For Sam

This began as a response to comment – in a comment of my own.  But it grew.  And it wasn’t what I wanted to write about today.  And it isn’t arguing with Sam.  The fact is that Sam and Mar both say things to me that get my mind, screaming against the rust in the machine, thinking.  Provocative little souls.  And this one, I guess, really started the engine.  Not in rebuttal, because we aren’t debating – just in figuring out my own two cents.  If I make a fool of myself, I know that Dick will find those places and twit me with them, which is fine.  All of you are allowed to twit me.  I deserve it.

So this was inspired by Sam’s comment on the last post.  About children and media:

Sam:  I am super pleased that you put that link up here.  I’m not that hot about Community (which is a smart little TV show, but a little too – well, maybe I’ll give it another chance), and I’d like to talk to him more about these ideas, but I came away from that letter really liking the guy.  He also didn’t factor in the Henry-male data, but that doesn’t always hold true, anyway.

[I’m going to stop and apologize here for answering only one of these comments – but life has grown hair, and I might even get to write about it today while I huddle in a corner of the couch, shivering – rain, rain, go away – please don’t make me go out to find food – oh, how I wish I had my bathroom back. ]

Here’s the way I see this: I remember myself as a kid, and I remember seeing a couple of things I found deeply disturbing on TV.  One of them was a scene from a movie, and why I saw it, I’ll never know—it wasn’t like my mom was casual about leaving the TV on, and this definitely wasn’t a cartoon.

I won’t describe it, I will only say that it shocked me, terrified me, and it has never left me.  There’s a black and purple drawer in my head that pops open when I come too close to it and that thing and some others come roaring back out.

But then, there are other drawers in there too, that are more subtle – full of  little things in films and on TV and in songs – things that left splinters in my growing concepts about the truth of love and of sex and of how people think and treat each other – things that have made burls in my thought, so deep in there, I probably don’t know they are there, mis-shaping the truth.  (Funny that I don’t include books – as I think about it, I don’t think that the impact the ideas in a book have on me is anywhere near as piercing.)

But then, most of these things are ultimately written by twenty somethings who really don’t know very much about the underlying truths of humanity, who are – in effect – trying to run with their perspectives of life before they’ve really learned to crawl.  And many of them (us) are social cast-outs who pride themselves on their quirky and superior views of the rest of us.  If they even think that deeply.  I mean, whoever put Transformers together was not nearly as concerned with human truths as with really cool mechanical design and special effects.

And I wonder how many people who write “for” children even HAVE children.  Or really give a hang about them?  Because money is the real concern in all of this.  And burping and farting sell more tickets than thoughtful and responsible homage to truth ever will.

All of this said, I don’t know why it’s all that important that I turn my kids’  brains over to these guys at ALL, least of all lend them over a period of hours to the tender mercies of an industry that is dedicated to creating a very believable virtual reality out of nothing.

But the fact is that I love movies.  I love stories.  I love songs.  And I have taken hurts from all of them, but I’ve also been made to think by all of them.  That said, we are talking about children who do not have a wide experience of what is real and what is not, and so few tools with which to sort out media experiences.

And as I begin to write this, I see myself, suddenly realizing that maybe the fact that  I feel like the world is in a hopeless tailspin of urgency and violence and danger – is because I watch the news.  Because the news, as everyone knows, makes money by picking the most sensational bits out of a wide, pedestrian-colored fabric of reality in which most people go about their business every day without dying in an airplane crash or being crushed by meteors.  “At any given moment” — there are some in which there are no earthquakes and floods ANYWHERE. Maybe even some when there are no rapes or abuses. But I find myself feeling responsible for and apprehensive about every single bad thing that may happen at some point on the globe as though that boring fabric really is ALL about these things.  That bad things WILL happen and DO happen to almost EVERY PERSON, EVERY MINUTE.  All because out of an hour of news, every minute is troubling.

My mind, then, even as an adult with almost 6 decades under my capacious little belt, is that easily colored by — media.

Children expect, I think, that all reality is probably consistent with what they live every day.  And little children should have the right to think it’s all lambs and puppies (which are actually pretty frightening, if you are short enough to be face to face with them) and flowers and cookies.

