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From: Foxfires
Date: 30 Jun 2004
Time: 09:51:40 -0500
Remote Name: 68.186.67.97
This brings to mind an interesting point. Nick wondered if perhaps gallows humor had gone out of style. I think back to when I would delve into a thick tome of Brothers Grimm, and feel the little prickly pokes of curiosity and fear creaping along my spine. Nights when my brother would tell me scary stories that he had read, and I would lay awake at night, not wanting to lose sight of my nightlight for fear that the bogeyman (here's lookin' at you, kid!) might come tap on my window. Those were exhilerating times. Adrenalin was not in short supply! It carved my imagination to embrace the dark side of fantasy, as well as the light. My mind would churn along the paths of the 'bad guys' as well as the good. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ However - the media was just beginning to saturate with actual views of war, crime, and the escalating dangers of the world. It hadn't gone full throttle yet. There were certain things that the nightly news just wouldn't show. My recollection of seeing horrific acts of war were in still frames frozen in the pages of the Time/Life annuals that were published. As troubling as those were, I studied those as a child and did not find myself as deeply unsettled as I am by the images seen on television today. I watched the film reels in school, listened to the history lectures... but that also had a sterilizing effect on what I was seeing. If it was in school, it was somehow 'contained', and didn't really touch the world I lived in. I wonder... how do children digest these things now? Any time of night or day, they can flip on the television and see unspeakably horrible images. Quite literally see people being shot and killed, people living in unthinkable conditions. Children screaming in terror. Stories of child abductions. This goes beyond the dark haunts of fairy tales, and stimulating a child's mind to creep up to that closet, and peek inside at the monster. Suddenly death is all around, just one channel away... the bogeyman actually LIVES in their world, and can steal them out of the mall, or find them in their sleep, or yank them from their bus stop. Parents are trying to cope with what their kids are seeing. They are trying to sheild them, save them from being tainted at such a young age with these realities. They don't want to have a five year old who is already frightfully aware of hostage beheadings and skyscrapers of moms and dads being wiped off the face of the earth. That pretty much takes the mystery and dark delight out of sharing a haunting tale to a child who already cries because of the nightly news. Or maybe they don't want to sheild their children from it, but are trying to educate them about it. Still - is this the trend that has stolen the fun out of gallows humor? It's not that life hasn't always had it's horrors. We've just never been privy to it 24 hours a day in real time. Anyway, that whole topic just had me wandering there for a bit. I guess this goes back to a question Nick asked a few weeks ago, about the saturation of what we see on TV, and do our minds have the ability to keep from being overexposed to it (or something like that. ;) ) Is there too much televised horror in the world for kids to ever find the same delight in old fashioned fairy tales? I hope not... but it does make me wonder. ~*~Foxfires~*~