art by jonathan weiner; keep art aliveI grew up in the generation that can typically chart their rites of passages and seasons of past days by what was on the flickering lights and colors of the television set. It is how we relate to one another, most of the time, and our television-fed pop culture histories are what have become the threads that hold us all together in most conversations and connections. Most of my friends had a television in their bedrooms, and spent most meals huddled around the latest network primetime offering. Begging and bartering, I would offer up promises of a clean room or just the sight of my pouting eyes to get an extra hour of awake time in order to watch this week’s Charlie's Angels.
Most of the playground make-believe games and make-believe were based off of characters on re-runs of Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley, and we all secretly longed for the Brady’s as parents, even if my friends and I cringed at the idea of sharing a bathroom with five siblings. My mother still had us sit around the table most nights for dinner, and I do not think that our household watched the box more than any other family on the block did; that said, I know that I remember far more about Wonder Woman's visit from her sister, the downfall of toes stuck in bathtub drains, and how Lucy met William Holden than I do about algebraic formulas or the articles of the Bill of Rights. I can probably recognize just about any television theme song in ten notes or less, too. It is just the way my media-saturated mind and memory works.
First was the television, and then came cable and the birth of MTV. I would shudder to think, or admit, just how many hours I spent watching Martha Quinn and Mark Goodman tell me about the latest videos, or the notebooks I wrote in, tracking what video played when, and how many times. I can vividly recall sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor, with the phone crooked at my neck and ear, discussing Pat Benatar’s dangerous prostitute dance and how it could frighten a pimp, what it would be like to kiss an animated boy, or just how good we would look standing on that boat with Simon LeBon and Nick Rhodes. After that, or probably just around the time if my memory serves, came the VCR which meant we could watch movies we could choose and bring home; and that now my friends and I were obsessively recording all those videos from MTV, to watch whenever we wanted to. These were what my adolescent years were filled with, along with hair dye, record shops and KROQ, dancing at Studio K, sleepovers, and crushes on boys. But, if I were to look back at any one of those other things I bet I could connect something that played on the television to it, even the hair dye.
The thing is, no matter how much television I watched and wasted time with, I still read books and I had amazing friends; I still rode my bike through the neighborhood; and, I still wrote pretty much every day of my life in spiral bound notebooks, composition books, and diaries. Looking back, I do not think actually lacked much of anything because of television, or believe I missed out on any experiences that I may have partaken in if I had not sat rapt up in serial dramas and half-hour comedies.
There were things I gained from watching, too. It was a show on televison that confirmed the fact that the abuse I was suffering was actually abuse, and wrong. It acted as a comfort that I was not the only one to have such a thing happen in their family, and it took away some of that guilt and shame that I had carried around with me for so long. Because no one ever talked about sexual abuse at school, or anywhere else, for that matter. There is a very good chance that I would have grown far into adulthood and still never told anyone what was happening had I not seen a made-for-TV movie that reflected back what I had kept secret for so long.
I probably weighed more because of television, though. Not that I was ever very physically gifted at all, or keen at sports. My inborn klutziness acted as a pretty big hindrance to any team sport participation, and until my best friend moved into the neighborhood, I was the lone girl on a street of boys who lived to climb trees and play ball -- both things that I generally failed at doing well, and loathed because of it. The television, along with stacks of books, kept me company and comfortably indoors. They also kept me inactive, and snacking. So, my never skinny figure was not helped by all the shows I deemed must-see, though I cannot say without a doubt that I would have been any skinnier if I had been raised in a no-television home. I will say, the Hollywood view of women and their near-impossible-to-attain bodies, did not help my already shaky self-esteem. I can say for certain that the television was not the only reason for my struggles with body image and eating disorders, but I will note it did play a part in it.
