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As Houston and Katrina get older, we are going to have to decide what kinds of things we allow them to expose themselves to. Television? Movies? Books and magazines? When i was growing up, we were allowed to watch a couple shows, Mr. Rogers, Sesamie Street and The Electric Company were three that came on consecutively and on a good day that meant we'd have a whole 1.5 hours of time in front of the tube! But then we moved to Peru, where we got to see movies in the Pucallpa cinema of strange smells and sticky floors. We saw Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and E.T. at the Pucallpa Cinema. Each trip to see a movie was something of an event, and when we saw E.T. i remember my dad and another parent getting into a fairly heated discussion about how appalling the movie was. The other parent had taken some issue with the language or something... or maybe it was the beer-drinking... and quailed in horror that he'd let his children be exposed to such filth. Or something. My dad was like "uh, it was a good movie."
Well.... i've become more convinced that each story, each work of fiction, should be thought of as a seperate universe from the one we really live in. Harry Potter, for instance, has a life only in the universe inside J.K. Rowling's head. His universe inside Rowling's head has clearly different rules than the universe we experience. Everything is different, from basic laws of physics to the obvious: there is no such thing as wizards and witches as the Harry Potter books describe them. In sitcoms - television in general - there is casual, consequence free sex. Pregnancies are fun, babies are adorable and cease to exist unless they're vital to the plot. Movies are the same. Different laws of physics, morals, different (or no?) value placed on human life...
Right, so what should we do? Clearly until our kids get old enough to have some kind of discussion about reality, we'll keep them away from anything too scary. Or violent. Already Houston has shown his impressionability when exposed to violent images or situations: "we don't hit people with sticks in this family." When we can have conversations about what it really means for one character to shoot another charachter, or for someone to fly on a broomstick, we'll be closer to the point where we can discuss how each fictional universe has fictional rules and consequences.
I suppose this is why i can play games where we shoot each other very dead with a vast array of weapons (like, in this one game you can throw toilets at each other, and get a kill if the toilet hits your opponent's head) and yet i am a passionate pacifist. I would never fire a weapon at a living thing. Sure, i find guns fascinating, and would probably enjoy going hunting, but would never kill a deer or even squirrel. I guess i've got some empathy of some sort, even for pesty beasts whose lives are kind of worthless. I even try not to squish ants when i'm walking. And there sure are a ton of ants on the sidewalks i frequent, especially when i have two strollers worth of wheels to worry about as well as my feet. Huh. Our two strollers have fourteen wheels added together.
Of course, some games like Grand Theft Auto where you can use the "services" of a pr0st!tute and then kill her and take the money back are beyond what i'd ever allow my kids to play while in my house. I've played that game, found it undeniably entertaining, and i suppose i'd keep playing it, but responsibly, but i guess there's just a limit. Maybe i'm being inconsistent... but i knew a Wedgwood girl who showed no remorse for her part in the beating and murder of a bicyclist. And she and her friends played GTA.
I know my mother struggles with what is okay for her sons to watch and play. Instead of looking at the movie or game and deciding what is Really Wrong, like, in the Real Universe, perhaps we should examine the fictional universe presented as such, and say how the fictitional universe is different from the reality God has given us. Then we can say it's okay to make a giant Godzilla squich hundreds of people into strawberry jelly. Even though it's not really okay to really squish people into any kind of jelly at all.