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    Barack Obama gives 'Wild Things' the Presidential Seal of Approval

    Posted:
    10/20/09
    Filed Under:Woman Up, Culture
    According to this weekend's pool report, President Obama spent Sunday taking in director Spike Jonze's live action adaption of Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak's classic children's book. The critic-in-chief, who also read the book during last spring's annual White House Easter Egg Roll, said the film was "worth seeing."

    Wild Things, which topped this weekend's box office with nearly $32.7 million in ticket sales, is an interesting choice for the leader of the free world. It is about childhood -- specifically the raw, animalistic, unchecked emotions of being a boy -- and is therefore not necessarily for children, but perhaps makes sense for the commander-in-chief.

    The most telling scenes happen between Max, the boy with "special powers," and Carol, the huge monster who crowns Max king (spoiler alert!). "You will be a truly great king!" Soon enough, though, Carol becomes dissatisfied when the world (read fort) that Max helped put together isn't perfect.

    "It's going to be a place where only the things you want to happen, would happen," predicted Carol while Max and the rest of the wild things got down to the busy work of nation building, which unsurprisingly requires lots of sticks and stones. Letting his anger and sadness get the better of him, Carol goes into a violent rage when Max fails to do all the super heroic things he promised in the beginning -- namely eradicating sadness and cutting out the brains of anyone they don't want around. Eventually Max has to take off the crown, and the Wild Things realize he's just a boy in a wolf's costume.
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    Helena Andrews

    Helena Andrews writes about the importance of everything pop culture. Her collection of essays, Bitch is the New Black, will be published by Harper Collins the summer of 2010... more

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