From the Times Online: “Am I being particularly sensitive, or does anyone else out there think it’s bad taste for Woolies to have a kiddy bed range named ‘Lolita’?.”
The British Woolworths chain have now withdrawn the bed, intended for 6 year old girls, from sale - but reportedly, no-one on their staff, including their website design team, had heard of Nabokov's novel, either of the film adaptationss, or any other use of the term until it was pointed out by a justifiably angry mother. That's not as disturbing as the possibility that someone deliberately intended it as a sick joke, but it's still decidedly sad - particularly as the store also sells books (though not that book) and DVDs, including the DVDs of both movies!
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
How to write your own canon
Over the holidays I picked up this nice little pamphlet from the sparkling next gen intellectual Teen Titans at n+1 magazine:
"What We Should Have Known" (n+1 Research Pamphlet Series #2)
...which consists of the transcripts of two stimulating (if sometimes ridiculously hand-wringing) round table discussions among various formal and informal members of the editorial board of the magazine regarding the important reading material they, upon reflection as to their own undergraduate experiences, think contemporary college students ought to read and won't otherwise be exposed to through a mainstream university education. Even if, as appears to have been the case with most of the n+1 crowd, they are fortunate enough to study philosophy or literature at Columbia or Harvard.
The transcripts are accompanied by appendixes including all the great books referenced within, and lists by each contributor of 8-12 "Books That Changed My Life." It's pretty good stuff. For example, this most worthy selection from the impressive Benjamin Kunkel:
1. Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia (1951)
2. Donald Barthelme, 40 Stories (1987)
3. George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871)
4. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (1957)
5. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (1962); The Age of Capital (1975); The Age of Empire (1987)
6. Javier Marias, Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me (1994)
7. James Salter, Light Years (1975)
8. W.B. Yeats, Collected Poems (1889-1939)
Nice! (If you know an earnest, intellectually curious 18-year-old, n+1 will send them the pamphlet for free.)
As noble as their groping around to discover a new 21st century canon is, it caused me to reflect that the real way to redefine the Canon is for each person to invent their own: a collection of books, great and not so-, that define their own intellectual being. What greater declaration of identity could any reader have?
So, reading this on the plane home from a business trip, I scratched out my own stab at such a list. I have supplemented the n+1 approach by listing the books in the order I actually read them, and the age at which I read them. Some of this is definitely not on the reading list at the Columbia philosophy department, whether the Frankfurt School faction or the postructuralists.
1. Philip Jose Farmer, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) (age 12)
2. Robert E. Howard, Conan of Cimmeria (1969) (age 12)
3. Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (1961) (age 17); The Last Gentleman (1966) (age 21)
4. Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren (1975) (age 15; reread age 30)
5. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) (age 19)
6. Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1845) (age 19); Das Kapital (1867-) (age 20).
7. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975) (age 19); Madness and Civilization (1961) (age 20)
8. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904) (age 20)
9. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) (age 20)
10. William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984) (age 21)
11. J. G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition (1970) (age 22)
12. Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths (1958) (age 28)
13. Bruce Sterling, Islands in the Net (1988) (age 30)
(I cheated and added a thirteenth early adulthood book.)
What did I miss?
The first few volumes of Soldier of Fortune magazine, alas, while a seminal part of my adolescence, does not qualify as an actual book. I have to say, this exercise was a somewhat illuminating bit of self-explanation regarding the formation of my own adult identity. You should try it!
So, what were your books? Fellow NFOTF bloggers? Other peers?
P.S. -- For more about the guys at n+1, check out this wonderful NYT Magazine piece from 2005 regarding them and their peers at The Believer.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Speechless
You know, it does my heart good seeing how the Screen Actors Guild has been closing ranks with the Writers Guild during the ongoing strike. And these online shorts that've emerged from the collaborations are amusing in their own little subversive way. Gotta love "interim agreements."
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Spelunking 20C with Mad Guides
Courtesy of Shanghaiist, a hilarious recap of the obsessive search of Canadian author and mAdman Rick McGrath for all things Ballardian:
The Shanghai Ballard-osphere
By Andy Best
Take a walk down Panyu (Fanyu) Lu from the Film Art Centre and you will soon pass by the SH508 restaurant. It occupies a slaughtered renovated colonial mansion adorned with a huge neon sign. Unknown to the proprietors, reviewers and most of the customers, this is actually the former family home of British writer J.G. Ballard.
