Identifying with "Kit": Not the Girls paying $10 to see her

A post-script regarding Kit Kittredge: My husband showed me an irksome article in our local paper (reprinted from the Washington Post) by Jennifer Frey. "Long-Ago themes of 'Kit' especially relevant today," blared the headline. It suggested that the 'tweens watching Kit suffer through the depression selling eggs and wearing feed-bag dresses will identify, because of our current housing slump and slight downturn.

Harrumph.

The national foreclosure rate, according to an MSNBC article of Feb. 26, 2008 (whose purpose was to express shock at the astounding raise in foreclosures) was one filing for every 534 homes. In the movie, Kit watches in horror as her classmate's furniture is carried from the house next door, a stuffed monkey still smiling from the child's neatly-made bed. Do you really think that kids who pay $10 to see this film know anyone whose furniture is sold out from under them? Who watch in horror when a "foreclosure" sign is hammered on their lawns?

The Hobo Jungle scene, as the Post article points out, includes a voice-over with the message, "we're all a few strokes of bad luck away from being in the same situation ourselves."

Now, we certainly should remember how very fortunate we are to live in this wonderful country, but not because "bad luck" can land us in such a benevolent Hobo Jungle as the "Kittredge" characters endorse. But we need to remember that "bad luck" often involves lack of industriousness, and that even when "luck" is cruel, we, in this nation, have the opportunity to re-invent ourselves, or at least, to get a job at a local Starbucks or Hollywood Video, look on Craigslist for an apartment to share, and not have to EVER live in a hobo jungle.

Admittedly, with gasoline at nearly $4.50 a gallon (actually it IS that high a few blocks from my home), people do feel a bit pinched. But they're still going to movies, still eating out, still paying their mortgages. I don't understand why liberal journalists feel so compelled to stretch even reviews of stories for little girls into "sky-is-falling" digs at the current government. Thankfully, the kids who see Kit Kittridge probably will recognize the story as long ago and far away, and identify only with the gumption of the girl and not the propaganda of the film-maker.