We were just finishing our family viewing of the animated movie, Ratatouille (about a rat who desires to become a famous chef) in our living room last night, my 4-year-old boy asked me, "Daddy, do we have rats like that in our house?!" Before I tell you how I answered him, let me digress to another dimension of my son's perception of reality. Our most recent Halloween, he dressed up as Spider-Man in the costume with a foamy Adonis upper body sewn inside. Soon, he and the costume were inseparable. With his forearms outstretched, his thumb, index and pinkie extended while his two middle fingers curled in, my boy believes that he is shooting webs down the hallway and is swinging on them as Tobey Maquire's character celebrated his newly found arachnid web slinging skills through the alleys and streets of New York. He leaps from the floor to the couch, then from the couch to the (hardwood) floor. Oops! "No web Spidey?!" Ouch! Daddy hugs, exhortations to "man-up"ensue. Then my sage-like discussion begins, helping the young lad grasp the distinctions between fantasy and reality. "Movies are able to show things that appear real, but they're not", I said. "This is called 'fantasy'. 'Reality' shows what is really real, or how things truly are. It's okay for you to pretend to be Spider-Man (boy), but think about what is fantasy (not real) and what is reality, (true to life). " We haven't had any Emergency Room runs since our discussion, however, his energetic boyhood warrants that potential daily. Helping my son discover the difference between fantasy and reality is one of the most valuable life-skills I can teach. It is wonderful for my son to want to emulate someone who desires to do what is honorable while helping his neighbor. It's not okay for me to have him think that he might be bit by a spider and receive superhuman abilities!Mass media is bombarding our youth with dangerous messages in order to win loyalty to their brands and products.
This blog is a clarion call to examine the messages, ideas, consequences, and consumption of corporate media on youth. We will learn the vocabulary and techniques used to draw young people away from their immediate authority and advocacy structures, to the submission of their corporate sponsors. Once we've unveiled these Emperors With New Clothes, we can move to a most exciting process of productive culture-making media.
Now about those resident culinary rodents. While we don't have fun-loving rats who want to help us cook delightful dishes, we have festering images and ideas that are trying to invade our thoughts and lives from the same instrument that we used to watch our movie. Much like Chef Skinner who wanted to keep Gusteau's son Linguini from creating wonderful original cuisines. Skinner wanted to drain all the integrity from a hard working culture-making heritage in order to market as many products, in as short a time, for as much money as he could amass for himself. Sound familiar?
