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Home > Research > Not Just Kids' Stuff la!
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Introduction
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Discussion
Preference & Maturity One purpose of this present study is to analyze the relationship between mental maturity and attitudes towards McMug. This section verifies the tendency that people's appreciation for comics-oriented McMug and text-oriented McMug varies in relation to their educational background. The better educated an individual is, the more he or she is likely to prefer the proficiency in language to the proficiency in drawings. Respondents were asked whether they preferred McMug comics to McMug novels or vice verse. Figure 7 presents their responses in relation to their educational qualifications. Preference for McMug comics is inversely proportional to educational qualifications, while preference for McMug novels is directly proportional to educational qualifications. These trends verify better educated people's interest in reading text-oriented McMug. (As explained in the Methodology section, because of the imbalance of age and education background in the final sample, focus is now put on the general trends deduced from the data instead of the exact measures.)
Preference for McMug maxims increases sharply in relation to education qualifications, while preference for McMug products decreases sharply in relation to education qualifications. This suggests that better educated people appreciate the textual wittiness more than the pleasing appearance of the characters in McMug. This preference for the textual aspect of McMug is further illustrated in Figure 9. Disregarding the postgraduate sector, which is subject to distribution imbalance, Figure 9 shows respondents' favorite aspects of McMug. The favor on drawings decreases while the favor on the narrative and underlying meanings increases in proportion to educational qualifications. To conclude, people who have attended higher education are more likely to admire the beauty of the language beyond the lovely appearance of the drawings. The Inner Child One issue this study aims to address is the reason why McMug, though written primarily for children, appeal as much to adults. This section examines Mr Brian Tse's opinion about this issue as well as some professionals' and respondents' opinions. Though respondents with higher education showed preference for McMug novels, in general people like McMug comics more. Over half of the respondents (56.3%) reported they liked McMug comics more while less than a tenth (6.7%) reported they liked McMug novels more. McMug comics was also the most favored (41.9%) sub-series of McMug.
As one respondent wrote, "inside everyone's heart, there is a child in them. McMug's sense of innocence, its laughable stupidity and other elements included help bring out every adult's inner child." Another respondent confessed that she hoped to be a person like those stupid characters in McMug. Mr Tse said something similar in an epilogue titled "My Life as McDull" (1995). Mr Tse remarked that McDull exists in both children and adults. McDull is a lesser part of us, which we have to learn to accept. We should be able to radiate our light of vatality, and whether this ideal can be achieved depends on how we treat the "McDull" in ourselves. Ms Chan (1996) argued that McMug, by projecting a utopian vision of a better world, fulfils adults' nostalgia for childhood and allows them to rediscover hope. Mr Fa Yu (1992) argued that McMug evokes peoples' pity on their tiredness of earning a living on the one hand, and gives people the spiritual motivation to transcend all difficulties in life on the other. This belief in McMug series as a way of getting away from the harsh reality is confirmed by the response of one respondent who wrote, "McMug gives me a peaceful and simple world in heart to hide from the real world." As described by the Easyfinder magazine, McMug is "the purifier of the urban life." To conclude, adults love reading McMug because it provides them a simple world and evokes the simplicity of their inner selves; McMug makes them feel better. Tse once remarked that it is not McMug Adult's Fables themselves that are marvelous; instead, marvelous are those adults who still like reading fables. "I am pleased that," he wrote, "there are still many adults who are -- wonderful" (1992). Multi-layered Meaning Another purpose of this study is analyze the factors contributing to McMug's popularity across different age groups. The evocation of our inner child discussed above being one, another factor is intertextuality that creates layers of meaning. With multi-layered meaning, McMug satisfies people of different ages and enjoys an extensive readership in terms of age. A number of respondents remarked that McMug has "deep," "profound," "educative," or "underlying" meanings. In short, they believed that McMug is not just kids' stuff. It is more than children's books. This common attitude towards McMug suggests readers' recognition of some other meanings beyond the apparent ones. The presence of certain deeper meanings, however, does not deny the validity of the apparent ones. Rather, Mr Tse deliberately leaves room for interpretation. He explained that to create a story he would examine the story as the writer as well as the reader (Zhi-Jeng Wong7 1996). Based on a simple inspiration, a story is developed from two perspectives: the writer's and the reader's. Mr Tse, as a reader, comments on the story and figures out what elements appeal to the reader most. Then he turns himself back to the writer's role and organizes the story according to the reader's interest. He also tries to perform different types of readers to extend the story's appeal. This tactic of roles shifting helps Mr Tse enrich each story's meaning. It opens up more approaches to interpreting the story.
