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In the wake of Littleton, a new panic is being sown in the fertile soil of fears about the young. Just as "juvenile delinquents" were a national obsession in the '50s, the specter of killer kids is now haunting America. And just as perverts were once thought to stalk the nation's schoolyards preying on the young, the culture is now imagined as a stalker of our children's souls. Meet Austin Powers, the new enemy within.

Never mind that adolescents are making wiser decisions about sex than their parents ever did, as demonstrated by the declining teen pregnancy rate. Never mind that violence is a far greater threat to kids today than sex could ever be. Puritans will always see opportunity in the primal parental fear of losing control over their children. But this time, there's a modern edge to the panic. Because it's not just precocious sexuality that's being beamed through the TV, the movies and the toy store. These devil dolls are also sissyfying our sons.

Clerical pundits like Dennis Prager have taken full advantage of this anxiety, loosing op-ed jeremiads about a feminist-led "war on boys' natures" in a recent issue of the Weekly Standard. The underlying fear is that kids are learning to identify with a persona that breaks the macho mold. Of course, what's really happening has less to do with feminizing boys than with liberating all children from the tyranny of gender roles. But traditional parents may well worry at the sight of their daughter waving a light saber around the house, while their son contemplates carrying a purse like Tinky Winky.

But it's not just Tinky Winky; consider the buzz about Jar Jar Binks, the alien sidekick in the new "Star Wars" movie. Of course, Jar Jar is most frequently maligned for alleged racial stereotyping in the creation of his faux-Rasta character. But now, more than a dozen newspapers and magazines, from the National Enquirer to USA Today, have weighed in on whether Jar Jar is gay. From the fury in cyberspace, you'd think George Lucas had set a drag queen loose in the Sistine Chapel. Clearly, this oversized amphibian has never sung in the choir, but he does utter words no real man would ever tell a Jedi warrior: "I wuv you." No wonder it's been necessary for the actor who plays him, Ahmet Best, to assure the world that Jar Jar is "swinging straight."

Notice that for all the tumult over whether the Internet, video games and violent movies might whet a kid's appetite for mayhem, no one is panicking over action figures from the wrestling realm or the ever more pumped-up G.I. Joe. These toys remain acceptable because they affirm traditional ideas about masculinity. But Tinky Winky and Jar Jar are signs that the culture is evolving before our eyes, teaching little boys that manhood isn't measured by power and dominance, but by the ability to nurture and love.

And so, in the modern version, Tarzan is no longer king of the jungle, but a deeply troubled boy torn between doubts about his ape identity and foreboding about his human nature. The conflict is resolved by his emergence as the caretaker of an inter-species family. Here is the brave new world writ small. We can't let him model self-love, too.

And as for Austin Powers: He may be shagadelic, but he sure isn't butch. Indeed, the great jape in this movie is that the randy nerd in the flouncy outfits -- who is indeed polymorphously perverse -- will always beat out his demonic double, the tight-assed Dr. Evil, especially when it comes to getting women. (And note to Jerry Falwell: Austin began to look like a switch-hitter in the final scene of "The Spy Who Shagged Me", when he got into bed with his look-alike clone and the lovely Felicity Shagwell.)

Now it looks like cracking down on the PG Powers doll won't be enough. Even though few kids who haven't been to Britain know the meaning of the word "shag," a movement has started to remove it from the title of "Austin Powers 2." Such is life in the land of promiscuous puritans, where wild shifts between freedom and repression are the norm. Children will always be caught on the horns of that dilemma -- and they will always find ways to escape.
salon.com | June 30, 1999

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