Please read the comments on my previous post. There’s a good discussion going on about the difficulties in raising kids, how to shelter them from bad influences, whether TV is a bad influence, and what government should do about it.
I only have a quick post tonight, because I’ve been busy reading those comments. Also, I’ve been camped out in front of the tube for most of the evening watching Survivor and CSI.
Every week, CSI features another sexual fetish. There have been episodes on the weirdoes who like to dress up like stuffed animals and do it, chubby chasers, and regular run of the mill S&M. Tonight, one of the killers was enraged because steroids deflated his manhood. Highly amusing, but I bet this show really ticks off some people.
As I explained in the comments of the previous post, I am in the “if you don’t like it, turn it off” camp on this one. There are lots of channels and lots of options. Something for everybody.
Perhaps it’s easy for me to say, because my kids are little and still in awe of my strength and wisdom. I can also hold the remote control high over their heads and boot them out the backdoor.
I limit TV. It’s on, because I need to get stuff done, but only during the allocated times. I limit TV not so much because I’m worried about the content. They’re asleep way before CSI. I limit TV, because I have an old fashioned notion that kids should be out doing things. No matter how good the TV show, it’s far better to be off investigating worms and throwing a ball. I want them to have the Kennedy-style vigor or “vigah.”
(oh, getting way to tired to finish this post. I’ll publish it anyway and add more tomorrow. Not good blogging practice, but screw it. need bed.)
Apt. 11d 
Melissa and I record CSI pretty much every Thursday, then watch it later in the evening after the girls are asleep. I wish it wasn’t on at 8pm (CST); it’s totally inappropriate for the adolescents who are often still awake at that hour. But I recognize that, while there are many things which I believe a plausible effort to address the concerns of parents might involve, asking the networks to re-arrange their line-ups on behalf of each and every time zone isn’t one of them.
Incidentally, Melissa covers her eyes at the truly icky parts, relying on me relay the information to her. Tonight’s episode, with the guy who’d caught some crazy mold infection that turned the inside of his skull to a putrid jelly, demanded such action. It wasn’t as bad as the fat guy decomposing in the bathtub last season, but it was up there.
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One of the things that’s interested me a lot about my daughter is that she’s pretty self-policing. I haven’t quite discerned the rules yet about what makes some scenes scary or bad and some scenes especially interesting, but she’s not shy about asking me to skip stuff. Which of course is what makes DVDs so wonderful and so unlike our own childhood media consumption: you *can* skip stuff painlessly, seamlessly, quickly. As well repeat certain scenes ad nauseum.
And I avail myself of that, too. I watched a weird French action movie called Brotherhood of the Wolf the other day and it had a really nasty autopsy scene in it. Skipped right past it.
Of course this is what does make me a wee bit more sympathetic about parental complaints over certain aspects of broadcast television. I’ve written elsewhere about how irritating I find some bumpers now (the bits where networks promote some other show), because they can be at times tremendously at odds with whatever is showing that moment–something that’s kid-friendly can have a bumper in the middle for something that’s decidely not. It’s a bit hard to lose control suddenly in the middle of a viewing experience, or to have to hover over the mute/channel change button.
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I miss the 9 p.m. watershed. Really. It’s the only thing I really hate about the cable/satellite revolution. ANd dammit, I AM a liberal, but I also don’t get why we watch such crap. Of course, I’ve also just started turning things off. I think what did it for me was an episode of L&O:SVU with Frank Langella. I found the episode disturbing, and the idea of the episode even more so. And I thought, “why do people watch this? It really just can’t be healthy.” So I don’t watch it any more. And I only watch CSI if the cases seem plain old puzzles. It’s not that I’m particularly picky about sex or violence — I’m addicted to most of the HBO series, and watch weird psychological thrillers on BBC America — but there’s real character development and resolution in those shows — it’s not ‘show as vehicle for shock.’
So about the kids — here’s my take, FWIW. I think the problem is a much more pervasive one and has a lot to do with our growing rejection of or inability to recognize the idea that we operate in many different spheres and that there are different behaviors appropriate to each one. There’s public/private, but there’s also friends/school/work … you guys know them. But as a society we seem to have lost the plot. I don’t see anything dissonant in being a rabid liberal and also expecting my stepchild to curb her swearing in front of me. Or for me to curb my swearing in front of her, or my colleagues. Or to just teach kids that there are sometimes different norms for different groups — even different rules for different groups — that make sense, and that’s just how it is.
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I think that’s a great way to put it, ADM. I guess I usually frame it in terms of roles. My role as a parent privileges/requires me to hold my kids to certain standards which fit the sort of home my wife and I have decided would be good for them. Either way, it’s the same point: being willing (or being enabled, if one’s media or social or economic environment puts obstacles in your way) to teach or enforce certain rules and norms as appropriate, and not being obliged to justify each and every one of them in light of some outlying case.
I miss the 9pm, “last-hour-of-primetime” boundary line too. We never got into L&O:SVU; I think we watched the very first episode (way back when we still watched L&O, before it suddenly dawned on us–around 2002, I think–that we’d basically seen every single story they were ever going to tell), and decided it wasn’t for us. I can’t account for why we like CSI, especially considering how my wife regularly responds to the autopsy scenes by hiding her eyes. Maybe we dig the ridiculous, over-the-top camera work and color scheme, I don’t know.
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You know that mostly I’m with you, Russell. I keep my kids on pretty tight leash. And like ADM, I don’t find any major disconnect with being a liberal and expecting my kids to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, to eat veggies, and to mind their manners.
I just haven’t felt that much pressure, so far, from Hollywood or the wider culture to do anything differently than what I’m doing. It’s probably because my kids are so young. Have you felt this pressure? Your girls are a little older than mine. Maybe you’ve had a different experience. I also would like to hear more about your views on how things should be different.
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