***
Ballard’s father ran a sweatshop factory in Shanghai and enjoyed the highlife of villas, health clubs and horse racing. Born in 1930, Jim Ballard was left to the care of indifferent servants. He used his relative freedom to explore the city by bicycle, seeing local Chinese starving to death on the glitzy foreign streets. Once Japan invaded in full, his family was interned at the infamous Longhua Camp, now Shanghai Zhongxue.
Canadian Rick McGrath has the largest collection of Ballard first editions in the world. His brilliant online catalogue – The Terminal Collection – is one of the two best Ballard sites available, the other being Simon Sellars’ Ballardian.com. McGrath heard that the Shanghai house was still standing and obtained a letter from Ballard himself. The letter contained a map which allowed him to confirm the location using Google Earth. A pilgrimage was on the cards.
Shanghaiist met McGrath for a stroll around the lanes of old Amherst Road (Xinhua Lu) and finished with dinner at the house itself. McGrath’s stories are great, including the time he couldn’t pass up on visiting Ballard despite a general request for no visits at the time:
“They call it doorstepping. It’s probably stalking. My bad.”
Despite McGrath’s obvious elation at finally making it to the site, he admitted that the Chinese are under no obligation to preserve sites from bitter days of occupation and that all things pass. Ballard himself wrote in the letter that the places are gone in the old sense and commented of the house “a restaurant? Great, better make it a McDonald’s or a KFC.” He also sabotaged his own knighthood, calling it a ridiculous gesture to a non-existent empire.
***
Photo shows Rick McGrath in front of the old Ballard house.
For a fuller, and completely hilarious, recap, check out Rick's complete travelogue.
(And for even better time travel, sample Rick's collection of his rock star interviews from the early 1970s.
Meanwhile, The Times reports on the sad circumstances leading to Ballard's writing of the latest version of his own story. "Miracles of Life."
"Ballard is courteous and genial in a slightly donnish way. At 77, he takes his time assembling his thoughts, but they remain unflinching and provocative, expressed with the verbal tics of his colonial background. But time, the malleable stuff of his science fiction, is running out. After being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2006, he sat down at his electric typewriter – “The computer age came too late for me” – and rapidly wrote his autobiography."
Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women, of course, were fictions. Whereas The Atrocity Exhibition was a work of journalism. Where this will fall on that continuum? You can find out next week by ordering your copy here.
The Shanghai Ballard-osphere
By Andy Best
Take a walk down Panyu (Fanyu) Lu from the Film Art Centre and you will soon pass by the SH508 restaurant. It occupies a slaughtered renovated colonial mansion adorned with a huge neon sign. Unknown to the proprietors, reviewers and most of the customers, this is actually the former family home of British writer J.G. Ballard.
***
Ballard’s father ran a sweatshop factory in Shanghai and enjoyed the highlife of villas, health clubs and horse racing. Born in 1930, Jim Ballard was left to the care of indifferent servants. He used his relative freedom to explore the city by bicycle, seeing local Chinese starving to death on the glitzy foreign streets. Once Japan invaded in full, his family was interned at the infamous Longhua Camp, now Shanghai Zhongxue.
Canadian Rick McGrath has the largest collection of Ballard first editions in the world. His brilliant online catalogue – The Terminal Collection – is one of the two best Ballard sites available, the other being Simon Sellars’ Ballardian.com. McGrath heard that the Shanghai house was still standing and obtained a letter from Ballard himself. The letter contained a map which allowed him to confirm the location using Google Earth. A pilgrimage was on the cards.
Shanghaiist met McGrath for a stroll around the lanes of old Amherst Road (Xinhua Lu) and finished with dinner at the house itself. McGrath’s stories are great, including the time he couldn’t pass up on visiting Ballard despite a general request for no visits at the time:
“They call it doorstepping. It’s probably stalking. My bad.”
