve come full circle. The same nameless people who promote edgy, sex-charged stuff like Fox’s “The OC” are subtly but strongly linked to the panic-stricken folks who blame smutty television and suggestive celebrities for the moral chaos supposedly ensuing among the teenage population. One group pushes the envelope; the other scrambles to move it back into place.
Life’s all about panic, ain’t it?
In reality, American youth isn’t all that bad. I know I’m not exactly eager to host my own rainbow party, and I think I’m in the majority on that topic … at least, I hope. We don’t need to be reading subpar novels posing as cautionary tales about oral gonorrhea.
Instead, (CLICHÉ ALERT) we need to open the lines of communication between generations (END CLICHÉ ALERT). What we really need is for our parents, teachers, (insert assorted trusted, respected adults here) and whatnot to be willing to talk to us before they’re petrified thinking we’ve gone and done something awful from an episode of “Oprah.”
It’s been preached a thousand times, but it’s still true: Talk to us. It’s a lot easier than getting all hot and bothered because you’re convinced all the teens you know really are so sinful that they’re inspiring global warming and rising gas prices and the West Nile virus and …you get the idea.
In the meantime, teens like me will sit in our handbaskets, sweating it out. Because as far as I know, we’re haven’t taken those handbaskets to hell. At least, not yet.
