The ANOMALY OF POINTING OUT ANOMALY
2020-2021
– Milo Yiannopoulos
If I were one of
the privileged western flag bearers of feminism, like our esteemed author here,
I certainly wouldn’t refrain from employing phrasal tags such as “bat-shit crazy propagandist.” Regrettably,
I am not. I’d rather that the author is being a sane pragmatic, which is worse
by the way, when she says ‘many people believe Cinderella is a great help to children because it gives them a sense that
life is ultimately good.’ I say a child of four should be made to believe life is ultimately good, for she has a lifetime of recouping
with reality, which is unpleasantly otherwise.
It is rather funny
to point out the blatant sexism fabricated in the essay – ‘To girls especially,
the story’s message is that their wishes will be fulfilled. I shouldn’t be a
bearer of revelation when I say this; the world constitutes of girls and boys - the text was certainly written
keeping in mind both the sexes and not ‘just’ girls. You know plainly that
something is awry when feminism intersects sexism producing a lethal flow of
destructive opinions.
In my humble
opinion, there is a candid commoditization of the term ‘fantasy’ and
‘fantastical implications’ that seep through her writing. I argue that the ‘unrealistic
rags to riches’ was very well intended to be unrealistic; since when did literature stand questionable to the
screwy standards of realism? A story is a story, wherein it can be anything it
chooses to be from a wide array of disjointed genres.
As superfluous as
it sounds, there is a formidable wave of reasons as to why a baby of four isn’t
thrust with an unabridged hardbound edition of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or
Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Literature aims at relation, one need to see in order to relate a story to
themselves - a child of four hasn’t seen to that extent, and doesn’t need to
either.
When the article
states ‘Cinderella, in many ways, is offensive to the modern woman and
inadequate for the modern society,’ we know where the problem lies exactly. Cinderella,
that last time I checked, was a fairytale. A fairytale is a traditional story
‘written for children usually involving imaginary creatures and magic’. The
GenY has rendered some facts in dire need of timely acknowledgement, one of
them fore-mostly being; a fairytale is not a political manifesto or a 17th
century lyrical ballad. Children’s literature was exclusively concocted for the
‘kinder’s joy’- for kids. Fairytales are, and were never intended to
cater to the whims and relishes of ‘modern women’ or ‘society’ at large.
The technical
fallacy in the author’s argument is revealed when it states, ‘Cinderella is
dependent on the fairy godmother.’ I would point out that in the supposedly misogynist
Cinderella, the entire course of the story is struck and designed by the fairy
godmother, who happens to be a woman.
A reading child
usually looks for immediate satisfaction; it may be information about something
of vital interest to him, but more often it is pleasure to be gained by
escaping from his own world into the enjoyment of experiences with characters
he’s meeting for the first time. This is the precise reason why the
commercialization of magic and illogic as a theme is not only grossly redundant
but also piteously heartless- prohibiting a child from the world of talking
bumblebees and purple unicorns and instead shoving viscous political agendas/female socialization misinterpretations down their puny throats.
I’m not saying
don’t shove viscous political agendas and female socialization
misinterpretations down people’s throats. Uh-Huh. Go ahead, do it all you like
if you want the world to prosper. Spare the four-year-old, that’s all.
The article’s
argument seems to evade all realms of perceived logic really. If a four-year
old exhibits the mettle to relate Cinderella’s small shoe size to the ancient
Chinese tradition of foot binding, that to the symbolism of beauty and that to
the sociological relegation of females-
then I’d plaintively argue dinosaurs exist and ghosts are real too.
The algorithm set
forth by the article’s drift seems to miss the point of children’s literature
entirely- to lead an escape for the child and incentivize their imagination.
That’s about it. No more, no less. If there are good morals churning out of
this process, well and good, if not, then that’s fine too. As long as the kid
is delighted and their emotion is called out to, a fairytale is working.
When the evil
sisters hack their feet off to fit the slippers, they aren’t portraying ‘beauty
standards’ or ‘conformity’ - they portray a simple emotion of ‘jealousy’ which
is certainly more tangible and relatable to children than the former. Jealousy
is an inherent trait common amongst children for they seek temporary pleasures.
Hence the evil sisters are ‘evil,’ they are jealous of Cinderella’s relation
with the prince - and being jealous is an evil virtue of possession.
Some extremes go
eerily too far in the other direction. It seems that some women are offended
that Cinderella needed help from a man simply because he’s a man, and that she
should have refused his offer not because of their lack of real love, but
because, again, he’s a man and asking a man for help is a weakness. This kind
of ordinary sexism is more damaging to a child than scavenging out bits of anti-feminist characterizations. It has to be addressed that everybody needs everybody’s
help, men and women and others. Each of us has half the
puzzle and we need the other half - not necessarily in a romantic way, but as
friends, parents, and leaders.
Pointless articles
don’t bother me much, but a pointless article at the cost of children is
something I’d have difficulty gulping down. When the author ends with ‘It is
always fun to read fantasy stories with impossibly happy endings’, does she
imply stories for children should cease to be fun? Or do the implications of
‘fantasy’ disturb her?
Whatever the case
maybe, it is distinctly understood that the author has somehow managed to
jumble her perspectives and land in a preposterous state of confusion- contrary
to her belief, the target audience of Cinderella are not privileged graduate
students like herself, but infants with unclear speech and sugar lozenge
addictions, from variegated economic and national backgrounds.
Most importantly,
it is for the children who are surrounded every day by the blackness of this
world’s reality and the unending chaos of sociological norms- that escaping the
‘real,’ even for a few brief moments, becomes their sanctuary of sanity.
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