So, now as a parent I find myself faced with the dilemma of the television. To allow your children to watch or not watch, that is the loaded question that friends, colleagues, experts and society all seem to have an opinion on. I have heard all the arguments that television viewing fosters violence in children’s behaviors, negatively affects attention spans, and helps promote the dumbing down of humankind. To be honest, the things I am more concerned about are the commercials, and the disgust I feel in the enormous marketing geared at children of such a young age. I know that it exists, and how deep and ingrained it aims to be, because I have spent almost ten years working for the beast called advertising. The goal is to create consumers from just about birth on, and advertisers and brands are quite skilled at it, too. Just ask my four year old and she will tell you what her new favorite cereal is (even if she has not tasted it yet), sing you the jingle to the paper plates that we need to have ("Zoo Zoo Zoo pals"), and constantly wish for a myriad of toys, some of which she would not even enjoy playing with if she had them. When she was younger, Veronica once told David and I that she just had to have a special light that told you where on the carpet your animal had urinated, all because she saw it on TV.
But, beyond the commercials, is television viewing that horrible and something you shoudl forbid? As a mother who has spent most of her life working while raising children, and who was a single mother for a large portion of my oldest daughter’s life, I will readily admit that there were times when turning a program on, or throwing in a video, was my saving grace. Weekend mornings when I could hardly function from being so tired, and times when I just needed twenty minutes to a half hour of adult time, television helped out the cause. Did I feel guilty for turning on the television because I needed a break? Sometimes, yes I did, and still do. But, it is the exception, not the rule, that I let a screen play temporary caregiver to any of the children.
Most of the playground make-believe games and make-believe were based off of characters on re-runs of Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley, and we all secretly longed for the Brady’s as parents, even if my friends and I cringed at the idea of sharing a bathroom with five siblings. My mother still had us sit around the table most nights for dinner, and I do not think that our household watched the box more than any other family on the block did; that said, I know that I remember far more about Wonder Woman's visit from her sister, the downfall of toes stuck in bathtub drains, and how Lucy met William Holden than I do about algebraic formulas or the articles of the Bill of Rights. I can probably recognize just about any television theme song in ten notes or less, too. It is just the way my media-saturated mind and memory works.
First was the television, and then came cable and the birth of MTV. I would shudder to think, or admit, just how many hours I spent watching Martha Quinn and Mark Goodman tell me about the latest videos, or the notebooks I wrote in, tracking what video played when, and how many times. I can vividly recall sitting cross-legged on my bedroom floor, with the phone crooked at my neck and ear, discussing Pat Benatar’s dangerous prostitute dance and how it could frighten a pimp, what it would be like to kiss an animated boy, or just how good we would look standing on that boat with Simon LeBon and Nick Rhodes. After that, or probably just around the time if my memory serves, came the VCR which meant we could watch movies we could choose and bring home; and that now my friends and I were obsessively recording all those videos from MTV, to watch whenever we wanted to. These were what my adolescent years were filled with, along with hair dye, record shops and KROQ, dancing at Studio K, sleepovers, and crushes on boys. But, if I were to look back at any one of those other things I bet I could connect something that played on the television to it, even the hair dye.
The thing is, no matter how much television I watched and wasted time with, I still read books and I had amazing friends; I still rode my bike through the neighborhood; and, I still wrote pretty much every day of my life in spiral bound notebooks, composition books, and diaries. Looking back, I do not think actually lacked much of anything because of television, or believe I missed out on any experiences that I may have partaken in if I had not sat rapt up in serial dramas and half-hour comedies.
There were things I gained from watching, too. It was a show on televison that confirmed the fact that the abuse I was suffering was actually abuse, and wrong. It acted as a comfort that I was not the only one to have such a thing happen in their family, and it took away some of that guilt and shame that I had carried around with me for so long. Because no one ever talked about sexual abuse at school, or anywhere else, for that matter. There is a very good chance that I would have grown far into adulthood and still never told anyone what was happening had I not seen a made-for-TV movie that reflected back what I had kept secret for so long.