Despite McGrath’s obvious elation at finally making it to the site, he admitted that the Chinese are under no obligation to preserve sites from bitter days of occupation and that all things pass. Ballard himself wrote in the letter that the places are gone in the old sense and commented of the house “a restaurant? Great, better make it a McDonald’s or a KFC.” He also sabotaged his own knighthood, calling it a ridiculous gesture to a non-existent empire.
***
Photo shows Rick McGrath in front of the old Ballard house.
For a fuller, and completely hilarious, recap, check out Rick's complete travelogue.
(And for even better time travel, sample Rick's collection of his rock star interviews from the early 1970s.
Meanwhile, The Times reports on the sad circumstances leading to Ballard's writing of the latest version of his own story. "Miracles of Life."
"Ballard is courteous and genial in a slightly donnish way. At 77, he takes his time assembling his thoughts, but they remain unflinching and provocative, expressed with the verbal tics of his colonial background. But time, the malleable stuff of his science fiction, is running out. After being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 2006, he sat down at his electric typewriter – “The computer age came too late for me” – and rapidly wrote his autobiography."
Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women, of course, were fictions. Whereas The Atrocity Exhibition was a work of journalism. Where this will fall on that continuum? You can find out next week by ordering your copy here.
Monday, January 28, 2008
MEMORY: 3
Parric flapped backwards, dodging the bloody rain of body parts. His coils twitched with interest as he took in the eight-legheaded creature with deliberate consideration.
"So," he said at last, "I'm finally catching you up. But just otherwhere are you coming from?"
The thing tramped over Flavius' remains, pawing and gnawing at the ground as if it were trying to snuff the life out of every last cell. It emitted a deep thrumming from its thorax, and radial patterns flushed cyan from its back, radiating along the length of its legheads. It was very much unlike any sort of otherwhereian creature Parric had encountered before.
It took no notice of Parric. A quick check of the perimeter assured Parric that the Obscuring he'd crafted still shielded them from the humans' battle raging just a few flaps away. The Obscuring may well be blocking the otherwhereian's awareness of him as well, Parric reasoned. Still, it attacked Flavius through that same Obscuring.
"You're more of a puzzling to me that I’m expecting. Yes, you’re definitely requiring more studying," Parric said, selecting some cormynt and reesehops from his pouches. "No more leading me on chasings through Cosms for you. No more killings for you, either."
Parric crafted a Holding around the otherwhereian.
It abruptly stopped pawing at Flavius' remains. Four legheads snapped up, alert, each sweeping its ring of eyes in a different direction.
"Oh, you’re feeling that?" Parric said, somewhat surprised. His antennae twitched, focused on the creature. He layered on another Holding, just to be on the safe side.
The four legheads whipped around to face Parric. One by one the mouths opened, the teeth within flexing rhythmically.
Parric instinctively flinched, his featherscales ruffling. "Aren't you full of surprisings. Too many for my tasting, though." Parric added a third Holding.
The otherwhereian took a step toward Parric. The outermost Holding tore. It stopped, considering the invisible bonds holding it. Then it lunged at Parric, shrugging off tattered Holdings in its wake.
Parric shrieked, darting to the side. A massive leghead slammed into the ground where he'd been a moment earlier, the mouth gouging out a huge chunk of turf. Parric’s wings flew into action, the twin sets a sudden whining blur jerking him back from another crushing blow.
Parric shot away, flying low to the ground. He weaved through the choking smoke of battle, in and out among confused Highlanders. The creature galloped after him, disturbingly quick for something so large and ungainly. It trampled any human unlucky enough to get in its way, the gnashing mouths flinging out broken bodies with every step.
Parric zoomed over the Scottish artillery, a handful of cannons with disorganized crew. An instant later the creature smashed through them, sending the guns tumbling.
“Things are not going as I’m planning,” Parric muttered. He'd meant to take Flavius' killer unawares, yet now he was the pursued. This otherwhereian was an order of magnitude more powerful than he’d expected. “Time for escapings.”
Parric's antennae flexed out, searching for Nexial gaps--seams in the Cosm's fabric of reality. Then Parric remembered. The sword.
"Scalesplittings," Parric muttered. "Damn, damn and damning you, Flavius MacDuff, to the deepest wingrottings pit in this vile Cosm of yours."
