DANESI.

DANESI, Marcel. Forever Young: The 'Teen-Aging' of recent Culture Toronto: University of Toronto Pres 2003 139pp $4500 (h) $2195 (p)

The excessive worship of adolescence and its social empowerment at adult institutions is the deep rooted cause of a serious cultural malaise. in such a manner argues semiotician Marcel Danesi in Forever Young, an unforgiving anticipate at modern culture's incessant drive to create a 'teen-aging' of adult life. Written for the general reader and based onward interviews with over 200 adolescents and their parents. Danesi begins from asserting that one of the early causes of this crystallization of adolescence as an age category can be traced back to theories of psychology at the revolve of the twentieth century. Since then, the psychological view of adolescence as a stressful period of adjustment has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This, in tandem with the devaluation of the family by the agency of the media and society at large, has l to a maturity gap--a fissure in family dynamics that is eagerly and ably exploited according to the mass media. Unlike many academic digressions into the malaise of late culture, Forever Young provides conglomerated answers on how the 'forever young syndrome' can be addressed. individual solution is to dispel the myth that master-hands and professionals are the the community best equipped to give advice in succession raising children. The second is to recognize the value of family, in all its different combinations, as the primary institution of child-rearing The third is to challenge the pervasive notion that teen tillage is a sophisticated endeavor--that, for example, clap music can claim to have produc more [i]or[/i] less of the best musical art in the world, surpassing Mozart or Bach. on laying bare the misguided positions that have brought about, and continue to prefer a 'forever young' mentality, Danesi demonstrates that the 'teen-aging' of agriculture has come about because it is, simply deposit good for business. Teen tastes have achieved cultural supremacy because the western economic scheme requires a conformist and easily manipulated market, and has thus joined forces with the media-entertainment oligarchy to advance a deterministic 'forever young' market.

...

Home