I probably weighed more because of television, though. Not that I was ever very physically gifted at all, or keen at sports. My inborn klutziness acted as a pretty big hindrance to any team sport participation, and until my best friend moved into the neighborhood, I was the lone girl on a street of boys who lived to climb trees and play ball -- both things that I generally failed at doing well, and loathed because of it. The television, along with stacks of books, kept me company and comfortably indoors. They also kept me inactive, and snacking. So, my never skinny figure was not helped by all the shows I deemed must-see, though I cannot say without a doubt that I would have been any skinnier if I had been raised in a no-television home. I will say, the Hollywood view of women and their near-impossible-to-attain bodies, did not help my already shaky self-esteem. I can say for certain that the television was not the only reason for my struggles with body image and eating disorders, but I will note it did play a part in it.
So, now as a parent I find myself faced with the dilemma of the television. To allow your children to watch or not watch, that is the loaded question that friends, colleagues, experts and society all seem to have an opinion on. I have heard all the arguments that television viewing fosters violence in children’s behaviors, negatively affects attention spans, and helps promote the dumbing down of humankind. To be honest, the things I am more concerned about are the commercials, and the disgust I feel in the enormous marketing geared at children of such a young age. I know that it exists, and how deep and ingrained it aims to be, because I have spent almost ten years working for the beast called advertising. The goal is to create consumers from just about birth on, and advertisers and brands are quite skilled at it, too. Just ask my four year old and she will tell you what her new favorite cereal is (even if she has not tasted it yet), sing you the jingle to the paper plates that we need to have ("Zoo Zoo Zoo pals"), and constantly wish for a myriad of toys, some of which she would not even enjoy playing with if she had them. When she was younger, Veronica once told David and I that she just had to have a special light that told you where on the carpet your animal had urinated, all because she saw it on TV.
But, beyond the commercials, is television viewing that horrible and something you shoudl forbid? As a mother who has spent most of her life working while raising children, and who was a single mother for a large portion of my oldest daughter’s life, I will readily admit that there were times when turning a program on, or throwing in a video, was my saving grace. Weekend mornings when I could hardly function from being so tired, and times when I just needed twenty minutes to a half hour of adult time, television helped out the cause. Did I feel guilty for turning on the television because I needed a break? Sometimes, yes I did, and still do. But, it is the exception, not the rule, that I let a screen play temporary caregiver to any of the children.
Julia is an avid fan of the television, and she even has a set of her own in her room, along with a VCR/DVD combination player. Yet, she still devours books to the point where they are impossible to carry alin one set of arms after one of her notorious library hauls, and she has grown to be quite a selective viewer, and conniseur of programming. With all the hundreds of cable channels to choose from, and all the gadgets to view any program or film at home, she has become quite picky about what she will spend her time with. At the moment there are only two shows she will regularly tune in to watch, Project Runway and Heroes. Though she does have the music video addiction I did, with Fuse as her MTV, but that was almost to be expected.
As for Veronica and Max, I am sure that some would say they watch too much television. Max is enamored to the point of obsession with Teletubbies, Thomas the Train, and Jay Jay the Jet Plane. Veronica, whose tastes have grown past the PBS fare, prefers the mysteries of Scooby Doo and Martin Mystery, along with a love of Sailor Moon. When she was younger it was Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street that she loved, along with a few of Noggin’s other offerings.
Do they get anything from the time spent in front of the tube? I think so. I know that Veronica learned a smattering of Spanish from Dora, a dose of girl power from the Sailor Scouts, and various problem solving techniques from the mystery genre she seems to enjoy that started early on with Blue’s Clues. For Max, television seems to help with his need for rituals and predictability. He seems to especially like the repetitive nature of Teletubbies, who even repeat whole sections of the show at the request of the Teletubbies plea for "again, again". He talks along with Thomas, and mimics the sounds of the trains as they go, and sings the theme to Jay Jay with a huge smile.
I think at this stage in the parenting game I have come to the conclusion that television is not the root of all evil, as some would have society believe. Instead I think that negligent parental involvement with television is where the trouble lies. Not to say that I am a supporter of censorship, or parental advisory propaganda; but I do think that viewing television can and should be active, and that parents’ need to be involved along with their children. There are plenty of tools out there to help with your show selection, guides and online synopsis, you can even catch clips of episodes on youtube to just about anything; or you can sit down next to your children, which I often do, and watch with them. Also, if you have the On-Demand feature with your cable television there are options for Noggin, Nick Jr. and my personal favorite, PBS Sprout, that offer some of the most popular pre-school level educational shows almost commercial-free. There is typically one commercial at the start and end of a show, but what I have witnessed the advertisers have only been diaper companies, and I can live with Pampers brand marketing to the kids, they usually do not plead for diapers at the store.
