A Change in the Status Quo
What song do you sing after the world ends?
Hello! This is the first entry in Very Distant Lands, my newsletter about fatherhood and pop culture. My name’s Adam Fleming Petty. If you’ve signed up for this, you probably know me in some way, be it digital or analog. But maybe not? Are you a stranger?? Can’t be too careful on the internet!
I’m a full-time stay-at-home dad to two daughters. My wife works in an office, and we live in West Michigan, which is part of what makes our arrangement work. It’s doubtful our family of four could get by on a single income if we lived outside the Midwest. Come on out, the housing market is reasonable! The job prospects are somewhat less so!
When I’m not hitting up storytime at the local library or running the school pick-up gauntlet, I write. Fiction, mostly. Some essays and reviews. But I've wanted to write something looser and more personal, as well as cultivate the habit of sending stuff out regularly, and the newsletter seemed like a good choice. I’m a late adopter to tech stuff, I didn't get on Twitter till like 2014, but better late than never! Accept the benevolent offering of my content, gods of the Cloud!
‘Very Distant Lands’ comes from Adventure Time, an incredible, epic poem of a cartoon show. I watch it with my kids often, and I wanted to start with something about that experience. I’ll likely write about the show regularly, but you won’t need to be familiar with it to follow along. Think of me as your anonymous Homeric bard, passing on the tales of noble Finn and loyal Jake to new generations as we sit before the glow of our digital campfire.
Following the Great Mushroom War that ravages the earth and destroyed civilization, the few remaining humans band together and roam the woods. Mutants oozing toxic sludge chase after them, as well as vampires bent on asserting their dominion over the earth now that humanity has mucked it up. At night, huddled around the campfire, a child wearing a rabbit hat asks their leader to play the song. “As humans, it’s our duty to tell the tales, to sing the songs,” the leader says. “Art must survive.” He strums his guitar. And what does he sing? What pinnacle of human expression does he preserve in this post-apocalyptic vale?
Streaks on the china,
Never mattered before,
Who cares?
When you drop-kicked your jacket
As you came through the door
No one glared!
Not a Bach cantata, not Ode to Joy. No, what sustains humanity in its dwindling days is the theme song to Mr. Belvedere, a deeply forgettable sitcom from the late 80s. Maybe humanity deserved to get wiped out by the Mushroom Bomb?
I’ll admit, I laughed. I’m a sucker for a well-placed 80s reference. But my kids, watching beside me, didn't. Why would they? They’re not aging millennials slaloming down the last stretch of their 30s. Just one of those jokes slipped into cartoons, meant to go over the heads of their target demographics and give weary caregivers a little chuckle.
Except that’s not what it’s doing, not really. Pop culture in-jokes are rare on Adventure Time. It doesn’t try to repackage existing works into kid-size portions and reap the existing revenue like, say, Trolls or Beat Bugs. (You better believe I know all these shows. I’m a dad on the front lines of entertainment conglomerates’ ongoing war for my children’s attention spans.) The show takes place 1,000 years in the future, after the Mushroom War has transformed the Earth into Land of Ooo, a magical realm with an abundance of candy people and slime creatures, and a distinct lack of WiFi. The kind of mass culture that could produce and support such meta references simply does not exist in the world of the show. So what’s up with this one?
Hiding in the bushes behind the campfire is Marceline the Vampire Queen. (Long story, but: Marceline is immortal on account of being half-human, half-demon. The campfire singalong is a flashback that takes place one 1,000 years before the events of the show proper. Yes I have watched the whole series multiple times.) She plays along on her bass, quietly harmonizing with the leader. The child in the rabbit hat climbs through the bushes and asks her to sing lead. “All hands look out below/ There’s a change in the status quo,” she sings. The bedraggled humans huddle around her, listening intently, and this sitcom theme song, this silly one-off joke, becomes something else entirely. An affirmation, a call to hope when it seems there’s none left.
My daughters love Marceline. She’s cool, she plays bass, she’s dark but still has a big heart. The goth big sister any girl would want. They don’t get why daddy laughs at the song. Why would they? Marceline is awesome and her songs are awesome, too. You should really stop laughing any pay attention to the song, daddy. So I do. I listen to her singing through their ears, and it’s lovelier than any joke.
I think about the difference between ‘childish’ and ‘childlike.’ Anyone, of any age, can exhibit either trait. ‘Childish’ suggests the kind of stubbornness that arises from the inability to recognize there’s a whole world beyond you, filled with other people and their dreams. ‘Childlike’ suggests regarding the world and the people within it in a state of wonder, awestruck at the variety it has to offer those who will pay attention. Many kids’ shows are childish, content to make dumb jokes for kids and dumb references for their parents. Adventure Time is genuinely childlike, enabling viewers to look at the world with wonder, whether they’re children, who see wonder everywhere, or grown-ups, who need to be reminded where to find it.
That’s it for this first one. I’ll send a new entry out every Thursday. Let me know what you think, let others know what you think. Email: adam.flemingpetty at gmail dot com. Algebraic!