Yet after Holden has seen through adulthood's pretense and sham, he suffers a breakdown, ending up in what amounts to an insane asylum. The young boy's cynicism was all along a symptom of his innocence and vulnerability. The popular art produced around the same time shares the book's picture of childhood. Without a Cause are embodiments of innocence run wild, and they end up as lost as Holden. Fifty years later, the way we imagine the relationship between kids and adults has been turned on its head.
Children hold sway in film and on television.
Strong and invincible, earnest and sincere, they do not need to protect themselves with cynical wisecracks. Screen adults, on the other hand, have acquired Holden's wounded ennui and, like him, lack authority to the point of innocence and vulnerability. Consider a pile of recent evidence. In the more recent Girlfight, a teenage girl who is a budding prizefighter wallops her cynical father, though he had never obstructed her path anyway. Likewise for Pay It Forward , in which a solid and mature little boy saves the lives of his mother and his junior high school teacher, two disillusioned and emotionally shattered adults.