Family Media Rules for the New School Year

Posted on August 29, 2011 at 9:37 am

As families get ready to start a new school year, it is a good opportunity to sit down and map out the rules for managing media, which should be posted in the kitchen and signed off on by both adults and children. Here’s what I recommend as a good starting point for developing a plan that works for you.

Certain times and spaces in the home should be media-free zones. That means no iPods for kids and no Blackberries for parents and no smart phones for anyone. Recommended: during meals, in car rides under 30 minutes, after bedtime.

No screen time for anyone under age 2, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Recreational screen time, whether television, DVDs, or computers, is a treat, not a right. It’s a good idea to make sure that it comes only after homework, chores, exercise, other kinds of play, and family time.

Make sure there is some quiet time each day as well. The spirit is nourished by silence. All too often, we try to drown out our unsettled or lonely feelings in noise, instead of allowing them to resolve themselves. Just as important, the best and most meaningful family communication flourishes only in quiet.

Plan recreational media usage. You might say something like, “We should have time for one hour of television today” or “Let’s get a DVD to watch on Sunday afternoon.” Then look at the newspaper or television guide listing together or look through a movie guide to see the options and pick which ones you think are worthwhile. Try to avoid the “let’s see what’s on television” channel surf, which has a tendency to be numbing rather than engaging or relaxing.

Distract and entertain the kids with books, crayons, or non-electronic toys; not television, iPads, and DVDs. The Washington-based Center for Media Education estimates that preschoolers watch four hours of television a day. Most educators think that anything over two hours at that age takes too much time away from the important “work” of playing, learning to interact with others, learning to amuse themselves, and developing their imaginations. School-age kids should spend even less time with television.

Turn the television off when the program or DVD is over, unless there is something else you planned to watch on next. This discourages the idea that we “watch television” instead of watching particular programs.

Watch with the kids whenever possible, and comment on what you see. Encourage them to comment, too. “What do you think he will do next?” “She looks sad. I think they hurt her feelings.” “He’s having a hard time feeling good about himself, isn’t he?” “If you were that kid, what would you do?” “If someone said that to you, how would you feel?”

Look for positive role models for girls. Children’s shows produced for commercial networks tend to ignore girls. Producers are asked for shows with “boy appeal,” because the numbers show that girls will watch shows produced for boys, but boys won’t watch shows produced for girls. There is a lot of what I call “the Smurfette syndrome,” a reference to the once-popular cartoon show that featured 99 highly varied male characters and one girl character, whose sole and defining characteristic was that she was a female. Whether you have daughters or sons, help them to be sensitive to these concerns, asking questions like, “Do you think it’s fair that there are no girls on that team?” “How come only the boys get to go on that adventure?” and commenting positively on good female role models: “She’s brave!” “That’s what I call persistence!”

Be alert for issues of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, family, and class. The media tends to feature Dick and Jane, Ozzie and Harriet suburban families, where Dad works and Mom stays home and does housework and everyone is white and vaguely Christian. Non-whites are often portrayed condescendingly or stereotypically. Make sure your children know that there are many different kinds of families, and many different kinds of homes. Make an effort to be sure they see diverse families in what they watch.

Set a good example. Don’t let the kids see you veg out in front of the television, aimlessly clicking the remote. Don’t tell them not to talk to you so you can watch some sitcom. Do let them see you reading, and enjoying what you read.

Don’t ever let anyone — parent, grandparent, sibling or friend — tell a child that a program or video he or she wants to watch is “too babyish.” Respect children’s interest and affection for the shows they like, and their need to return to old comforts.

Make sure that children understand the difference between programs and commercials. Saturday morning cartoon commercials are particularly troublesome, with a sort of hip-hop precocity that shows grade-school kids acting like hyperactive mini-teenagers. Online games and communities for children are also filled with marketing and advertising.

Establish a zero-tolerance policy for mean or bullying behavior on social media. Middle school and elementary school-age children should know that parents can and do review everything they do online or via texting at any time.

If you find that you have made a mistake and taken your children to a film that you find inappropriate, leave the theater. You can get your money back. And you communicate an important lesson to your children about your commitment to protecting them. The same is true, of course, for a DVD or television show.

Do not be shy about setting television limits with babysitters, friends’ parents, or grandparents. Never leave your children with anyone without being clear about your rules.

Be careful with tie-ins, especially cartoons based on movie characters. Just because a Saturday morning cartoon like “Beetlejuice” or “The Mask” or some fast food gizmo is geared for children does not mean that the associated movie is appropriate for them as well.