Parric broke left and back, veering beneath the creature's striking legs. The brute was moving too fast to follow--the sodden ground gave way beneath it, and the creature caromed wildly.
"The sword, the sword," Parric berated himself. "How am I forgetting that wretched sword?"
The battle lines had moved, the chaos of the fight churning the field with blood. Parric darted along, parallel to the English lines. He scanned the ground for any glimpse of the sword. Random shots tore through the air around him, forcing Parric to break from the search to dodge. The English had finally noticed him. More complications.
A silver blade flashed beneath him. Parric pulled up sharply and doubled back, his wings battering away several English too close to his prize. Quickly he scooped the sword up. His antennae fell limp in disgust. It was the wrong sword.
The otherwhereian burst through the smoke, hurling itself at Parric.
“You are full of persistings, too,” Parric said. With a sharp motion, Parric launched himself into the air while flinging the found sword at the beast. The blade tip buried itself nearly a foot deep into one of the tough legheads as the otherwhereian pounced on the spot Parric had been moments earlier. One of the legheads pulled the sword free with its teeth. The injured leg howled a reverberant "Hooon!" then took off in pursuit of Parric once more.
The English weren't making Parric's search any easier, forcing him to continuously dodge musket fire as more and more of the army turned its attention from the routed Highlanders. To make matters worse, they weren't hindering the otherwhereian much at all. Their guns were too weak to pierce its rugged hide, their bodies too small to slow it as it churned its way through their ranks.
Then, below, Parric saw his prize. Amidst great chewed-out gouges of turf lay the muddy claymore with the whortleberry hilt. The otherwhereian was close behind, too close for Parric to chance a landing. Ahead, he spied the English artillery, the cannon crews struggling to turn the guns to face the invaders from otherwhere.
Parric clicked his beak in anticipation. “I’m thinking of surprisings for the teeth-footing beastie,” he said, flying straight at the artillery. Parric slowed slightly, just enough for the otherwhereian to gain on him. When the otherwhereian drew within a wingspan, Parric again broke left. He veered back and down, threading the needle between the massive legheads.
This time the otherwhereian was ready. A hind leghead swung forward horizontally, maw open wide.
Parric screeched in alarm, trying to cut right. The snapping mouth clipped Parric's leading wing, crumpling it. Out of control, Parric collided with another leghead. His momentum carried him past it, and he tumbled through a rank of English soldiers before plowing into the muddy sod.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Simon's Cyborg Film Fest
Over at Ballardian, the brilliant Simon Sellars has gotten The Man's publishers to sponsor a Festival of Home Movies filmed with mobile telephones. Think DIY surveillance footage, grainy recordations of the bleak landscape you traverse during your daily commute, satellite transmissions from the inner space of your mind. Now get to work...
"I’d like to organize a Festival of Home Movies! It could be wonderful — thousands of the things… You might find an odd genius, a Fellini or Godard of the home movie, living in some suburb. I’m sure it’s coming… Using modern electronics, home movie cameras and the like, one will begin to retreat into one’s own imagination. I welcome that…"
-- J.G. Ballard, quoted in ‘Interview with JGB by Graeme Revell’, RE/Search No. 8/9, 1984.
In 1984 J.G. Ballard called for a ‘Festival of Home Movies’ and 24 years on we’re happy to oblige: announcing our latest competition, to promote JGB’s forthcoming autobiography, Miracles of Life. Presented by ballardian.com and HarperCollins UK, the competition will utilise ‘modern electronics’ as specified above, of an especial type that Ballard with his prodigious clairvoyant powers came close to envisaging: the mobile phone (or cell phone, for our North American cousins).
THE PREAMBLE
As Ballard writes, the minor, continual, subliminal modifications we make to our bodies on a day-to-day basis add up to something else:
"a continuing authentication of [our] physical selves, a non-vocal gossip…that no kinaesthetic language, beyond those provided by the instructions on a deodorant or a lady-shaver, has yet been found to express."
-- J.G. Ballard, ‘The 60 Minute Zoom’, 1976.
