What Are We Wroughting?

3 July 2005

He stands a lean and lanky 3’4” tall. Almost five year old Jason (no real names used here) is a fixture in the school playground each morning as his mother drops his sister Jessica off to school in the tiny South Wales hamlet of St. Brides Major. Here mothers gather in chatty gaggles fending off the wind, cold and showers (normal Welsh winter weather) while the children enjoy two-minutes of frantic running about awaiting the bell to toll. They then queue up like docile little lambs (by class rank) before being led into the school by their teacher.

Jason is bored with most of the adult goings on around him (so, truth be told, am I), is too small to play with the older kids and clutches his plastic toy dinosaur (clearly from this untrained eye a member of the Tyrannosaurus Rex family, complete with two quite realistic fire-frothing heads) and peers around Mommy’s leg growling at me.

We engage in a game called “I hide behind Mommy’s leg where I pretend not to see you then jump out with my T-Rex, roar and send you running away screaming in fear a game you have to continue playing until I get bored, something shiny catches my attention or I suddenly walk away… no matter what.” We both play it a b it too well, much to the tsk, tsk disdain of the gaggle to whom this concept of play seems as if perhaps an alien ship has deposited this bizarre American writer on their fair shores.

Dan is a London-based media consultant and his wife works for one of the largest financial corporations on the planet (hint, it never sleeps). To say their lives are busy would be similar to calling the Pope a devout Catholic. They were seconded to London two years ago and their young progeny Walter is living in his third new home of his young life cared for by other hands.

Walter is, at almost five, a notoriously light sleeper and prone to many 3-4 day flu-like illnesses. Dad and I were solving the world’s problems one evening over a pint when the topic of kids and their sleeping habits came up. “It’s weird” he said, “but my kid can only fall asleep watching television. He would wake up in the middle of the night as an infant screaming and the only thing that would help him to sleep was watching television with music. He’s been watching MTV since he was about 4-months old to fall asleep.”

(Sound of deafening incredulous silence.)

Little Jason and I were talking one morning when he said the words “Jurassic Park.” I jokingly asked him if he even knew what that was and he said yes, he had seen the movie. I turned to see Mom standing there smiling as she said, “yes, he has seen all three movies several times and loves them.”

(Sound of deafening incredulous silence.)

So we are clear, we have here two almost 5-year old boys; one a fan of a movie with special effects so realistic and terrifying, if I remember correctly a character was discovered, the roof of his outhouse chewed off (thus saving his pants but not mine from being spoiled) and eaten in two bites by a T-Rex like yesterday’s Chicken McNugget® while sitting on the potty and a young boy every evening lulled to sleep by Eminem and da udda boys from da hood hip-hopping his little self to sleep?

(Sound of deafening incredulous silence.)

I’m 47 years old. Jurassic Park 1 and 2 scared me enough to not even think about renting movie number 3. What is a four year old doing watching that?

MTV, the source of swear words I don’t understand, misogyny, brutality, guns and makes it a point to be cool by demeaning all that is different has been piped into this child’s other than conscious mind for four years and all I get is a laugh and a shrug?

My own 3, 4 and 5 year old don’t get past CBEEBIES® (the BBC’s PBS), Playhouse Disney® or Nick Jr.® (and that last one is skating on thin ice because of dodgy security alarm adverts we now screen).

“These programs enter their consciousness, sit and percolate and twist it around to the point where reality is so blurred they have no concept real vs. fantasy” said a psychiatrist friend on condition of anonymity, (not surprisingly, he is trying to protect his growing practice.) “I see 4-5 kids like this a day and their parents just don’t get it. They fall into the trap of well, it’s not that bad (I suppose if compared to what, Alien vs. Predator? - Ed.) so how harmful could it be? It is this pseudo-intellectual shading that alarms me most.”

Now this is a spiritual magazine where we focus on clearing our issues, never get angry, raise our voices, have judgment, allow negative thoughts to enter our being and have complete understanding for the other person but I gotta ask the question, WHAT THE HECK ARE THESE PARENTS THINKING!!!!

They can certainly rally around the flag when something they have never even seen, like say, a musical doing very well in London’s West End called “Jerry Springer, The Opera” plans a US tour where people will of their own free will pay $100 for a ticket for an evening out of adult entertainment yet will sit and do nothing as their kids watch people beat the crap out of each other because their lover is gay and having an affair with their cross-dressing best friend on the set of his live show?

When the BBC broadcast the opera, the international furore included BBC executives harassed on private home telephones (numbers conveniently provided by a religious right website) and although they have never seen it, the outraged parents of the religious right have banded together in a feeding frenzy to ensure that the US tour is cancelled (it was last week and a UK tour is in jeopardy).

Their venomous concern for something so far outside of them far dwarfs any they might have their children’s babysitter, the tube in the middle of the living room (and in many homes the kitchen, bedroom(s), playroom, garage and bath with 200 channels, TiVo® or Sky+® to let them record and watch Live TV later and nothing’s ever on because the same US regulatory FCC which was titillated by Janet Jackson’s mammary gland cares not a whit about the violence and adverts kids are exposed to on the telly.

(Sound of deafening incredulous silence.)

While this piece has pointed, there seems to be a pattern emerging of finger pointing to excuse our busy, over-packed lives. It’s everybody else’s fault but ours and as my buddy in Georgia says (southern USA not former Russian republic) “that dawg just don’t hunt.” As a master once said to me, when we point the finger of blame at everyone else around us for not doing their job right: teachers, schools, TV, society, church, etc. we seem to forget that there are three fingers on that very same hand point squarely back at us.

(Sound of deafening incredulous silence.)

I made a mistake in the headline What Are We Rotting? now seems appropriate.

(As appeared in Children of the New Earth Magazine)