Oooh, Grant, what a good riff: Pixar and the Precious Children (the children of the upper middle class who are coddled and protected and so out of touch with reality that it makes your head swim) But you know, I was watching South Park with my daughter the other night, and I am thinking of the imputed expression. South Park is about as far from Pixar as you can go in animation–well I suppose stick figures would be further–but I was thinking about how I, anyway, tend to “read in” expression to those fat flat little faces.

And the other thing I think about are the cadre of the shadow or reverse of the Precious Children–kids who are underprotected and undercoddled, kids where the parents aren’t parenting or don’t know what to do or cannot protect them from—

In fairy tales sometimes heroes and heroines do what they know they should not, because of the glamour or enchantment–the mixture of thrill and dread when you do something you know you should not, but you cannot resist that haunting call–

the gang enchantment and the drug enchantment and the bling bling enchantment and the easy sex/booty enchantment

leading to the kids in court or dead.

You wrote of “Is there a Ricky Williams effect? “–well, maybe, but what about the shadow, the dark side of the coddling culture.

One theme I’ve noticed is the legacy of extreme peer pressure + absent or overworked families. The result is that students are hypervigilant against any disruption of the group or the tribe. For this reason they are inclined to dull the edge of all-out competition and innovation (perhaps a variant of the Tall Poppy Syndrome).

I guess I’d argue that in your counter example, the NFL is acting like the government – putting in place new rules that applied to all the franchises looks to me like governmental regulation for the purpose of structuring a market.

I don’t think I was really saying much past the old adage from 20 years ago that no one ever got fired for buying IBM products – people minimize their risks all the time on an individual basis b/c of fear of the consequences of being wrong. To some degree, the justification for bankruptcy protections is that we want people to feel free to take risks without worrying that they will literally lose everything.

“In certain systems, all competition does is make people limit their risks; the cost of failure is too high.”

I don’t know that I follow this line of reasoning. In a similar vein to my Pixar comment, it was competition for audience that motivated changes to the NFL. It was precisely that the cost to all franchises was so high that changes occurred. I’m struggling to picture the situation in which a lack of costs and/or a lack of competition would result in greater innovative strides.

Keelay, yes, improv is the thing. It’s popularity is a good sign, and, perhaps, evidence that there will be retraining grounds. Thanks.

Mumblin’ good point, all of us are products of rote learning and somehow escaped its icy grasp. Thanks.

Dirk, precisely, kid culture is more hierarchical than the court of Elizabeth (I). Thanks.

SomeCallMeTim: I’m with you. Some parts of the Dem culture is about spontaneity and bouleversement. Long may it remain so. If only they weren’t so very nervous about the bouleversement of the marketplace. Thanks.

Ah, nice one, perhaps that’s it: the safety of the group. Thanks.

Tom, don’t get me wrong. I dont wish for modesty. As an anthropologist, I merely report it. I’m with SomeCallMeTim, bouleversement is better–or at least more interesting, usually. Thank you.

Grant

Yesterday, you were arguing for “as many birds as possible with one modesty shot” or some such thing. Sounded like you were pleased with that development.

Me, I’m betting on sex.

Today, you’re despairing for the loss of the spontaneous fringe.

The unintended consequence of the kind of animation you’re describing is a loss of humanity, the sticky, damp stuff that we live with. In graduate school, a professor once said, “where there’s life, there’s slime.” Not in PixarWorld, there’s not.

Me, I’m betting on slime.

And, heading for Paris for Thanksgiving…