Fully calibrated with the user’s personality, the mobile phone sticks to the skin like a third ear, a wearable, affordable prosthesis grafted to the cochlea. It’s as banal and as integrated as his deodorant or her personal lady-shaver, and yet it’s something else again, something even more Ballardian. Moral panics scream that the mobile phone turns people into self-enclosed zombie pods, that it turns its users inwards and against each other. Horror films (and Stephen King) are cashing in on its unseen malevolence. Scientists scream that it causes tumors and brain lesions; it’s the absinthe of technological instruments. And throughout it all, the core power of the thing grows apace as it becomes more and more like a super-powerful micro computer: able to not only receive, beam and transmit, but to record your every move in sound and vision, unnoticed, silent, cloaked.
It’s an unprecedented window into inner space.
REQUIREMENTS
+ Shoot a film using your mobile phone’s video function, no more than one minute in duration, and using no post-production or processing — the film must be shot entirely ‘in camera’.
+ The theme: anything at all to do with either one or both of the Collins English Dictionary definitions of ‘Ballardian’:
BALLARDIAN: (adj) 1. of James Graham Ballard (J.G. Ballard; born 1930), the British novelist, or his works. (2) resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels & stories, esp. dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes & the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.
+ Email your footage to ballardianfilm at ballardian dot com.
+ Closing date for submissions: February 11 February 20.
Entries will be judged by myself and John Rivers from the HarperCollins digital wing.
THE PRIZE
Selected entries will be hosted on the site and the winner will receive a copy of Miracles of Life along with the forthcoming HarperCollins reissues of Ballard’s Millennium People, The Drought, The Crystal World, The Drowned World and The Unlimited Dream Company.
My sincere thanks to HarperCollins for generously sponsoring this event, and to John Rivers for allowing it to happen. And as always, special thanks to J.G. Ballard for continual and ongoing inspiration.
"Everybody will be doing it, everybody will be living inside a TV studio. That’s what the domestic home aspires to these days; the home is going to be a TV studio. We’re all going to be starring in our own sit-coms, and they’ll be strange sit-coms, too, like the inside of our heads. That’s going to come, I’m absolutely sure of that, and it’ll really shake up everything…"
-- J.G. Ballard, quoted in ‘Interview with JGB by Andrea Juno and Vale’, RE/Search No. 8/9, 1984.
"I’d like to organize a Festival of Home Movies! It could be wonderful — thousands of the things… You might find an odd genius, a Fellini or Godard of the home movie, living in some suburb. I’m sure it’s coming… Using modern electronics, home movie cameras and the like, one will begin to retreat into one’s own imagination. I welcome that…"
-- J.G. Ballard, quoted in ‘Interview with JGB by Graeme Revell’, RE/Search No. 8/9, 1984.
In 1984 J.G. Ballard called for a ‘Festival of Home Movies’ and 24 years on we’re happy to oblige: announcing our latest competition, to promote JGB’s forthcoming autobiography, Miracles of Life. Presented by ballardian.com and HarperCollins UK, the competition will utilise ‘modern electronics’ as specified above, of an especial type that Ballard with his prodigious clairvoyant powers came close to envisaging: the mobile phone (or cell phone, for our North American cousins).
THE PREAMBLE
As Ballard writes, the minor, continual, subliminal modifications we make to our bodies on a day-to-day basis add up to something else:
"a continuing authentication of [our] physical selves, a non-vocal gossip…that no kinaesthetic language, beyond those provided by the instructions on a deodorant or a lady-shaver, has yet been found to express."
-- J.G. Ballard, ‘The 60 Minute Zoom’, 1976.
Fully calibrated with the user’s personality, the mobile phone sticks to the skin like a third ear, a wearable, affordable prosthesis grafted to the cochlea. It’s as banal and as integrated as his deodorant or her personal lady-shaver, and yet it’s something else again, something even more Ballardian. Moral panics scream that the mobile phone turns people into self-enclosed zombie pods, that it turns its users inwards and against each other. Horror films (and Stephen King) are cashing in on its unseen malevolence. Scientists scream that it causes tumors and brain lesions; it’s the absinthe of technological instruments. And throughout it all, the core power of the thing grows apace as it becomes more and more like a super-powerful micro computer: able to not only receive, beam and transmit, but to record your every move in sound and vision, unnoticed, silent, cloaked.
