Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Alex Rider: the proof that boys should be boys
Times ^ | July 15, 2006 | Amanda Craig

Posted on 07/14/2006 3:23:48 PM PDT by fgoodwin

Alex Rider: the proof that boys should be boys

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-2269130,00.html
http://tinyurl.com/m5dsl

The Times July 15, 2006

As Stormbreaker, the first film about children’s favourite junior spy, opens in cinemas, Amanda Craig talks to his creator, Anthony Horowitz, about adventures, kissing and growing up

“I STILL REMEMBER THE tremendous exuberance of being a boy,” Anthony Horowitz, the creator of Alex Rider, says. “It has an almost abstract quality that you can’t create by artificial means.”

I reflect on this as I walk round my local park every morning and see my son slay an entire Roman legion with a sword, track rabbits with a wolf and race against time to decode a complex computer virus invented by a fiendish villain bent on destroying every trace of human life.

The sword is really a stick, the wolf a dog and the computer virus a last-minute piece of maths homework. But to a boy aged between 3 and 13, these are an essential part of being himself. To be a boy these days, however, is to be born under a cloud. That natural exuberance is frowned on or even medicated; children are kept indoors instead of being allowed to run free.

Suddenly, however, the secret life of boys is being given much more support. The film of Horowitz’s Stormbreaker is coming to our screens, complete with death-defying car chases, jaw-dropping gadgets and enough adrenaline to boot James Bond into a bin liner. And the old-fashioned pleasures described in Conn and Hal Iggulden’s bestseller The Dangerous Book for Boys reassert such traditional pastimes as making a tree house, skinning a rabbit or peeling a thistle.

“I don’t think the imaginative world of boys has changed as perhaps that of girls has,” Horowitz says. “There’s something that is just pure, abstract Boy, which hasn’t changed since the 19th century. They still like violence, slapstick humour, gadgets, and Alex Rider very much plays on that.

“I deliberately don’t use slang or refer to fashionable clothes because those are so transient. I never set out to target boys, I just wrote for the boy in me.”

Despite the easy allure of computers and films, books are at the heart of the secret life of boys. Like Philip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Eoin Colfer, Terry Pratchett and Michelle Paver, Horowitz is popular with both sexes, but he is one of those increasingly rare children’s writers who create heroes without heroines to support or match them. This, I think, is significant. The feminist revolution has expanded the imagination and ambition of girls largely by invading the kinds of narrative that used to be reserved for boys, and boys resent it.

Alex Rider gets boys back to their essential daydreams. He may not want to be a spy or a saviour, but he knows how to do all kinds of cool stuff, from martial arts to speaking three foreign languages.

Unlike those of Andy McNab’s deadly serious children’s heroes, his adventures have a touch of comedy in them — such as when he breaks out of a tank with a killer jellyfish by squeezing zit cream on the metal frame.

“I did dream of being a spy, and even went as far as building radio receivers out of matchboxes when I was 9 or 10,” Horowitz says. “What I’m against is wrapping children in cotton wool. Modern life is squeezing danger out of children’s lives, because parents fear a paedophile on every street corner. Where is the spirit of Shackleton?” It is rare to find the type of unambiguous, confident hero celebrated by Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Hergé or John Buchan in more modern books or films. (The Aragorn that Tolkien created in The Lord of the Rings, who never doubts his moral strength, is a very different to that in Peter Jackson’s screen version.) Yet any parents who try to ban guns will find their sons biting them out of toast. Guns, swords, lavatory humour, practical jokes and dreams of glory are hard-wired into the male sex, and the adult failure to find this endearing and funny is why so many authors do not reach boys.

Until recently, children’s literature portrayed a prelapsarian age: magic depended upon not growing up, like Peter Pan. Ged, Ursula K. le Guin’s “Wizard of Earthsea”, specifically binds himself to chastity and only loses his virginity once he has lost his magic; Superman gives up his powers to have sex with Lois Lane.

Comic-book heroes may love the girl next door but Spiderman and Wolverine are always prevented from doing more than kissing them; in one of the most popular Playstation games for boys, Prince of Persia, the hero fights innumerable demons only to have his beautiful princess lose all memory of her saviour at the end. In Pullman’s His Dark Materials the ability to pass into other worlds ends after Will and Lyra kiss. For boys, who take on average two years longer to reach puberty, chastity is an essential part of the fantasy life.