Use movies as a starting point for developing interests. Go to the library to check out a book or video relating to what you have seen. Read the newspaper for stories relating to what you have seen. Make a craft project inspired by the show. (“Can you draw Mickey carrying the buckets of water?” “Let’s try to find where Indiana Jones went on a map.”)

When in doubt, turn it off. Remember that there is no reason to watch any DVD unless you genuinely feel it is the best use of your child’s time and worth two hours of childhood.

Every month or so, try a “television diet” day without any television at all, and use the extra time for special family activities.

When an older sibling is watching a video that is not appropriate for a younger child, make sure the younger child has an appealing alternative. It’s a good time for you to do something special together, even if it is just sorting laundry or setting the table.

Establish strict limits on viewing, but try not to use limits as a punishment, unless the offense relates to television itself (watching without permission, for example) or time management (“If you don’t finish cleaning up by 3:00, you won’t have time to watch the movie.”) This reinforces the message that we make decisions about television and videos based only on the merits of the shows.

Let them know why you like (or don’t like) particular shows. Try not to say that something is “too old” for them, as this will just make them more interested in seeing what it is about. Sometimes it works better to say (truthfully) that it is “too stupid.” Compare it to food; some shows are like healthful food, some are like candy, some are like poison. Model good television behavior yourself. Don’t keep it on as background noise. Don’t watch anything you don’t want them to see if they are around (you’d be amazed — and appalled — at what a three-year-old can pick up.)

No television in a child’s bedroom, unless he or she is sick in bed. It is not only isolating, but it makes establishing limits impossible.

Never, never, never have the television on during family meals. That is your most precious time to share the day’s experiences, challenges, and thoughts, and to let children know how important they are to you. The same goes for rides in the car, minivan, or RV.

Is ‘The Help’ Offensive?

Posted on August 26, 2011 at 8:00 am

The Help is a hit. The book club favorite by first-time novelist Kathryn Stockett is now a box office success, with strong reviews and robust ticket sales. Like the book, though, it is controversial. Is it well-intentioned but insensitive for white people to write in the voices of black people? Does it make whites, rather than blacks, the heroes of the civil rights struggle?

There are some worthwhile discussions of the film online already, well worth reading whether you liked the film or not. Its greatest contribution will probably be opening up the space for conversations about how to tell these stories in a manner that is both true and respectful of the past and the present. One element of the film I think has not been given enough credit is the way the most explicit expression of racism in the film, the requirement that private homes build separate bathrooms for “the help,” is a manifestation of the virulently disordered thinking from combining the extreme intimacy of the domestic employee relationship with the extreme racism that requires psychic distance. The white employers hold onto their bigoted view of the world to feel less vulnerable to the domestics who were so deeply involved with their families and so aware of their secrets.

Teresa Wiltz’s review in “The Root” is an exceptionally thoughtful parsing of the film’s merits and its shortcomings.

In many ways, the movie version of The Help, adapted for the screen and directed by Tate Taylor, is better than the 2009 novel. The film does much to humanize unsympathetic characters; a close-up of welling eyes, a frown or a backward glance provide visual cues that Stockett’s ham-fisted prose cannot. On the page, Stockett’s clumsy attempt at black dialect grates; on the screen, in the mouths of talented actors, it feels natural, unforced. Then again, the supremely gifted Viola Davis (Aibileen) and Octavia Spencer (Minny) can make any screenplay sing.

Wiltz says the film “skillfully evokes the curious and complicated intimacy between African-American domestics and their “families” but it omits any role for black men. Her criticism of the use of humor is telling: “Often, The Help‘s solution to handling difficult subject matter is to leaven it with humor, the better to make it palatable to a mainstream audience. Sometimes you laugh to keep from crying, but sometimes laughter trivializes the fact that, yes, you should be crying.”

I liked the way The Root also included a discussion by five young black professional women who attended the film. One said, “in a theater full of mostly older black women, who seemed to love the film, I was forced to not be so dismissive. Maybe we need to consider that that story line really resonates with a certain generation.” Another found that she identified most with the young white protagonist in the film, Skeeter (played by Emma Stone). “Her story line as a young, educated, single woman trying to navigate society’s expectations resonated the most…That’s great news about how far we’ve come, but it also made me think seriously about what we’re doing (if anything) to honor their legacy. I’d hate to think some of our grandmothers survived that just for us to end up like little brown versions of the white women they used to work for. ”

In Entertainment Weekly, Mark Harris said that it was Viola Davis’ performance that made the film work. I agree — and think it was very wise of Tate to make hers the narrator’s voice of the film. Her character, and her performance are in every way the heart of the story.

