The cult of the Kidult

Why growing up is a thing of the past

In the second part of his 2014 documentary on Brutalism Jonathan Meades tries to show how childish we have become. He sits in a tiger onesie stuffing crisps into his face whilst reading a Harry Potter book.

“The more we have been consulted as consumers, the more we have elected to be fed drivel”, he says, pointing out that the people of “50 years ago adults did not dress like children. They did not read children’s books. They did not enjoy children’s diet”. Meades says that people have regressed into “irreversible infantilism and helpless dependency”.

I think it is both possible to be a grown up and to dislike Brutalism, though I must say his documentary did much to persuade me of his passion for hostile concrete lumps. Brutalism was the progress of those days, and the progress of our days is infantilism.

There is a market - a massive market – for endless trash. Grown men (it is usually men) collect children’s toys, buy merchandise from grimdark cape ‘n’ costume films, they go on expensi…