It’s an unprecedented window into inner space.
REQUIREMENTS
+ Shoot a film using your mobile phone’s video function, no more than one minute in duration, and using no post-production or processing — the film must be shot entirely ‘in camera’.
+ The theme: anything at all to do with either one or both of the Collins English Dictionary definitions of ‘Ballardian’:
BALLARDIAN: (adj) 1. of James Graham Ballard (J.G. Ballard; born 1930), the British novelist, or his works. (2) resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels & stories, esp. dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes & the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.
+ Email your footage to ballardianfilm at ballardian dot com.
+ Closing date for submissions: February 11 February 20.
Entries will be judged by myself and John Rivers from the HarperCollins digital wing.
THE PRIZE
Selected entries will be hosted on the site and the winner will receive a copy of Miracles of Life along with the forthcoming HarperCollins reissues of Ballard’s Millennium People, The Drought, The Crystal World, The Drowned World and The Unlimited Dream Company.
My sincere thanks to HarperCollins for generously sponsoring this event, and to John Rivers for allowing it to happen. And as always, special thanks to J.G. Ballard for continual and ongoing inspiration.
"Everybody will be doing it, everybody will be living inside a TV studio. That’s what the domestic home aspires to these days; the home is going to be a TV studio. We’re all going to be starring in our own sit-coms, and they’ll be strange sit-coms, too, like the inside of our heads. That’s going to come, I’m absolutely sure of that, and it’ll really shake up everything…"
-- J.G. Ballard, quoted in ‘Interview with JGB by Andrea Juno and Vale’, RE/Search No. 8/9, 1984.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Wither taboos?
I just stumbled across an article on MSNBC, By seeing everything, kids today miss a lot, which I found particularly interesting since I identify with it completely.
The author relates his quest to watch the forbidden "Three's Company," and I experienced flashbacks--my parents, too, forbade the watching of that show, although they never acknowledged the gay element. No, theirs was the more basic "A man rooming with two single women is immoral" objection. My family was of the socially conservative Democratic background that now holds all Bill O'Reilly says as gospel, you see, and bouts of utter ignorance regarding what us kids were watching on TV were sandwiched between phases of draconian censorship. Anything with shootouts or bloody violence was fine, of course, but my mother forbade me to watch broadcast-edited James Bond movies because they were "Rated X." I was once denied when trying to watch the "Battlestar Galactica" pilot/movie on Showtime because it came with a "PG" disclaimer that mentioned "brief nudity" as a possible reason for the rating. Sheesh.
The guiding child-rearing principal of my parents in my home growing up was "Ignorance is a virtue." Their thinking was that if they didn't tell me about something (ie sex) then I wouldn't know it existed. And you can't tell kids about sex, otherwise "they'll run right out and try it" (and that's a direct quote). My sheltered upbringing left me extremely vulnerable to malicious manipulation by my peers in school, however, and I soon twigged to the fact that my folks were useless as a reliable source of knowledge. Caddyshack was the first rated R movie I ever saw, and I didn't even have to sneak in--my best friend's mother took us, and my folks never bothered to check and see what was playing. Apart from the language and nudity, it was probably the perfect kid's movie. And the nudity impressed me, simply because it was something my folks worked so hard to shield me from. So I did what every other pre-teen does to learn about sex--I turned to cable.
In the days before parental controls, cable television relegated soft core fare to the late night broadcast hours (after 10 or 11 p.m., if I recall rightly). There was a big push-button converter box on the television, with a long coiled coaxial cable bringing all the forbidden offerings Showtime had to offer to our TV set. I had a small black and white TV in my room, but no Showtime converter box. To get around this problem, I'd wait until everyone else was asleep on the weekends (usually by 11 p.m.) and disconnect the long coaxial cable from the living room TV and run it to my TV in my room. The box in the living room would descramble the signal, and I'd watch it with the volume turned down and my door closed. I'd be more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, cutting off the TV and diving for bed half a dozen times as random sounds both real and imagined. It was in this manner I watched such dubious fare as Two Top Bananas (cornball burlesque from Don Adams and Don Rickles with a few token fan dancers), The Sex Machine (soft core Italian T&A masquerading as social commentary) and Young Lady Chatterly (Holy moley!). Did it distort my concepts of sexuality? Of course it did. But at least I wasn't an easy target for all the older kids anymore, and that knowledge was a much stronger defense than my folks' flaccid directives to "just ignore them."
