Sarcasm?! Not!!!

I haven't posted recently because I was quite sick.  Ironically enough with the H1N1 flu! (Please see previous posts about the culture of fear.) So I relied on children's movies and television to help me through the couple of hours between when my children finished lunch and when my husband finished work since I was completely exhausted and, by 2pm, just couldn't move or function.  So, I saw A LOT of children's films this fall, and I'm quite concerned about what I've seen.

As an older mom, who came of age in the 80s, I grew up in a particularly disfunctional relationship with Barbie.  As a child, she was my best friend - always cool, always popular, always accepted by her peers.  As a teen, she was dismissed as an archaic remnant of a less modern time when women had no role I ever wanted to be in.  As a young woman, increasingly aware of my "flaws", she was a symbol to be mocked - I remember laughing at different, unorthodox versions of the doll.  And, I distinctly remember telling anyone who would listen that I would never, ever let my daughter play with a Barbie.

Well, twenty years and three children later, Barbie is firmly ensconced in her pink plastic carrying case in our playroom.  I treasure the moments I get to play 'barbies' with my children (all of them), and remember with tears how my mom used to sew the coolest clothes for my doll.  I wish I had the time and the talent to do that. And now, after my illness and reliance on children's movies, I REALLY treasure the Barbie films.  They are appropriate in content for my young children, they deal with subjects like equality and tolerance, kindness and friendship.  This fall, we watched Barbie and the Three Musketeers and later, Barbie in A Christmas Carol.  Both films are awesome.  My son asked, "Why weren't girls allowed to be musketeers?"  It just doesn't make any sense to him that girls aren't equal to boys in some people's minds.  And I feel like Supermom! (And then I go overboard and show the kids School House Rock's "Suffering Until Sufferage"!) Disney fairy movies (Tinkerbell and Tinkerbell 2) are in the same vein as the Barbie films, and have the benefit of showing an attractive young fairy working with tools and thinking about the mechanics of things (engineering!).  But that's where it ends.

I made two significant mistakes this fall (aside from relying on movies & tv, but let's put that aside for now). I allowed my children to watch G-Force, the Disney/Bruckheimer film about special ops guinea pigs, and Home Alone, the classic Chris Columbus film with Macaulay Culkin.  G-Force was truly the silliest film every made, but that wasn't the problem.  In the film, one of the characters passes gas and says, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"  And the chorus of mice shout "The horror, the horror".  I laughed, of course, not realizing what had just happened.  Then a week later my son starts chiming "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"  Trust me, it's not really that funny when a 6 year old says it, and then asks, "Mom, what's napalm?"  Ok.  How to answer that?!  Because I'll have to answer in such a way that makes the humour of the line ok with my kids, and I finally concluded that that was just not possible.  There's no way you can equate the reality of napalm with humour. Ever.  So, I used the question as an opportunity to talk about what's appropriate for characters in kids films to say, and what's not.  Seriously, the sheer disgust you feel watching Apocalypse Now, when that line is delivered, is totally undermined by a furry tail-less rat repeating it about his own flatulence.  I don't want to get all Tipper Gore, either though.  There is a place for sarcasm and biting humour - in films geared to pre-teens and older.  I love sarcasm, but I don't use it with my children.  Which brings me to Home Alone.

I had forgotten the disdain with which the McAllister family treated each other.   It's horrible to hear Kevin (Culkin) call his mom a 'dummy' and the kids call each other 'jerks' and 'morons'.  This is the same parenting era that gave rise to Barbara Coloroso and Mazelich and Faber's "How to talk so kids will listen".  It just doesn't compute.  It's awful, and really undermines all the work I've done to teach my kids to respect each other.  How did parents tolerate this film when it was released?  It's off our dvr now, and won't be returning, even though my kids laugh like nothing else when they watch it.  The long-term cost of Home Alone is too great.  And I realize now that Barbie and her fashion-forward friends are not the enemy anymore.  It's the complacency and disdain and distrust that Hollywood promotes as 'model' families.  Home Alone is a direct ancestor to the Simpsons, Two and a Half Men, and now Modern Family.  Enough is enough.  Real families aren't like that.  Real families love each other.  But real children can't distinguish between Hollywood fantasy and reality.  They need us to guide them, nurture them, and show them how Hollywood doesn't decide how we behave.