Check out A.S. new book review, below: "What is the What" by Dave Eggers.
E-mail your book, film, or music review to me for publication on this page. We all benefit from the recommendations. My "Must Read" list is growing already. . .
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Sesame Street Deserted, Gentrified and Bought by Private Company
This morning Merry has a cold and we are all at home. And so we sat sniffling around the kitchen table eating pancakes and listening to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. If you've not listened to this hilarious show, a favorite section of ours consists of three stories--one is true, the rest are false. Today's true story recounted Ariel's "Sweet Sixteen Birthday Party" (broadcasted on MTV). Ariel's daddy throws her an immorally lavish bash, exposing himself and his oil fields to publicity; now you can read about the scandal in The Arizona Republic: Ariel's generous papa is on the news for "fraudulently promoting oil and gas investments in Kentucky." Investors feel grumpy about their money being invested in a brand-new BMW for little princess Ariel. But Ariel seems like a typical sixteen year old girl; she believes in the inherent worth of her father and of oil both: "My dad owns his own oil company. He has oil wells all over the world. I love oil. Oil means shoes and cars and purses," Ariel said on the show, which aired Monday. "So it sets me apart from everybody else in this town. . . . It smells like money, Daddy!"
You can find all the endless horror on sweet sixteen birthday parties on the MTV site. Or you can just watch MTV. Or our kids can watch MTV and dream of big bashes of their own.
What is happening to our culture? I know, I know, there are excesses in every culture, historically, all over the world. But the great excesses of our culture, and particularly our youth culture, deeply disturb me. There seems to be a growing sense of entitlement among American youth in general. And the problem goes much deeper than a mere feeling of deservedness. The problem is, our youth do not know what they truly deserve any more.
Children do not deserve cars, or cellphones, or a glittering social life among their peers. They do not deserve to feel comfortable all the time or to even be happy. They should not expect easy answers or facile outcomes. Youth should not feel they are the centre of their culture or the universe in general, nor should they expect an easy flow of material goods. They are not entitled to an easy education; they are not entitled to rewards.
What do our youth deserve? They deserve to be servants. They deserve to work hard and then to realize small but enduring benefits for their work. They deserve a love of learning, brought by discomforting, hard labor. What can we give our children? Not more things. We can give our children good conversation, the wisdom of the aged, knowledge of books. Our children deserve lives based on truth and realities that occasionally make them feel sad or disquieted.
I propose an alternative show to "Sweet Sixteen." Instead of taking in the frills and arsenic-laced whipped cream of excess, we could instead educate ourselves on the realities of an economically and socially torn world: a sixteen- year old orphaned by AIDS, caring for her siblings and grateful for what little education she can receive. A sixteen-year old sold into the sex trade by her desperately poor parents. A sixteen-year old conscripted into military work. A sixteen-year old who is the sole survivor of terrorist attacks in Iraq.
Oh, wait--are we at war? I had forgotten.
And God forbid we impress our youth with the reality of who they are in the world, and what work they must undertake to make our culture, and our world, a better place.
And education--what is that these days other than a product-line? Don't our youth deserve good jobs that will make them loads of money? Isn't success based on our professions, and our paychecks, and how much we are able to afford? What is learning but a means to an end?
Our society will collapse, piece by piece, if we do not give our children what they truly deserve.
I'm not waving the flag of socialism here. I'm not planning to strip my daughters of all their toys and give them sawdust pallets to sleep on. I'm not suggesting labor camps. I am certainly not advocating a loss of childhood. I believe in childhood, and I believe it is full of wonder--and chores, responsibilities, discipline, learning by experience, real conversation and silence and respect.
But I want to give, as much as I am able, a real life to my children. I want them to be unafraid to encounter and react to suffering. I want them to be compassionate and delight in all that is truly and deeply real. I want them to have wonderful imaginations, imaginations that give them faith to believe what is unseen and good.
_______________________________________________
What does this have to do with Sesame Street?
I love Sesame Street--it is clever, robust programming. I love the good services that CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) delivers to children all over the US, without advertising and meaningless fillers. To me, CPB is a sign of health in our media morass. NPR is a bright spot in my daily routine and offers true education and responsible perspective.
And in the midst of our wildly disproportionate defense spending, not to mention controversial programs such as "No Child Left Behind" and our immoral health care messes (just to name a few concerns), the House has once again targeted CPB: "On a party-line vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health and education funding approved the cut to the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. It would reduce the corporation's budget by 23 percent next year, to $380 million, in a cut that Republicans said was necessary to rein in government spending." (For a great illustration on government spending, see the Cookie Site).
