Thoughts On: Consumed by Conspicuous Consumption by Wendy Glenn

So I think I will keep my comments to a minimum this time around given that I found this article to be strangely peculiar.

For starters, I usually don’t like to call people names or make overt generalizations of them, but...I think Wendy Glenn is a ragging communist, and also she appears to be one of those old time academics who have a prejudiced view of what defines ‘real’ literature. I know this does not make her inherently a bad person, nor does it make her analysis invalid, but I feel that it has somewhat clouded her judgement or at the very least predetermined her analysis before her research was completed, instead of allowing her results to determine her conclusions. And yes I know everyone is in possession of certain biases; Glenn, however, seems to be writing with an overly strong agenda. I base this on several offsetting statements which she made:

1)       “The novels discussed in this article might not meet my definition of good literature, but I don't have the right to tell students not to read them.” –I think we all know what she thinks of these novels.

2)       “...cross-examination of the YA titles discussed here and John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men or The Grapes of Wrath, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or Charles Dickens's Great Expectations.”—it seems odd that she would only request comparing “conspicuous consumption” books with only notable classics. Why not compare them with suitable contemporary novels; are these not worthy examples as well?

3)      and, why does she use a Marxist principled approach in her analysis anyways; it seems over the top. I know that she is attempting to bring legitimacy to her claims, but this could have been established through other methods.

In any event, I do somewhat agree with some of her conclusions, especially that which highlights the importance of YAs reading critically. But I think Glenn is somewhat wrong to think and suggest that YAs do not already do this; it is a natural process of reading. Nobody simply accepts things as they are read to be absolute (at least I hope not); let’s give YAs a little credit, they are not children who have not yet been educated or raised to think this way and surely they have walked through a depressed neighbourhood (or possibly even live in one), or have seen posiitive ethnic and gender role models in their daily routines to know that the depiction of life within Gossip Girl is not representative of the whole of society.