10.27.09
On Advertising and Discussions With My Sons
It’s super windy out today. The perfect day to curl up and read a good book. I haven’t been able to finish any books on my “to read” list as family life has been keeping me pretty busy. However, one of Matty’s required reading for his English class is Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. I had read that book years ago when it came out, so it was an interesting book and topic to re-examine.
We have been discussing Fast Food Nation because Matty’s had to write about the various chapters in this book. There are actually many aspects/concepts brought up in this book to discuss and write about, and one of the things Matty chose to write about was advertising. I like these discussions because it’s interesting to hear what my son is thinking and how he’s working things out in his mind. Plus it also gives me a different perspective. For instance regarding advertising one of his complaints was that it was a one-way street. That is, companies like McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants can advertise to us, but we can’t advertise back to them. Hmmm. I never thought about that. Plus, Matty pointed out that not only is it a one-way-street, but it comes directly into the home via television. I know, too, that many people would say that you can turn off the TV or change the channel. True. But it also reminded me of a portion of Barack Obama’s book, Audacity of Hope, where he writes about what’s broadcast on TV. This is what he wrote regarding a speech he gave at the Kaiser Family Foundation after they had given statistics that sex on TV had doubled in recent years:
“. . . Now I enjoy HBO as much as the next guy, and I generally don’t care what adults watch in the privacy of their own homes. In the case of children, I think it’s primarily the duty of parents to monitor what they are watching on television, and in my speech I even suggested that everyone would benefit if parents–heaven forbid–simply turned off the TV and tried to strike up a conversation with their kids.
“Having said all that, I indicated that I wasn’t too happy with ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs popping up every fifteen minutes whenever I watched a football game with my daughters in the room. I offered the further observation that a popular show targeted at teens, in which young people with no visible means of support spend several months getting drunk and jumping naked into hot tubs with strangers, was not ‘the real world.’ I ended by suggesting that the broadcast and cable industries should adopt better standards and technology to help parents control what streamed into their homes.
“You would have thought I was Cotton Mather. In response to my speech, one newspaper editorial intoned that the government had no business regulating protected speech, despite the fact that I hadn’t called for regulation. Reporters suggested that I was cynically tacking to the center in preparation for a national race. More than a few supporters wrote our office, complaining that they had voted for me to beat back the Bush agenda, not to act as the town scold.
“And yet every parent I know, liberal or conservative, complains about the coarsening of the culture, the promotion of easy materialism and instant gratification, and the severing of sexuality from intimacy. They may not want government censorship, but they want those corncerns recognized, their experiences validated. When, for fear of appearing censorious, progressive political leaders can’t even acknowledge the problem, those parents start listening to those leaders who will–leaders who may be less sensitive to constittional constraints.
“Of course conservatives have their own blind spots when it comes to addressing problems in the culture. Take executive pay. . . “
We realize that we can’t rely on government and the judgment of TV networks to choose suitable subjects for our family to view. This is the major reason why we take it upon ourselves to “not” watch regular television broadcasts in our home to limit negative influences. It’s not like there are any programs out there that is essential to watch anyway. But even so, what we have found is that we “still” are influenced by outside “advertising.” No we don’t eat fast foods and haven’t for more than 10 years now, but if we are honest with ourselves, we can’t deny that our society has influenced us even without watching television at home. And I think of what my son, Matty, said, “the influence of advertising is a one-way-street.” And I am reminded of another book I read called, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander. I thought that was another excellent book which discussed the problems with television. I highly recommend that book, too. In that book, Mander explains how television skews our perceptions of real life. It’s been years since I read that book, but it was one of the reasons that encouraged us to stop watching regular television programs in our home.
So why then are we still so influenced by the “outside?” Well, because we still “read” the news and other books and articles, AND we are a family heavily into the internet. . . And we realize that even the people we associate with influence us. so if they are influenced by television, we will be, too. So these discussion with Matty has enlightened me a bit and reminded me that we have to be alert and aware that we are not immune to negative influences even though we try to limit what streams into our home via media. And this is why it is extra important that we teach our boys what’s good and what’s bad and to understand that the friends they choose or the people they associate with will influence them. So that they will be able to discern good from bad and right from wrong in a world that seems to be increasingly blurring those lines.
The next book I’m hoping to get my hands on is called Eating Animals by Jonathan Foer. I don’t expect to go vegetarian after reading it as I’ve already been there and done that, so no thank you. But with the reviews it’s been getting, I’ll probably learn some things from Foer. And with my other son, Andrew’s, school subjects, he has rekindled my interested in reading Sven Lindqvist’s book, A History of Bombing, because Andrew had to do a presentation on the ethics of the bombing of Dresden. He was discussing this with me, and we were looking at the death toll statistics of WWII and the polls taken on whether it was necessary to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I know my feelings on it, but I’d like to read what Lindqvist has to say about it. So, I’ve got those two books on library hold. Let’s see if I can manage to get through them.
Okay, so I can smell that dinner is ready, and I’ve rambled long enough, so better leave it here for now. Was there any point to this post? Eh, I think I was just enjoying how I can have interesting discussions with my boys. And to think that once they were so small and our conversations used to be so different!
Marlakins
