The Quickening: Childhood is dying · 4:03pm May 4th, 2018

"Children are people. They are small people with perfect souls who haven't yet made them slaves." Gerry Spence

It's hard to be kid nowadays.

When I was younger, we had the option to imagine and dream about the things we saw during the day and later, tell our parents about what we had dreamed. Nowadays, kids don't get excited. In Children's Day, now the pattern is like this (the kid is always in a FUCKING cell phone [why does a kid needs a FUCKING cell phone?!]):

"It's Children's Day! What are you going to do?"
"Play Fortnite."
...Ok, but what else? Did you see Infinity War?"
"Yeah (say it in the most emotionless level)."
"And wasn't it great?"
"Meh."

Nowadays, children don't give a shit about anything. The lack of imagination, the lack of ashtonishment, the lack of creativity is impressive. Technology is everywhere and parents have changed too. In these times a parent wouldn't dare to raise his hand to his son because he calls Human Rights and accuses him of domestic violence, you can't give them a spanking in the park if they make a tantrum because that makes you the worst father in the world, you have to give the kid everything he want so that he's happy (Take this tablet and leave me do my work alone). Even Grown Ups, as bad as it is, dealed with this topic.

Before we didn't have everything first hand. We grew up with movies that molded our childhood and, in some aspects, adulthood. The Goonies, Gremlins, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Home Alone, Stand by Me, Babe, Matilda, A Little Princess, Neverending Story, The Princess Bride, Legend, Labyrinth are example of this.

And this affects our entertainment media. Movies are now trying to be franchises, presenting cinematic universes and proposing better effects and sutff that doesn't matter and not on proposing better stories and characters. Gamers who grew up with Nintendo, like me, have always carry the stereotype of "Nintendo is just for kids" and, like I said before, the media is becoming more age-restrictive. We complain about the kid who plays Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty, but that's pretty much the only interesting thing they have (to the point that I don't complain about Minecraft anymore).

It's terrible and sad to see boredom in the eyes of a child.

Death in its maximum splendor.

Imagination is missing nowadays. We need stories that remind us why imagination can help us to face the world. Nowadays kids films are dramas and both Disney Channel and Nickelodeon are focusing on kids that want to be famous and whose problems are adult problems. Fantasy is dying, there's no place for Mary Poppins anymore, there's no place for Roger Rabbit anymore, there's no place for E.T. anymore. Heck, there's no place even for Harry Potter anymore. Nobody wants to create fantasy or magic or stimulate children's imagination anymore. Why?

Because children's God nowadays is called consumism. They want to create product for kids to consume, to buy and to be fans from here to 30 years later.