What do I do here, in Hollywood, with the V-Word? Backstory: (Before Kid) I remember scores of parents everywhere talking about their children. Sorry, that’s a lie. I don’t remember scores of parents saying anything. That would have required caring about what parents were saying, and I remember a decade or two, maybe four or so, when I didn’t much care what they said.
Apart from that, I do recall them asking things in plangent tones like, “‘What are we teaching our children about the world?” and other sayings that felt a good deal like whining at the time.
Back then – about two years, six months, five days and a handful of hours (that is, before Sophie was born) – I could not have cared less about what we were teaching our children. Especially, about the V-Word. No, get your minds out of the bedrooms. I meant Violence. It’s no big deal, right? Especially since it’s everywhere?
When I was a kid, so what if I used to grab a poker out of its holder next to the fireplace, and wave it in the face of a friend like I’d seen Tom the cat do to Jerry the mouse? Anybody who couldn’t hang with a little plastic pistol whipping session in the back yard ’cause “The Duke” said it was okay, was a lily-livered poltroon, as the saying went.
But, who can deny it? That’s the way the world is. Now. It’s Violent.
I quote almost everyone I’ve ever known on the subject: “Violence is Human Nature.” It is the way of the world; you must dominate or die.
I remember Walt Disney’s famous quote, “People get what Entertainment they deserve.” But, do we deserve this kind of entertainment? Don’t get me entirely wrong – production value aside…But, there must be a significant amount of violent people here in LA if it follows by the level and quality of super-evil images on the billboards, advertising movies and the types of shows seen all around Town.
Sunset, Santa Monica, Hollywood, Ventura, Melrose – the violent images and references are all one and the same.
There are snipers with gritty sneers armed only with the truth (plus a huge automatic machine gun) on the side of a bank. Or, would you choose to have the indelible image of an eighty-foot high (not exaggerating) hideous clown face on your way down to Hawthorne on the 405? I know, maybe you were having too much fun, driving west on Ventura, top down with lemonade in hand, and they had to toss out ten repeated building-sized posters of a thirty foot high face of a lovely woman about to die, looking up at the face of her killer (POV could be the child of the soon-to-be murderer watching placidly) with a black streak coming from her eye.
The me of two years, six months and five days and a handful of hours ago would have maybe thought differently about it all.
But, as I turn around in the car, time and time again, to look AT Sophie when passing these images, all I can see are her bright blue eyes, taking it all in. Then I think, what if violence is not in our nature, but in our nurture? After all, I think a child only strikes out when it feels threatened. It’s just that same perception of serious threat for a child which includes having your all-important plastic shovel snatched away at the sandbox.
Would the need to be violent go away if the perception of threat goes away? I bet it would. That also mildly freaks me out when I think that the world loves these images and movies. Does that mean we all are so threatened and afraid we can’t even slap our neighbor? Or play with that little plastic pistol?
Maybe I’m just being too serious and I should just stop being such a sissy. This is the way the world is. And, not preparing my daughter for the coming wars, famine, death and misery that we are all actively and relentlessly visualizing is irresponsible and unreasonable. She’s going to have to survive in that world; she and she, alone, is going to have to fight for it.
But here’s the true horror: I suspect the world is this way not because of it’s intrinsic nature, but because we’ve made it this way. It’s what we wanted. How does that feel?
As I turn around to look in the eyes of Sophie, knowing those eyes will look upon the world, and judge, and choose, and create, I’m sure I want one thing for her: The ability to see the world as it truly, truly is – shapeable, playful, yielding, and hers.
And, on the heels of that, I am sure about another thing; I better watch what I teach my kid to wish for, here in Hollywood – as in everywhere else.