What pisses me off, however, is the fact that these viewing restrictions apparently only applied to me. I learned quickly to be guarded in what I had on TV during prime time or weekend viewing, lest I get busted big time. Grounded. Maybe even worse. My younger brothers, however, showed no such concerns. Coming home from college one weekend, I was shocked to find them watching "Total Recall" in the living room, unconcerned with our parents (who were oblivious) or my 8-year-old younger sister. She came to me later, quite disturbed by the scene with the three-breasted mutant prostitute, because that obvious something she couldn't ask the folks about (she, being a girl, had to be kept even more ignorant. For her own good, of course). It was quite awkward for me, but I tried my best to reassure her that things like that didn't happen in real life, and the actress was only wearing some convincing makeup. I probably botched the whole thing, but afterwards I ripped my brothers a new one for their cavalier attitude toward what they watched when their sister was around. Not that it made much of a difference in the long run.
Am I being hypocritical here? Maybe, but in my book an 8 year old is much better equipped to deal with the juvenile humor of "Caddyshack" than the über-violence of "Total Recall."
I wonder when--if it hasn't started already--my own children will start trying to watch verboten programming behind our back. The parental controls on the TV and internet seem sufficient thus far to limit their exposure, but I'm not foolish enough to think they're not hearing things at school or seeing questionable fare at friends' houses. Hopefully, we've got strong enough channels of communication open so that we never have a repeat of what happened with my sister.
Strange how society has evolved. What was dangerous, forbidden and tawdry when I was a kid is kind of quaint and amusing now, and that which is now viewed as dangerous, forbidden and tawdry can now earn you a visit from Dateline NBC and a cadre of arresting officers. Innocence isn't so innocent anymore, and ignorance has never been more dangerous.
Damn. I have a sudden, overwhelming need to Netflix "Caddyshack." Gotta love that gopher...
When I was a kid in the ’70s and ’80s, you really had to work to see stuff on TV that you weren't supposed to see. You had to plan and scheme and connive and possibly hold a ball of aluminum foil in your hand to get a clear signal. It was a quest, a noble and important quest, and that's what made it so fun.
Timing was key. My friend Rafael developed a knack for muting the TV during the parental warning that preceded his favorite Saturday movie program, “or I'd time it so that I turned on the TV just after the warning card, which was at exactly 11:02 a.m.,” he boasts. “I got to be pretty good at it.” And another friend, David, had an intricate scheme to sample the forbidden fruit of “Dark Shadows” that played like a third-grader’s version of “Mission: Impossible.”
The author relates his quest to watch the forbidden "Three's Company," and I experienced flashbacks--my parents, too, forbade the watching of that show, although they never acknowledged the gay element. No, theirs was the more basic "A man rooming with two single women is immoral" objection. My family was of the socially conservative Democratic background that now holds all Bill O'Reilly says as gospel, you see, and bouts of utter ignorance regarding what us kids were watching on TV were sandwiched between phases of draconian censorship. Anything with shootouts or bloody violence was fine, of course, but my mother forbade me to watch broadcast-edited James Bond movies because they were "Rated X." I was once denied when trying to watch the "Battlestar Galactica" pilot/movie on Showtime because it came with a "PG" disclaimer that mentioned "brief nudity" as a possible reason for the rating. Sheesh.
Two friends of mine, both named Jack, were cable porn pioneers, and I'm inspired by their courage and commitment. “Back in early days of cable, we used to get this soft-core channel at 3 in the morning,” recalls Jack M. “It was all static and blurry but if I held a massive ball of aluminum foil in one hand and the antenna in the other, I could occasionally make out a boob or a butt. I'd watch ’til the sun came up.”
Jack P.’s newfangled cable system was static-free, but not bug-free. “You could watch one minute of the dirty movie channel before it would show up on your bill,” he explains. “So everyday my siblings and I would watch one minute. The problem was sometimes you’d watch a minute not knowing that another kid had already watched a minute and then we'd get totally busted.”
