Sunday, May 30, 2004
YET ANOTHER DIM MEMORY: While I'm thinking of something new to add, here's another insta-rant from March of last year dug up from a Thread aPa forum thread, inspired by an article in the Irish Examiner about a study over the course of 15 years that concluded children who watch violent cartoons are more likely to become aggressive in young adulthood. Their suggestion: banning all animated violence, regardless of the intended target audience. On another day, I might've gone on about the hopelessness of childproofing the world, but I guess my butt was asleep, so I snapped in a different direction instead. Appropriate mood music: Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire"...
But of COURSE...it all comes back to animation.
The decline and fall of the nuclear family. The rising tide of urban and (God help us) suburban violence. Spousal and child abuse. Latchkey kid-ism. The ongoing cruelty of kids towards anybody who is different. The ongoing cruelty of kids towards anybody who is too much the same. Raising children to really believe that horseshit about how they're precious gems, and that they have special rights and gifts above and beyond everybody else just because they're richer/thinner/whiter/more Christian/more anything else. Lack of effective gun control. Watching grown people arguing and killing on the news every night for the rest of your life. Watching certain grown people never forgive or forget any of the tiniest trespasses against their persons or personalities. The gradual decline of real-world networking. Palming off the idea that the ends justify the means and screw the morals. Babies making babies. The inability of many grown people to take responsibility for their own actions instead of creating a culture of victimhood. A generally lame public education system. Falling SAT scores. Sleepless nights listening to your parents fight. Sleepless nights listening to the gunshots in the distance. Sleepless nights listening to the Art Bell Show. Not being read to enough. Being allowed to sleep in front of the television at single-digit ages. Smiley faces in Internet chatrooms. Playstation 2. Backyard wrestling. Anna Nicole Goddamn Smith.
You would be a fool and a Democrat to believe these are the actual problems that could affect the way children deal with the world they live in, and thus create screwed-up adults. These are the symptoms of the only real sickness, the one caused by old cartoons being endlessly repeated on cable networks, and that alone. Let's complain to our cable companies, and devote our entire energies towards driving these heinous animated monstrosities off the air, because once this single act is done, nirvana will dawn, boys and girls of all creeds will frolic in the open air teaching each other merry songs, nobody will ever kill or hate again (even Shiite Muslims), and best of all, THE TOILET WILL NEVER, EVER BACK UP AGAIN.
Television messed my mind up, but it was REAL LIFE that made me a freak.
(Annnnnnd SCENE...the thread's still on the message board at this writing, but on the off-chance that Delphi crashes one day and never comes back, it's good to have backups of the type of overheated prose that led me to blogdom in the first place. There's a full-fledged Anna Nicole rant buried somewhere in that message board, but it was such a nasty flameout, I think you should be spared...for now.)
(Another cheery sidebar: The Blogger spellchecker wanted to replace "gunshots" with "sunsets". Interesting substitution in the context.)
But of COURSE...it all comes back to animation.
The decline and fall of the nuclear family. The rising tide of urban and (God help us) suburban violence. Spousal and child abuse. Latchkey kid-ism. The ongoing cruelty of kids towards anybody who is different. The ongoing cruelty of kids towards anybody who is too much the same. Raising children to really believe that horseshit about how they're precious gems, and that they have special rights and gifts above and beyond everybody else just because they're richer/thinner/whiter/more Christian/more anything else. Lack of effective gun control. Watching grown people arguing and killing on the news every night for the rest of your life. Watching certain grown people never forgive or forget any of the tiniest trespasses against their persons or personalities. The gradual decline of real-world networking. Palming off the idea that the ends justify the means and screw the morals. Babies making babies. The inability of many grown people to take responsibility for their own actions instead of creating a culture of victimhood. A generally lame public education system. Falling SAT scores. Sleepless nights listening to your parents fight. Sleepless nights listening to the gunshots in the distance. Sleepless nights listening to the Art Bell Show. Not being read to enough. Being allowed to sleep in front of the television at single-digit ages. Smiley faces in Internet chatrooms. Playstation 2. Backyard wrestling. Anna Nicole Goddamn Smith.
You would be a fool and a Democrat to believe these are the actual problems that could affect the way children deal with the world they live in, and thus create screwed-up adults. These are the symptoms of the only real sickness, the one caused by old cartoons being endlessly repeated on cable networks, and that alone. Let's complain to our cable companies, and devote our entire energies towards driving these heinous animated monstrosities off the air, because once this single act is done, nirvana will dawn, boys and girls of all creeds will frolic in the open air teaching each other merry songs, nobody will ever kill or hate again (even Shiite Muslims), and best of all, THE TOILET WILL NEVER, EVER BACK UP AGAIN.
Television messed my mind up, but it was REAL LIFE that made me a freak.
(Annnnnnd SCENE...the thread's still on the message board at this writing, but on the off-chance that Delphi crashes one day and never comes back, it's good to have backups of the type of overheated prose that led me to blogdom in the first place. There's a full-fledged Anna Nicole rant buried somewhere in that message board, but it was such a nasty flameout, I think you should be spared...for now.)
(Another cheery sidebar: The Blogger spellchecker wanted to replace "gunshots" with "sunsets". Interesting substitution in the context.)
|| Eric 5:25 AM#
