Re: the whiteness of middle class play

From: Paul Dillon (dillonph@northcoast.com)
Date: Sun Dec 05 1999 - 12:24:57 PST


>- this pokemon thing is pretty much a white kids play, yes?
>is it as pervasive in low-income schools/families? with african-americans,
>hispanics?
>

There is absolutely no evidence that his is the case, starting with the fact
that it's Japanese in origin.

On the other hand, unlike lunch boxes, barbie/ken and all the other
trappings of white middle class childhood, Pokemon represents something of a
tertiary artefact and, in this sense, still quite unique in the complexity
of the system for the age group it appeals to (primarily pre-teens by all
evidence I have seen).

Another quality to consider, that differentiates it from such homo-erotic
fantasying play with barbie and ken, as has been described here in terms of
a subversion of parent's expectations, Pokemon provides a bridge between
stranger kids on a level that is also quite unexpected but fully within the
design itself. I highly doubt that too many children meeting each other
with their barbie and ken dolls would say, "Hey you want to play queer with
our dolls?" or "Can my barbie feel up yours?" But who knows, maybe
Barbie's come out of the closet and soon they will in fact market "Bull-Dyke
Barbie" complete with leather SM trappings. I don't know, maybe they
already have.

Anything that can be marketed will be marketed in our society but that
doesn't explain why kids go for it or have much at all to do with the
special quality of Pokemon artefacts as constitutive of a unique and
heretofor non-comparable COP as several have called it. As Charles Erasmus,
anthropologist at UCSB for a long while, used to say of all consumer
culture: "Nothing comes out of that faucet unless you suck on it!" Why
some things cause people to suck and others don't, that's the question.

Paul H. Dillon



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