So, the thing is… I have a bad attitude. 

A friend wrote me recently and told me (very nicely) that she liked the columns but she occasionally wanted to tell me to get over myself.  I know, I know.  Sometimes I have the same response to me. Unfortunately, this is one of THOSE columns, so be forewarned. 

My husband and I tuned in for exactly two minutes of the Grammy awards.  We saw a woman, who had just been awarded a Grammy, give the single most graceless acceptance speech I have ever seen.  I remarked to my husband that I simply didn't understand that --why even go to the Grammy's, why buy into the whole award system, if your attitude is that bad?  If it doesn't matter to you at all, or if you begrudge the judges for taking so long to award you a statue, why GO??  Why get all dressed up, sit through what must be the most boring six hours in history only to finally get an award and show up all over everyone's television set as the World's Most Sore WINNER?  I don't get it.   

So then I started thinking about the current predominance of bad attitude that permeates all forms of entertainment.  The hip-hop hoodlums and their vile music lyrics.  The slasher video games and movies.  The trash talk shows.  The WWF.  Temptation Island.  The Rugrats.  

And you know what?  I'm SICK of it.  I don't want to see one more article or show about some athlete/ singer/ actor who has been arrested for pistol-whipping someone in a nightclub, or leaving the scene of a car accident or worse.  Enough, already! 

There is a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams) in which one of the main characters says this:  “… the least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for.  And the most you can do is live inside that hope.  Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.  What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.  Enough to eat, enough to go around.  The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed.  That's about it.” 

I was so struck by that quote. That's all I want, too.  Elementary kindness. Elementary decency.  Really, it doesn't seem like so much to ask but the pendulum is so far in the other direction, it's hard to conceive of it ever swinging back.  I want to pick up a magazine and see a celebration of the JOY in life --not an article on the sixty-five ways to tell if your man is cheating on you.   I want to watch a movie with my children that I don't have to screen first for sex and violence and wherein the message is POSITIVE.  I am tired of negativity. I'm just tired of it. 

Now, I have to say that I am not at all into censorship.  It's a hard line to draw actually.  I think artists who really have something to say, who have a POINT to make, should be left in peace to express themselves.  Remember the hubbub over that painter who depicted the Madonna smeared with feces?  Well, I don't really have an opinion on that (other than I didn't think it was a particularly good painting and I'm not sure I got the point) but I wouldn't want it censored.  I guess what I'm talking about is more the crass commercialization of violence and sex to sell products to impressionable kids.  Come on already.  It's just basic decency.  Yes, you know you can sell records and movies when you go for the shock value.  Kids want to see and hear that kind of stuff because it's like riding a roller coaster --it’s heady stuff, tinged with fear.  It lets them play at being grown-ups.  But the bottom line is that it's poisoning the vulnerable minds of the youths in this country --and then when we see kids arming themselves and settling playground disputes with Daddy's pistol, how can we really blame anyone but ourselves?  

The entertainment industry is always telling us that we should be responsible for what our children are exposed to.  “Turn off the television,” they say.  “Obey the movie rating.”  Well, you ask any concerned mother of a teenager exactly how much control she has over what her child sees.  Ask her how much time she gets to spend with her children in their natural habitat (the shopping mall.)  We cannot stalk our children in order to ensure that they are only exposed to wholesome messages --it's simply not possible, no matter how hard we try.  

My friend Linda and I were talking the other day about some parents we know who won't let their kids have anything to do with Harry Potter books because of the so called “Satanic” element.  I've read the Harry Potter books and I think they're wonderful –full of classic David vs. Goliath, good vs. evil stuff.  The witchcraft in them is FUNNY --and it’s always going awry.  Makes me laugh.  But that's just MY call.  (And of course, you have to make sure you're exposing your kids to them when it's developmentally appropriate.  I wouldn't read them to my THREE year old or anything.)  Anyway, it seems to me that THIS is the kind of decision parents should have to make --we should be able to pick and choose among the good stuff out there for what is appropriate for our children.  We shouldn't have to always choose the one that's the LEAST offensive. 

So, come on, Hollywood, grow up.  Make the decision as grown-ups that yes, selling that kind of mind crap will make you loads of money but it's WRONG.  And it's bad for our country, which will soon be in the hands of kids who have seen thousands of grisly murders and heard thousands of songs about violence against women and intolerance for difference and the glorification of ignorance and indecency as something worthy of our time. 

Police your own.  If you can't hire people who use some basic good judgment over what's decent and what's not, then buckle down and come up with some guidelines.  I don't want the government to have to regulate you.  You should be able to do it yourself.  Maybe you could just use a rule of thumb like “Would I want the next President of the United States being exposed to this?”  Maybe that's not such a good example.  How about “Would I want the boy who is about to take my daughter out on her first car date exposed to this?”  

Everywhere I look, someone else is bemoaning the coarsening of our culture and the desensitization to violence but nothing seems to be getting DONE.  My husband thinks that there will be no real change by the entertainment industry unless there is economic incentive to do so.  I know he's right, but that's also my point.  The industry should change because it's the RIGHT THING TO DO --because the short term, grab-the-money-and-run philosophy is very harmful to us all.   

At this point, you are probably wondering what color the sky is in my world.  Well, it's blue.  I'm not so naïve as to think any of this is going to happen.  But I have identified what it is I hope for and I'm living inside that hope.  I don't think it's too much to ask that I be able to bring up my children among some basic kindness and decency without having to encase them in plastic bubbles.  I'm calling for an end to this relentless negativity and violence and hatred in the products that are marketed to humans under the age of eighteen.  I just want the people who are making money this way to stop and think about the long-term effects of what they are doing to the minds of the children.  

And I don't think I'm getting over myself any time soon.

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(c) Barbara Cooper 2001

Barbara Cooper is the mother of Ana (3) and Jane (five months).  She lives in Austin, Texas where the sky is actually a dull gray at the moment.