Ithaca: Where the Wild Fandoms Are

So I happen to be a huge fan of the quaint little toy story called “Alphabet Soup: A Kid’s Store” and I happen to go in there whenever I’m on the commons to relive my childhood. On my most recent trip in (shopping for a birthday present for a certain co-blogger), I perused the book section as I always do, and what was readily available to my greedy, book-fiendish hands? None other than Maurice Sendak’s 10-sentence masterpiece for children, Where the Wild Things Are. As I have been recently bombarded with advertising on sites such as imdb.com, youtube.com, and pandora.com, I was well aware of the upcoming film adaptation of the same name by director Spike Jonze. To be honest, I was greatly looking forward to the movie.

I was not the only one, either. I find myself surrounded by people walking around with t-shirts with the title or pictures from the book. In Ithaca College’s Clarke Hall in the lower quads, the three Resident Assistants themed the bulletin boards, door tags, and information for their residents around the theme.

For me at least, this book turned movie reminds me so much of my childhood and how my mom would read this book and others to me. (I distinctly remember being really afraid of the goat wild thing…) It would not surprise me if most of the people who are jumping on the boat to join in the Where the Wild Things are craze feel exactly the same way as me. We are fans of our childhoods, and this book movie manifests what all children go through.

At the end of the movie, I started the slow clap (Not Another Teen Movie style), but no one joined in. At first I was confused at why no one seemed to like it. And looking at the faces of those who left the movie, it became more clear to me that they were still in awe of the movie’s power, and no superficiality with clapping for a movie screen would deter them from doing as the Wild Things do in the movie: feel. And Ithaca knows exactly what that means. *aaaaa–aaaahhh—oooooo*

–Lizzy

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