Classic children’s novels, such as Geoffrey Trease’s Cue For Treason or C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy, often ended with the hero and heroine (sometimes disguised as a boy) marrying when they grew up, and this was as satisfying as the ending of a traditional fairytale.

Today, much-loved series such as Michelle Paver’s Chronicles of Ancient Darkness which feature a boy and a girl are read with increasing anxiety by boys who realise that the nature of relationships may change.

Paver’s Torak is, in one sense, a classic boys’ hero, surviving in the Stone Age with just a slate knife, a bow and a wolf — but how long before he and the girl, Renn, start behaving like Adam and Eve? It is obvious that some kind of sex is going to happen — the latest novel, Soul Eater, ends with some tantalising facts about wolf cubs — but boys do not want hero and heroine to become involved emotionally. When Harry Potter snogged first Cho Chang, then Ginny Weasley, half his fan base among the under-12s evaporated.

Alex Rider does have a girl friend, Sabina Pleasure, but she is not a girlfriend. He kisses her only once, at the end of the third book before saying goodbye to her for ever. Originally, the kiss was described in some detail, but when Horowitz read the scene to his sons, then 12 and 14, they reacted so strongly against it that it was cut. They felt, he said, that although James Bond has sex, they were “ uncomfortable” about a boy their own age having such feelings.

“Alex doesn’t have sex,” Horowitz says. “Sex erodes what I’m writing about, it interferes with childhood, with that total immersion of creating a world within a world.”

Our sons need this world badly, and the fact that their innocence will end naturally some time during their teens does not mean that it should be brought to a deliberate halt. The success of The Dangerous Book for Boys (which includes a sensible chapter on talking to girls) has hit a nerve precisely because the secret life of boys retains all of its essential characteristics, despite having received very little encouragement over the past 20 years. “I think that a lot of authors who try to write books for boys because they think there’s big money in it have fallen flat on their faces because you can’t reinvent it if you’ve lost it. The most horrifying thing I heard at a school was that a child was allowed to read my books for pleasure because they had passed an exam.”

Today’s boys may no longer want to join the scouts, but the Just William types still want to build dens in woods, dam rivers or race through the streets on their bicycles just as Alex Rider does in Stormbreaker’s most thrilling chase sequence. They want danger. The fact that many parents are too busy, or too frightened, to allow it has done most to push them into the sort of fantasy where the only action is the pressing of thumbs on console buttons — and where the heroes are bold, brave and living in a world of their own.

Amanda Craig’s website, http://www.amandacraig.com recommends books for children, especially boys.


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Education; Hobbies; Outdoors; Society; Sports
KEYWORDS: alexrider; anthonyhorowitz; bookreview; books; boyhood; boys; dangerousbook; emasculation; feminism; feminists; heroes; moviereview; stormbreaker

1 posted on 07/14/2006 3:23:53 PM PDT by fgoodwin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: fgoodwin

Interesting article - thanks for posting. My 10 year old son loves these books!


2 posted on 07/14/2006 7:32:22 PM PDT by day10 (Whenever you come near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: fgoodwin

Very, very nice. Thanks! Having raised three boys to adulthood, I can say with no second thought that, "Anything can be a gun."

I'm so glad I had boys over girls. Man, we had lots of rough and tumble fun! I miss those little boys so much, but I'll just relax and re-group until my Grandsons show up. ;)


3 posted on 07/14/2006 7:39:10 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin (Save The Earth. It's The Only Planet With Chocolate.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: day10
Interesting article - thanks for posting. My 10 year old son loves these books!

I've read them myself and enjoy them too. We didn't know Stormbreaker was being made into a movie. Anyone have a release date?

4 posted on 07/15/2006 6:30:14 PM PDT by Dianna
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Dianna

According to rotten tomatoes, the release date for the Stormbreaker movie is Oct 6 (wide).

The article led me to believe its being released earlier in the UK (or at least in London).


5 posted on 07/15/2006 6:56:12 PM PDT by fgoodwin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Dianna

http://stormbreaker.com/


6 posted on 07/15/2006 6:57:11 PM PDT by fgoodwin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: fgoodwin

Thanks for the info!


7 posted on 07/15/2006 8:23:34 PM PDT by Dianna
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson