King of the Wild Frontier: Thoughts on Children's Stories and Pop Culture
I'm easily one of the quirkiest kids of my generation. Others in my age group probably grew up watching cartoons like "Spongbob" and "Arthur" (my lack of detailed knowledge of the pop culture landscape of my childhood is glaring right now) and other similar media. Me?
Saturday mornings were Western time. Usually, I might be found watching "The Lone Ranger" but I also enjoyed "The Range Rider" and, perhaps most of all, "The Cisco Kid." Sure, I watched shows more in line with current standards of children's media but I loved my westerns.
I am probably the one member of my generation who, under the age of 10 (rough guess here) was spellbound by George Pal's Destination Moon (1950) and delighted by the Disney film version of Jules Verne's In Search of the Castaways (1962). But looking back, probably more than another movie, the one that characterized my childhood was Fess Parker's Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier (and the sequel movie, Davy Crockett and the River Pirates). I had my own (toy) "Betsy" and coonskin cap. I could quote the song to you from memory. I raided the library shelves for any and all books about Davy. In short, I was a belated victim of the infamous "Davy Crockett Bug."
I'm not entirely sure of the reason I loved (and still love) this frontier epic so much. Maybe because of all the fictional characters (and yes, despite the historical background, this Davy Crockett is a fictionalized portrait of the actual man) I encountered, Davy was at once familiar and different.
Familiar because we hailed from the same part of the country and so there was a deep connection to the world he came from. He loved the woods. I grew up with woods in my backyard. Davy was clearly an introvert (I think most frontiersmen were introverts, hence why they chose they life they did) and, while I was unaware of the concept of introvert and extrovert at that age, I was, and still am, an introvert.
On the other hand, we were different. But those differences inspired me. I wanted to be the kind of man Davy was, a man who tried his best to what he believed was right ("Be sure you're right, and then go ahead"), a man who was strong but compassionate. The keyword here, and probably the single most compelling aspect of Davy's character for me, is "a man." Not a kid like me, a man. It's the common thread of my favorite books and movies both then and now.
It seems, from what I can tell, that over the past several decades, children's stories have lacked men like Davy Crockett. In fact, they lack men period half the time. I cannot think of a single children's movie, show or even book made in the past twenty years that features a positive, adult, masculine hero. The closest I can get is Star Wars (Obi-Wan in the prequels and The Clone Wars among other characters). But the vast majority of children's shows avoid this type of character. The exception is superhero films which still fall short of the kind of hero I found in Davy Crockett, the Lone Ranger and their kindred spirits. Something about Davy is more real and relatable (for me) than a bunch of guys flying around in capes and cool cars.
On the whole though, Hollywood avoids positive male heroes. And I believe it has negatively affected our society.
I'm not going off on a rant about the need for positive male role models in children's lives. Anyone with an ounce sense knows the validity of this argument. So I want to focus instead on what happens when boys don't have men to look up to from the perspective of storytelling. In a sense, those of us who take on the task of telling tales, visual or written, have the task of providing role-models en masse for those without them in real life.
I believe it is important to provide kids with adult heroes instead of child characters. Children tend to be shortsighted. They need men as heroes rather than other kids to broaden their priorities beyond simply being the coolest kid in their group. Boys especially need someone to show them the difference between strength and aggression, having a backbone and being stubborn, earning respect and being cool- I could list so many others but I think you get the idea.
I'm not holding my breath for Hollywood to turn out heroes like Davy Crockett again, but at least we can still show him to future generations. Maybe Hollywood would do it if we tried grinning them down?I mean, "it worked on a b'ar.." after all.