I think there’s nothing wrong with a young child  – and I don’t know how young I even mean – maybe even ten year olds – seeing the world as a basically safe and supportive place.  They don’t need “interesting” elements added, because the small child’s life, while seeming boring to the jaded adult mind, finds the magical advance of a con-trail-dragging jet way up there in the sky to be WAY interesting.  Little children are charmed when they hear dogs barking blocks away – while an adult won’t even notice (unless it’s to be annoyed).

Everything is new and fresh to a child.  Everything is a problem that has to be worked through  – from standing up and balancing successfully to the wonders of the tech they’re not supposed to mess with, to color and grass and climbing and figuring out why people say no, and learning ENGLISH from basics to the much more mysterious vagaries. We don’t have to make things loud and fast and tense for children.  Their senses are already engaged.  They don’t need our help.

And when you turn the volume up on sound or color or tension – you are screaming into their faces.

So why do we do it?

When I brought this up, talking about the Dragon movie, it was because that movie was pitched to move ME.  I’ve been around the planet a few times.  I’m exhausted with drama and emotion.  Bored with reality.  I want magic.  I want an adventure that I don’t actually have to live through and manage myself.  I want risk that won’t leave me permanently injured.

Children already have enough to do.

Children grow up very quickly.  They work through problems at a rate that would leave an adult brain, after about two hours of  the same work, yearning just to watch TV.

Dramatic tension—to the degree that I am moved to feel it—in a really well-engineered entertainment is almost always going to be way too much for kids.

And maybe Dan is right.  Maybe many of them are not intelligent enough to see past the shwooshing color and dramatic music to understand that something scary is happening.  Maybe.

[Major digression: remember, please, that people like you, Sam, practice for hours everyday to achieve verisimilitude in your work – you labor over every tiny shadow, every line of character, even the color you use in building a character.  And along with you on the credits of a movie are hundreds of others, maybe in the thousands – all people who have spent thousands of hours perfecting their tiny bit of craft so that every aspect of the audience sensibility is controlled – all that brain chemistry carefully run by You guys—so that the two hours’ experience is THE MOST POWERFUL experience (of whatever kind) that body has ever experienced.  So that when that body walks out of the theater, its mouth is going to be saying, “WOW.  THAT WAS BRILLIANT.  I’M GOING TO BUY ANOTHER TICKET AND SEE IT AGAIN>  AND I’M TAKING MY ENTIRE FAMILY AND THE WHOLE CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT WITH ME.”

Which is fine.  Adults have to take responsibility for their own reactions to their choices.

But we take our children into a theater—why?  So they will be able to have a fun experience?  We walk them up the aisle.  Find them a seat.  Maybe get them popcorn.

And them tell them to hold still while 987 artists drop a sensory semi-truck on their heads.

Again: why do we do it?

So I will have to say that Marilyn and I sit very close on this one.

In the end, I want to say that good parenting is not easy.  Not causal.  It’s a matter of eternal effort, study, awareness and diligence.  It’s up to parents to know each child for who he is – because children are all different, each with his own learning and thinking patterns, maturity levels, needs.

And it’s also up to each parent to keep eyes open and minds awake: a thing which many people don’t do even in defense of their own little selves.  If grown-ups actually paid attention to the real realities around them, nobody would smoke, nobody would get drunk, nobody would be overweight, invest with slick characters, and nobody would come anywhere near pornography – or really, really dumbed-down books, no matter how romantic they may seem.

The thing that worries me is that there’s obviously a lot of all that going on in the world all the time.  And these adults, who cannot even look after themselves (ourselves) are arrogant enough to think they can raise a child?

In the end, you can only do your best.  But how many of us even try to do our best?  Too busy with our own lives to realize that the purpose of our lives after we have children IS the children.

All of that ranted, each parent has to, in intelligence and mercy, decide what is best – or what is even acceptable  – for each of (his or her or both) own children.  Nothing is ever simple.  That’s the game of mortality.  We just have to play it the best we can.