Yo' Mama, Mary Mack, and Boudreaux and Thibodeaux by Jeanne Pitre Soileau

Author:Jeanne Pitre Soileau [Soileau, Jeanne Pitre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Children's Studies, Folklore & Mythology, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies
ISBN: 9781496810410
Google: xPzIDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Published: 2016-12-14T05:48:28+00:00

To Infinity and Beyond

CHILDREN’S PLAY IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE

It is 2014 and I am now living in New Iberia, Louisiana, after having moved around south Louisiana a number of times over the past forty-four years. I am lounging beside the swimming pool at the Reserve, a newish apartment complex built in the midst of cane fields. Two boys run past me, one African American, the other white. One is five, the other four. The four-year-old wears a tattered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles outfit. “Pock, pock, pock, pock,” the four-year-old shouts as he aims his Nerf Super Soaker at his friend. The five-year-old keeps running, “You missed!” he shouts, “You will never defeat Zurg, Buzz Lightyear!” and he belly flops into the pool. Wow—what intermingled popular culture references! A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume, a store-bought merchandising item pedaled to moms around Halloween season; a Nerf water gun—in 2011, the Nerf Super Soaker Shot Blast won the Best Outdoor Toy of the Year at the Eleventh Annual Toy of the Year Awards held at the American International Toy Fair in New York City.1 “Zurg” and “Buzz Lightyear” are characters that appear in Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and Toy Story 3, Pixar productions distributed by Disney Films.2

I reach for my notebook and squint and scribble. OK, what is really new about what I just saw? The running game is a variant of the many chase games children have played throughout history. The fact that an African American boy and a white child live in the same apartment complex has its roots in the 1960s in south Louisiana. Nerf toys, Buzz Lightyear, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles represent current popular culture manifestations, which the boys tap into and identify with.

Many traditional games are still played today. I pass school yards where girls clap hands and jump rope (if the principal allows rope jumping). Boys still climb the monkey bars (if the playground still has them), chase each other in tag games, play marbles, and build tree houses.

The electronic age has simply added, not superimposed, a new play world for children. The four-year-old dressed in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles clothing has an Xbox in his bedroom and has viewed the DVD of Toy Story 2 enough times that, even at his young age, he can quote entire passages of the script. Two of my grandchildren, now in college, watched the VHS tape of Monty Python and the Holy Grail until they could mimic episodes complete with accents and accompanying special effects. They still quote lines whenever an appropriate moment presents itself.

Play in the electronic age offers an exciting range of new modes of interaction—YouTube, Facebook, smartphones, Xboxes, video games, and much more offer children and young adults new avenues of play and social communication. Simon Bronner, in “Digitizing and Virtualizing Folklore,” tells us:

Alan Dundes was among the first folklorists during the 1970s to spot the computer’s leavening of folklore: “So technology isn’t stamping out folklore; rather it is becoming a vital factor in

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