And who loses? Our children. Again. And so society suffers: the cuts would force the network to "drastically reduce the programming and services public television and public radio can provide to local communities," as well as cutting funding and thus obliterating 'Ready to Learn,' a literacy TV program, and online teaching resource `Ready to Teach' (The Boston Globe 2006).
But don't worry. If our children want good programming, they can always find "Sweet Sixteen" on MTV. MTV doesn't depend on the government for its funding, and guess what? It's doing just fine. Big Bird may have to register for food stamps, but MTV will not suffer. Hey, maybe Big Bird could actually get a beak-job and have his own show.
My sense of unreality grows. As Marvin Gaye put it, WHAT'S GOING ON?
You can find all the endless horror on sweet sixteen birthday parties on the MTV site. Or you can just watch MTV. Or our kids can watch MTV and dream of big bashes of their own.
What is happening to our culture? I know, I know, there are excesses in every culture, historically, all over the world. But the great excesses of our culture, and particularly our youth culture, deeply disturb me. There seems to be a growing sense of entitlement among American youth in general. And the problem goes much deeper than a mere feeling of deservedness. The problem is, our youth do not know what they truly deserve any more.
Children do not deserve cars, or cellphones, or a glittering social life among their peers. They do not deserve to feel comfortable all the time or to even be happy. They should not expect easy answers or facile outcomes. Youth should not feel they are the centre of their culture or the universe in general, nor should they expect an easy flow of material goods. They are not entitled to an easy education; they are not entitled to rewards.
What do our youth deserve? They deserve to be servants. They deserve to work hard and then to realize small but enduring benefits for their work. They deserve a love of learning, brought by discomforting, hard labor. What can we give our children? Not more things. We can give our children good conversation, the wisdom of the aged, knowledge of books. Our children deserve lives based on truth and realities that occasionally make them feel sad or disquieted.
I propose an alternative show to "Sweet Sixteen." Instead of taking in the frills and arsenic-laced whipped cream of excess, we could instead educate ourselves on the realities of an economically and socially torn world: a sixteen- year old orphaned by AIDS, caring for her siblings and grateful for what little education she can receive. A sixteen-year old sold into the sex trade by her desperately poor parents. A sixteen-year old conscripted into military work. A sixteen-year old who is the sole survivor of terrorist attacks in Iraq.
Oh, wait--are we at war? I had forgotten.
And God forbid we impress our youth with the reality of who they are in the world, and what work they must undertake to make our culture, and our world, a better place.
And education--what is that these days other than a product-line? Don't our youth deserve good jobs that will make them loads of money? Isn't success based on our professions, and our paychecks, and how much we are able to afford? What is learning but a means to an end?
Our society will collapse, piece by piece, if we do not give our children what they truly deserve.
I'm not waving the flag of socialism here. I'm not planning to strip my daughters of all their toys and give them sawdust pallets to sleep on. I'm not suggesting labor camps. I am certainly not advocating a loss of childhood. I believe in childhood, and I believe it is full of wonder--and chores, responsibilities, discipline, learning by experience, real conversation and silence and respect.
But I want to give, as much as I am able, a real life to my children. I want them to be unafraid to encounter and react to suffering. I want them to be compassionate and delight in all that is truly and deeply real. I want them to have wonderful imaginations, imaginations that give them faith to believe what is unseen and good.
_______________________________________________
What does this have to do with Sesame Street?
I love Sesame Street--it is clever, robust programming. I love the good services that CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) delivers to children all over the US, without advertising and meaningless fillers. To me, CPB is a sign of health in our media morass. NPR is a bright spot in my daily routine and offers true education and responsible perspective.
And in the midst of our wildly disproportionate defense spending, not to mention controversial programs such as "No Child Left Behind" and our immoral health care messes (just to name a few concerns), the House has once again targeted CPB: "On a party-line vote, the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees health and education funding approved the cut to the budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. It would reduce the corporation's budget by 23 percent next year, to $380 million, in a cut that Republicans said was necessary to rein in government spending." (For a great illustration on government spending, see the Cookie Site).
And who loses? Our children. Again. And so society suffers: the cuts would force the network to "drastically reduce the programming and services public television and public radio can provide to local communities," as well as cutting funding and thus obliterating 'Ready to Learn,' a literacy TV program, and online teaching resource `Ready to Teach' (The Boston Globe 2006).
But don't worry. If our children want good programming, they can always find "Sweet Sixteen" on MTV. MTV doesn't depend on the government for its funding, and guess what? It's doing just fine. Big Bird may have to register for food stamps, but MTV will not suffer. Hey, maybe Big Bird could actually get a beak-job and have his own show.
My sense of unreality grows. As Marvin Gaye put it, WHAT'S GOING ON?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
