YA Stories and Narcissism

I often say that fallen humans are given over to self-worship. In fact, I've said many times that there are only two objects of worship: God or the self. Even other religions are created, not because those other gods are loved, but because they give something to the individual that he needs to worship himself.

It's interesting to see the flood of YA books and movies that have come out in the post-Harry Potter world because I think it reflects, and maybe even tutors and affirms, the self-centeredness of our culture in terms of relationships. This is especially true of YA science fiction movies that have hit the screen within the last decade.

If you're not familiar with the Young Adult-science fiction category, it's a genre of storytelling that usually presents the main protagonist as a special teenager who must save the world, usually by fighting against the evil adults.

Some of these movies include the Divergent franchise, Twilight, The Maze Runner, The Hunger Games, Eragon, The Giver, Mortal Instruments, I Am Number 4, The Seventh Son, The Golden Compass, the Percy Jackson series, Jumper, Ender's Game, etc.

In each of these, there is a special person or couple that is pretty much presented as the most important person or persons in the entire world. Every other character merely exists to show how special the main character(s) are.

If you think about that for a moment, kids are learning how to think about themselves and others often through these stories. The stories of a culture are extremely important. That's why they were once filled with moral tales that had much more to do with the tragedy of selfishness than the exaltation of it.

In our culture, however, we create our own worlds. Kids are the gods of their own personal online worlds. They are the heroes of their own stories. Everyone else is just a supporting character who exists to show how special he or she is. If someone doesn't function that way, he or she is often discarded. This is especially true of anyone who may critique what the would-be hero might believe or do. That's the opposite of showing how special he is. That's being a bad supporting character, one who is toxic to the unique specialness that is the jobless, witless teenager that currently contributes nothing to the world whatsoever except to place a strain on its resources while he imagines himself to be the most important person who has ever lived.

We wonder why kids turn into snowflakes at college, but we ought to wonder what kind of thinking was instilled in them that opened the door to the pure narcissism we see produced by professors of the humanities and social "sciences" on college campuses today.

Maybe that narcissism was fostered much earlier than college. Maybe it's to be found in spending one's teenage years thinking of the world in terms of how it exists to display just how special they are. The world is a place to embrace or fight, depending upon what conditions will exalt the individual as praiseworthy. People exist only to support the individual's self-aggrandizing narrative, and if they would actually dare to suggest that the world does not exist for him, they are quickly removed from the final cut of the movie.

In short, it seems to be a genre of idolatry, where all things exist to the praise of our glory. All people must bow and confess that so-and-so is lord. This is why narcissists love these stories. Most of them are absolutely awful cases of storytelling. The writing and depth of dialogue is usually atrocious. But that is not their appeal. The narcissist is flattered by any presenation of himself as exceptional, and he sees himself in the protagonists of these stories. That's why he or she loves them so much.

Certainly, other movies function this way as well, but the move from groups to an individual, or an individual couple (because every teenager wants a girlfriend or boyfriend to complete their specialness) that represents, not a Christ-figure, but the individual reading the book or watching the movie seems to be nothing more than a move toward delusions of grandeur rather than one that plants one's feet on the ground so that he or she may have genuine relationships and see the world as something that was not made to glorify him, but the One who is truly unique, and yet, gave His life as a ransom for all.