Wednesday, December 01, 2004
I used to watch a bit of "My Wife and Kids" because I think Damon Wayans is funny. I hadn't seen the show in quite awhile but watched it last night and was really disgusted with it. The show began with their little girl, Kady, who's played by an eight year old actress, talking about her "gaydar" going off and telling her older sister about kids in her class who are gay and don't even know it yet. She went on to tell her teenage sister that her boyfriend was gay, too. Later, the even younger actor who plays the genius child Franklin, pulled the teenage boyfriend down, slapped him across the face and told him to act like a man.
I find nothing funny in putting these types of thoughts, words and actions into the mouths of child actors. I'll stick with taped repeats of the Andy Griffith show where a seven year old Opie would likely have been beaten to a pulp by any Mayberry teenager he tried to slap... beaten, I might add, most likely with Andy's blessing. When I was young, all twelve years of our school attended in the same building, we all rode the same bus (high schoolers didn't all have cars then)... young kids knew enough to stay out of the big kids' way. We knew, in effect, much more about how the world works and much less about it's perversions.
Isn't it strange that today on the one hand we hardly allow our children the opportunity to be injured -- by removing snowballs, swings, dodgeball, exploration of lakes and ponds and woods, etc. from their lives -- while on the other hand we value life so little (see Euthanasia in the Netherlands ). My uncle tells me the story of pulling my father out of the river after he broke through the thin ice while playing at recess during school. A school where I live in Indiana suspended a few first grade boys for just kicking snow into the air a couple years ago... they are not allowed to touch snow. It's strange, this dichotomy, this reverence for unvalued life; strange enough to twist kids' minds.
ps. Speaking of Ron Howard. How sad that someone who seems so grounded as him and Tom Hanks are going to do a DaVinci Code movie. I wonder if Andy Griffith believes that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were an item? I wonder how that idea would have gone over in Mayberry.
I find nothing funny in putting these types of thoughts, words and actions into the mouths of child actors. I'll stick with taped repeats of the Andy Griffith show where a seven year old Opie would likely have been beaten to a pulp by any Mayberry teenager he tried to slap... beaten, I might add, most likely with Andy's blessing. When I was young, all twelve years of our school attended in the same building, we all rode the same bus (high schoolers didn't all have cars then)... young kids knew enough to stay out of the big kids' way. We knew, in effect, much more about how the world works and much less about it's perversions.
Isn't it strange that today on the one hand we hardly allow our children the opportunity to be injured -- by removing snowballs, swings, dodgeball, exploration of lakes and ponds and woods, etc. from their lives -- while on the other hand we value life so little (see Euthanasia in the Netherlands ). My uncle tells me the story of pulling my father out of the river after he broke through the thin ice while playing at recess during school. A school where I live in Indiana suspended a few first grade boys for just kicking snow into the air a couple years ago... they are not allowed to touch snow. It's strange, this dichotomy, this reverence for unvalued life; strange enough to twist kids' minds.
ps. Speaking of Ron Howard. How sad that someone who seems so grounded as him and Tom Hanks are going to do a DaVinci Code movie. I wonder if Andy Griffith believes that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were an item? I wonder how that idea would have gone over in Mayberry.
