One of the first things you learn in PR is that newspapers are written at a "fifth grade level," so don't try to write anything too fancy or complicated. Not only did this early lesson make me wonder why I ever took college-level English, but it also raised my suspicions that most Americans - at least the "average" ones to which marketers and companies like newspapers must appeal - are not really interested in anything too intellectually, shall we say, fancy or complicated.
But wait. What if a newspaper written for a fifth-grader is only a symptom of a much larger issue? You don't have to look too far to find evidence of America's thriving fifth-grade culture.
So what got me thinking about our culture's deepening Peter Pan syndrome? Mainly the fact that I am on yet another flight full of business travelers and adult vacationers where the feature film is a cartoon - something about penguins surfing (obviously). While this movie is marginally better than the infamous scene in Airplane! in which passengers are watching a reel of other planes crashing, I am hardly impressed. Granted there may be other explanations for this film's appearance - keeping children from crying or a debilitated airline that will be put out of business by one more frivolous lawsuit and therefore only chooses to feature the most saccharine fare. Maybe. But judging by the transfixed idiots around me - not to mention the box office success of these films, I think people love this stuff. Whether it is the desire for a perpetual childhood or a necessary escape from the cartoonish character they elected president, I will never know. But America's sexless, violence-free, moral-laden version of anime appears here to stay.
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