These layers of meaning contribute to McMug's popularity among both children and adults. For different layers satisfy people of different mentalities. Mr Tse explained that the profundity of his stories hardly relies on the age of the reader. The profundity is not by itself an obstacle to reading. Given that a story is rich in content, readers of different types would get what they need from the story (Zhi-Jeng Wong, 1996). "Those who read the story, and those who accept the story, are the real writer of the story (1995). To conclude, what Mr Tse intends to achieve is a simple but never superficial work, a work of rich connotation within a simple form (Zhi-Jeng Wong, 1996). This idea, Mr Tse explained, is inspired by Raymond Briggs, the writer of Father Christmas (Guan, 1993). He was greatly impressed when he read Briggs' stories during his university life. He was impressed by the form rather than the content, understanding then the flexibility of this peculiar art form. "I keep hoping that McMug," said Mr Tse, "by means of the simplest presentation, attracts the largest group of potential readers. . . The more people laugh for the same thing, the more beautiful it is" (1993). Personal Comment Approaching to the end, this section presents my personal comments on McMug's popularity and its achievement as a new generation of local children's literature. Better educated respondents were more likely to doubt the possibility that McMug is suitable for both children and adults. Figure 10 indicates that better educated respondents tended to consider McMug more suitable for adults. This could be ascribed to their ability to recognize some deeper meanings from the stories, which made them think McMug is more difficult than it appears to be and so not suitable for children. People seem to appreciate McMug out of their impression that there is some underlying meanings, whatever they are, in each story. This phenomenon makes me feel strange and skeptical about whether difficulty in reading necessarily means profundity and greatness.
People often mystify difficulty in reading. A text that is difficult to read should not be undoubtedly taken as "great" or "sophisticated." We would appreciate a text because of its underlying meaning but not because of the mere presence of certain underlying meaning. As Mr Tse remarked ironically, stories that are meant for children are stories that are most difficult for adults to appreciate. There is no "profound" or "philosophic" meaning. "To get adults to accept or even appreciate this stuff written to please children and to cheer them up, would be unbelievable [7]" (1993). McMug, being a force of the new generation of Hong Kong children's literature, is not written only for children. Diverse readers manage to find their own place, situating themselves well in it. By applying multi-layered meaning, Mr Tse widens our horizon in appreciating a text. There should not be boundary restricting the reader's own interpretation of the text, and there is no model interpretation to follow. The reader can give the text meaning. A book has no meaning if not read. What I intend to emphasize here is the misconception about the relation between difficulty in reading and profundity in meaning, and the relation between the presence of underlying meanings and literary accomplishment. By no means l would like to undermine the success of the McMug series, tough. Limitation and Suggestion The imbalance of age in the final sample is the most noticeable inadequacy of the present study. Launching the website and distributing of the questionnaire through the Internet turned out to be a good tactic. This simplified a number of procedures in date collection. However, responses from the Internet were not qualitatively satisfying enough. They were outnumbered by responses obtained in the library and by mail. This imbalance of age lessened the quality of the findings. Implications deduced from the findings were not as representative as they were expected to be. Future research could earn more credibility if it improves the sampling and so avoids the imbalance this research has confronted. Discussion about McMug should not be done without the creators' participation. It is regrettable that an interview with Mr Tse and Ms Mak was not possible. This study was thus in lack of primacy sources of the creators' account of their accomplishment. This study eventually relied on secondary sources. Future research should obtain first hand information from professionals of children's literature and from the creators. It would help to understand the ideology of McMug, to analyze the findings in relation to the ideology, and to gain more insights into its success.
Endnotes 這同時是成年人最難欣賞的故事， 沒有了其他 「麥嘜成年人童話」的「高深」、 「哲理」， 要成年讀者接受甚至享受一些原本寫來逗孩子笑的故事， 會不會有點不可思議？ [Back] |
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