The guiding child-rearing principal of my parents in my home growing up was "Ignorance is a virtue." Their thinking was that if they didn't tell me about something (ie sex) then I wouldn't know it existed. And you can't tell kids about sex, otherwise "they'll run right out and try it" (and that's a direct quote). My sheltered upbringing left me extremely vulnerable to malicious manipulation by my peers in school, however, and I soon twigged to the fact that my folks were useless as a reliable source of knowledge. Caddyshack was the first rated R movie I ever saw, and I didn't even have to sneak in--my best friend's mother took us, and my folks never bothered to check and see what was playing. Apart from the language and nudity, it was probably the perfect kid's movie. And the nudity impressed me, simply because it was something my folks worked so hard to shield me from. So I did what every other pre-teen does to learn about sex--I turned to cable.
In the days before parental controls, cable television relegated soft core fare to the late night broadcast hours (after 10 or 11 p.m., if I recall rightly). There was a big push-button converter box on the television, with a long coiled coaxial cable bringing all the forbidden offerings Showtime had to offer to our TV set. I had a small black and white TV in my room, but no Showtime converter box. To get around this problem, I'd wait until everyone else was asleep on the weekends (usually by 11 p.m.) and disconnect the long coaxial cable from the living room TV and run it to my TV in my room. The box in the living room would descramble the signal, and I'd watch it with the volume turned down and my door closed. I'd be more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, cutting off the TV and diving for bed half a dozen times as random sounds both real and imagined. It was in this manner I watched such dubious fare as Two Top Bananas (cornball burlesque from Don Adams and Don Rickles with a few token fan dancers), The Sex Machine (soft core Italian T&A masquerading as social commentary) and Young Lady Chatterly (Holy moley!). Did it distort my concepts of sexuality? Of course it did. But at least I wasn't an easy target for all the older kids anymore, and that knowledge was a much stronger defense than my folks' flaccid directives to "just ignore them."
When it came to monitoring her impressionable youngster's media habits, my friend Holly was in way over her head.
“My 9-year old son, Rylan, had a bunch of friends over, and they wanted to watch the movie ‘The Terminator,’” she told me. “I said, ‘You are not watching that movie! It's rated R and it's too violent.’ And they all looked at me and said, ‘We've already seen it.’”
What pisses me off, however, is the fact that these viewing restrictions apparently only applied to me. I learned quickly to be guarded in what I had on TV during prime time or weekend viewing, lest I get busted big time. Grounded. Maybe even worse. My younger brothers, however, showed no such concerns. Coming home from college one weekend, I was shocked to find them watching "Total Recall" in the living room, unconcerned with our parents (who were oblivious) or my 8-year-old younger sister. She came to me later, quite disturbed by the scene with the three-breasted mutant prostitute, because that obvious something she couldn't ask the folks about (she, being a girl, had to be kept even more ignorant. For her own good, of course). It was quite awkward for me, but I tried my best to reassure her that things like that didn't happen in real life, and the actress was only wearing some convincing makeup. I probably botched the whole thing, but afterwards I ripped my brothers a new one for their cavalier attitude toward what they watched when their sister was around. Not that it made much of a difference in the long run.
Am I being hypocritical here? Maybe, but in my book an 8 year old is much better equipped to deal with the juvenile humor of "Caddyshack" than the über-violence of "Total Recall."
I wonder when--if it hasn't started already--my own children will start trying to watch verboten programming behind our back. The parental controls on the TV and internet seem sufficient thus far to limit their exposure, but I'm not foolish enough to think they're not hearing things at school or seeing questionable fare at friends' houses. Hopefully, we've got strong enough channels of communication open so that we never have a repeat of what happened with my sister.
Strange how society has evolved. What was dangerous, forbidden and tawdry when I was a kid is kind of quaint and amusing now, and that which is now viewed as dangerous, forbidden and tawdry can now earn you a visit from Dateline NBC and a cadre of arresting officers. Innocence isn't so innocent anymore, and ignorance has never been more dangerous.
Damn. I have a sudden, overwhelming need to Netflix "Caddyshack." Gotta love that gopher...
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