For me, I allow the television to be a part of our family’s life. But, I still encourage books to be read, and read them aloud, and not just at bedtime. We take trips to the park, and walks around the neighborhood. Veronica and I plan and execute craft projects and bake cakes, do chores together and talk about the things she does see on television and around her world. Julia and I bond over shows that we like, but we also listen to music, talk about boys and philosophy and politics, and go out and do things together. Max shares his cars with me, gplays chase at the park, and he rides on my back around the living room. The television is not always on, and it is often replaced by music, or just nothing but silence, or our chattering and storytelling to each other. I suppose, like anything else, moderation is key.
As for Veronica and Max, I am sure that some would say they watch too much television. Max is enamored to the point of obsession with Teletubbies, Thomas the Train, and Jay Jay the Jet Plane. Veronica, whose tastes have grown past the PBS fare, prefers the mysteries of Scooby Doo and Martin Mystery, along with a love of Sailor Moon. When she was younger it was Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street that she loved, along with a few of Noggin’s other offerings.
Do they get anything from the time spent in front of the tube? I think so. I know that Veronica learned a smattering of Spanish from Dora, a dose of girl power from the Sailor Scouts, and various problem solving techniques from the mystery genre she seems to enjoy that started early on with Blue’s Clues. For Max, television seems to help with his need for rituals and predictability. He seems to especially like the repetitive nature of Teletubbies, who even repeat whole sections of the show at the request of the Teletubbies plea for "again, again". He talks along with Thomas, and mimics the sounds of the trains as they go, and sings the theme to Jay Jay with a huge smile.
I think at this stage in the parenting game I have come to the conclusion that television is not the root of all evil, as some would have society believe. Instead I think that negligent parental involvement with television is where the trouble lies. Not to say that I am a supporter of censorship, or parental advisory propaganda; but I do think that viewing television can and should be active, and that parents’ need to be involved along with their children. There are plenty of tools out there to help with your show selection, guides and online synopsis, you can even catch clips of episodes on youtube to just about anything; or you can sit down next to your children, which I often do, and watch with them. Also, if you have the On-Demand feature with your cable television there are options for Noggin, Nick Jr. and my personal favorite, PBS Sprout, that offer some of the most popular pre-school level educational shows almost commercial-free. There is typically one commercial at the start and end of a show, but what I have witnessed the advertisers have only been diaper companies, and I can live with Pampers brand marketing to the kids, they usually do not plead for diapers at the store.
For me, I allow the television to be a part of our family’s life. But, I still encourage books to be read, and read them aloud, and not just at bedtime. We take trips to the park, and walks around the neighborhood. Veronica and I plan and execute craft projects and bake cakes, do chores together and talk about the things she does see on television and around her world. Julia and I bond over shows that we like, but we also listen to music, talk about boys and philosophy and politics, and go out and do things together. Max shares his cars with me, gplays chase at the park, and he rides on my back around the living room. The television is not always on, and it is often replaced by music, or just nothing but silence, or our chattering and storytelling to each other. I suppose, like anything else, moderation is key.
And, I suppose, if I am going to love some television shows as much as I do, how can I say my children cannot fall in love with their own selections? I just try to steer them to the best things available.
So give me coffee and TV
Peacefully
I've seen so much I'm going blind
And I'm brain dead
Virtually
L.
you know me, i'm impulsive
1 comment:
That sounds a lot like my household growing up. I watched a ton of television. But I also read a lot of books, played outside all the time, did gymnastics, played with my toys, and did all of my homework. And yes, sometimes it was in front of the television. Including the homework :) My parents were active too, knowing what I was watching and talking to me about it.
Post a Comment