Down with Childhood
Pop Music and the Crisis of Innocence
by Paul Rekret
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Pub Date 19 Sep 2017 | Archive Date 31 Oct 2017
Repeater Books | Repeater
Description
So claims Down with Childhood, as it takes in psychedelia’s preoccupation with rebirth and inner-children, the fascination with juvenilia amidst an ebbing UK rave scene and dozens of nursery rhyme hip-hop choruses spawned by a hit Jay-Z tune.
As it examines the often complex sets of meanings to which the occasional presence of children in pop songs attests, the book pauses at Musical Youth’s ‘Pass the Dutchie’ and other one-hit teen wonders, the career paths of child stars including Michael Jackson and Britney Spears, radical experiments in free jazz, and Black Panther influenced children’s soul groups.
In the process, a novel argument begins to emerge relating the often remarked crisis of childhood to changing experiences of work and play and ultimately, to an ongoing capitalist crisis that underlies them.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781910924495 |
| PRICE | US$14.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 120 |
Featured Reviews
David W, Media/Journalist
Slip-Sliding Away
Paul Rekret sure knows his pop music. Where I am bored, he sees nuance. Where I hear noise, he hears nostalgia. So his tour of 60 years of pop music is an expert’s guide. What he has done with this expertise is surmise that childhood is on its way out.
But precious childhood is a new concept that was already on its way out anyway. Childhood and indeed children were barely tolerated until recently. Children were considered small adults, expected to work for their keep, and subject to intense hardship if not outright slavery. Outside of Baby Jesus, no one sculpted or painted children in the past 3000 years. For a brief moment in the last century, children, at least American children, had freedom to express themselves, and be children. They could make their own friends, build a secret clubhouse, hang out at the candy store, and play games. Today, all that is gone again. Parents are in command and control mode, with every waking moment of their children’s lives preprogrammed, supervised and monitored. Rekret thinks parents consider children to be at-risk, being dumb children and all, so parents are just being vigilant. He doesn’t examine the possibility that parents are the ones at-risk, and have no time to allow their children any freedom. They impose their will to manage their time sink.
The music Rekret cites shows the decline. From the bubblegum pop of the fifties to the flower power of the sixties, to the gangsta rap of the 90s, he can follow the decline of innocence and childhood in lyrics. He thinks pop music reflects an impossible longing for idealistic childhood that is slipping farther and farther away. He cites Michael Jackson, who tried to live it, and Britney Spears, who leveraged it. His focus though, seems to be rap and its fragmentary offshoots. Some don’t think of rap as pop however.
What’s bizarre in all this analysis is that Reckret avoids the obvious – capitalism. You have only to glance at the audience in pop concerts to note that the biggest group is 12-14 year old (screaming) girls. They buy the tickets and the albums. So of course managers and record producers target them. It’s all geared to the market, not the artistic development of the performer. And since pop music is a phenomenon only 60-70 years old itself, this “development” is hardly a shocking new discovery; it’s market efficiency evolving.
Down With Childhood is (obviously) thought-provoking. It’s not John Putnam’s Our Kids, but it could sit on the same shelf.
David Wineberg
