Wholesale No. 45

In Baffler no. 45, our stalwart contributors puzzled over the state of American adolescence and our collective fascination with coming-of-age tales. In an eclectic set of nostalgia trips, fact-finding missions, and theoretical explorations, our crack investigators uncovered a nation in a pervasive state of arrested development. Alex Pareene studies MAGA teens and their adult advocates, who bend over backwards in order to defend not just their prep school princelings, but the entire social order that conflates goodness with status. After all, innocence is the exclusive provenance of those who can afford it, as Sarah Marshall makes clear in her essay on the darker side of Disney’s dream empire.