Using her controlled physicality, her low voice, and her radar for realism, she quiets the movie down — which it desperately needs — and turns herself into the embodiment of the pain, compromise, and strength The Help otherwise struggles to get right. Davis’ integrity melds so seamlessly with Aibileen’s that her work is wrenching on an almost unconscious level….

The New Republic tried to imagine a version of the movie that would please those who call it racist.

Harris means unconscious on the part of the audience, not on the part of Davis, whose thoughtful and layered approach to the role lends dignity to the film.

New York Press movie critic Armond White found it cozy and convenient by comparison to television’s “I’ll Fly Away” and Broadway’s “Caroline, or Change.”

Empathic storytelling like this has considerable charm, but newcomer Tate Taylor’s direction and adaptation of the book by Kathryn Stockett indulges prefeminist nostalgia more than it faces the complex realities of American racism. Finding erroneous humor in the way black women outsmarted their white mistresses through wily social courage and culinary artistry is deceptively attractive. To imply that all this has passed and can now be accepted by our advanced, socially tolerant era depends upon a certain falsification of how the black-white, mammy-mistress symbiosis operated. Taylor’s interest in updating historical embarrassments leads to a shallow view of a tradition that began in slavery but continues on in the casually sustained interplay of pain and affection, dependence and resentment.

The Boston Globe’s Wesley Morris appeared on the Slate Culture Gabfest to discuss his review of “The Help.”

It’s possible both to like this movie – to let it crack you up, then make you cry – and to wonder why we need a broad, if sincere dramatic comedy about black maids in Jackson, Miss., in 1962 and ’63 and the high-strung white housewives they work for. The movie is too pious for farce and too eager to please to comment persuasively on the racial horrors of the Deep South at that time….“The Help’’ joins everything from “To Kill a Mockingbird’’ to “The Blind Side’’ as another Hollywood movie that sees racial progress as the province of white do-gooderism.

And Thelma Adams writes:

on’t be fooled because it’s set among the knick knacks and bridge tables of Jackson, Mississippi – it carries a potent message for those with an open mind

If, like me, you believe the personal is political – a 60’s mantra — then the story of racism can be assembled from small intimate moments, and told from behind closed bathroom doors, in a single community – and that story can have a revolutionary impact. And that is the story of The Help….

You can critique the movie’s form – as Manohla Dargis described it “this big, ole slab of honey-glazed hokeum,” or George’s “rosy glow” headline – but the delivery system does not negate the complexity of the society it reveals. It’s not a simplistic thing. It’s not “oh evil white Southerners” or “wonderful black women that vacuum.” The central question is: what happens in a society where black women raise white children with love, and those white children grow up to terrorize black women?

That’s a unique and provocative question without an easy, rosy, candy-coated answer.

The same could be said about the merits of the movie. I agree with at least some of all of the points made above. And I especially agree with what one of the movie’s stars, Octavia Spencer, said when I visited the set last year: ”What I love about this book is that we are having the conversations so that we can stop having the conversations.” That seems to me to be a good place to begin.

Film Stage calls ‘One Day’ Toxic

Posted on August 24, 2011 at 8:00 am

I did not like One Day much and neither did the audience. The box office in its first week of limited release was under estimates. But it really riled up Kristy Puchko of Film Stage, who called it “the most toxic romance of the year.” She objected to the disparity between the two. Emma is thoughtful, principled, and diligent, while Dex is self-centered and spoiled.

The visual disparity in their appearance alone is striking. (It’s like Beauty and the Sex Offender.) But what it suggests about these characters status is even more shocking. To recap: when Emma was a frumpy loser with no career prospects, her romantic equal (according to Dex, the film’s ultimate protagonist) was a similarly stunted server with a hopeless goal. But now that Dex is the one who is lost, lonely and physically beat — he sees his romantic equal as wildly successful and enviably gorgeous Emma. This double standard asserts to impressionable audience members that girls should aspire to Lancome good looks to land even a once-handsome man.

SPOILER ALERT: She also objects to the ending, which seems to suggest that Emma’s ultimate purpose was to sacrifice herself to give Dex a growth experience. I had the same problem with both the book and movie and would be glad to hear from a fan who feels otherwise.

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Who Scares the Scarers?

Posted on August 23, 2011 at 3:59 pm

The New York Times asked people who make scary movies about the movies that scared them in a piece called What Spooks the Masters of Horror? The answer turns out to be pretty much the same things that scare the rest of us. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining was mentioned by director Ti West (“The House of the Devil”) and Guillermo del Toro (“Blade” and this week’s “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”). The Exorcist terrified John Landis (“An American Werewolf in London”) and Eric Red (“The Hitcher”). Check out what else scared who and why in this goosebumpy survey.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture