My husband won't like this certainly, but I just added the Season 3 disks of Little House on the Prairie to our Netflix cue.
Why, you may wonder, would I do such a thing. I know, I know. For those of you old enough to have watched some or all of the series you are wondering 1) why I would want to watch it again, and 2) why, as I am doing, would I inflict such a thing on my children.
Well, here is the deal. When the kids were much younger and the reading of books at bedtime was de rigour, I had a notion that I should be reading them story books, not just picture books. You know, in order to get them used to the eventual reading of chapter and long form books. Although I hadn't read the original Little House books by Laura Ingels Wilder myself as a child, I picked one up one day at the library and attempted to read it to them that night. It fell with a big thud.
Cut to several years later - this year some time after I broke my arm - it happened to be my turn to pick for Movie Night (our Friday night ritual) and we were at the library in the kids' video section. There it was, the pilot of Little House on the Prairie. Oh sure, there was much moaning, and declarations of intent to leave the room if it proved boring (by mostly my husband, but kids too). But low and behold, about 20 minutes in (I chain them to the sofa for at least 30 minutes when viewing anything new) they were hooked. When I told them it was a series and we could get it on Netflix there was much enthusiastic cheering of "get it, get it".
We just finished Season 2 and I was ready to slip the DVD into its red envelope and send it off when I said to the kids that we had to decide whether we wanted to commit to watching the next season of the show, because it was severely cramping Daddy's DVD watching style. Ang looks at me with this impertinent look and says, "What!". Oh my, I thought, here we go. Now I get to hear about how smarmy and stupid it is and of course we don't care about watching it anymore. But he surprised me with the follow up to his shocked outburst with, "Of course we're gonna watch it! If there's more, we're gonna watch it. Sheesh" Oh. Of course, how dumb of me, mama!
So, Lesson One. Sometimes it pays to ask, and sometimes it doesn't. Meaning, if I had been swayed by the shocked and despairing looks when I first picked up that pilot DVD, we never would have gotten this far. And if I hadn't asked whether we should continue, I might have assumed they had no interest and let it go.
Lesson Two. I have been vaguely assessing why the kids are so enthusiastic about watching the show. Now interest in watching an episode is indicated by the humming of the theme song, wherein everyone else comes running. I get asked, often on school nights, if there is time to watch an episode, but also, I rarely get put off when I suggest a viewing. I am probably the one who pays the least attention and not because I've seen most of the episodes before (we were viewers, but certainly not devout, and even if I'd seen it my memory is slim on the details). But having watched now two seasons, some 46 episodes plus the pilot, I have come to realize that it is probably the aspirational quality that we all respond to.
It is smarmy, and probably, even in 1974 terms, and idealistic vision of another time. But to be overly cynical and to say, oh everyone is so good and everything turns out so well, would be wholly unfair. I was somewhat surprised at some of the storylines which include such themes as the loss of faith, war, drug use, usury, theft, desperate poverty, loss of a child, desertion, financial devastation and natural and man-made disasters, among others. They didn't shy away from portraying ugliness, which is often one of those sarcastic assessments of the series - that everything is good and people were wonderful. One might make a case that the episodes which focus primarily on the girls - Laura and Mary - do tend on the all is well that ends well side. And punishments metted out to them in the series are, arguably by today's standards, mild. Can you imagine today's audiences allowing for a "good talking to and embarrassment of exposure" as adequate retribution for the crime of stealing church money?
Yes, what is portrayed in Little House on the Prairie is a kinder, gentler, simpler time. And maybe that is what we like. But also what I like is that while the series itself may be aspirational, the writers allowed for their characters to be entirely human, and thus fallible, and even surprising. It's nice to watch a show where the good people are good and the bad people are only human, and sometimes they are having an off day and do the opposite. Just like the rest of us.
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Monday, December 06, 2010
Life in Exile: Things Fall Apart
I was reminiscing about a moment in time a few years back when my life in exilehood did not seem so bad. Things… came together. I had been performing my solo-performance play at the gallery, and by all audience feedback, moving people. I had randomly answered ads for various services like writers and artists and such the like, and suddenly there came offers. I was a Teaching Artist at the McCallum Theatre Institute! I was a contributing writer to Dune Magazine! I was writing apace on my novel! It felt good. I was busy but I was happy. And in the way of such moments I got more done. Ironically my house was cleaner, I made it to the gym several times a week. My toddlers were relatively clean and well dressed, and supremely happy. I was happy damnit!
Then, as they do, things fell apart. My husband lost his job. The magazine folded. I got let go from the Teaching Artist position for reasons I am still not clear on (too emotional I suspect though I have no overt evidence. If they had wanted unemotional people they should have put a call out for Quaker Artists!) And, as these things have a way of infiltrating all nooks and crannies of life, my husband and I entered a protracted and supercilious period of battle… to be right… as all battles of marriage seem to be. Which of course led to child behavioral issues which led to, wait for it… iCarly permeating our house, what seems like 24/7.
As all parents know you have to make concessions sometimes to keep the peace. And if you don’t, well then you are a dictator, or a member of the Greatest Generation. It started as “just iCarly, nothing else”. Said concession stemmed from some serious and persistent fuss/misbehavior and downright stubbornness and refusal to change the channel, which stemmed from little sister’s intense neediness, which stemmed from the long battle which… well, as above. It has grown to Big Time Rush, Victorious, and various other teen laugh track comedies, and a venomous need to see every single special every single time it airs. The justification to which is “but it’s the Special!” Duh-uh!
It is impossible, for me at least, to separate achievements from how I feel about everything else about life, including my kids’ childhoods on which I am a contributing editor. One could distill it all down to enthusiasm I suppose, but you would lose the subtleties. As I was enthusiastically going about my creative life in that time before things fell apart and after the long, lonely-time in the beginning of my exile, I could WOW them with my passion, my enthusiasm for life and them. Who needed TV! We had activity instead. They were also a great deal younger, a great deal less jaded by the long battle, and we were all still in that period of hope – that point in time of very early familydom where there is still the possibility of more – maybe more children, a dog, maybe a move to a new and better (or old and better) place. Children themselves being still so incompletely formed, as toddlers, seem to embody possibility. We had not yet hit the grooves of family life. Those grooves which are children’s particular personalities and proclivities. The grooves of daily life. The grooves of holidays, celebrations, school. The grooves of how you treat each other. There still seemed time to enlarge our family (which I wanted but the husband decidedly DID NOT!) or change its rhythms to something slightly more coordinated and soft, not the hard jerky inconsistent syncopation groove we now live in.
And when that something that swooped underneath the knees of me and washed away all that hope, I grew more cynical (if that is possible), and tiresome, no doubt. And tired. So I caved. And now we are in some sort of horrible TV groove. As I was trying to imagine how we could get some iCarly out of our lives, and remembering fondly the relative calm of shows on Noggin, like Oobi and Franklin, Little Bear, even the craziness of The UpSideDown Show, I realized all that had led up to that moment of weakness.
I have a congenital inability to hold on to and recount for all within earshot my achievements. I don’t want to think about what I did once. I actually flush with embarrassment when I think about or talk about my various accomplishments. “Stuck up” comes to mind – obviously a song I heard so often in childhood it is permanently etched in my psyche and rears up on hind legs when even the thought of tooting my own horn emerges. I don’t want to rest on my laurels but new ones are so hard to grow out in this desert, my beautiful prison, though I keep trying. I want to do.
I wonder though, had I a little more reminisce and a little less angst to accomplish, if I might have been able to hold it all a little more together, not caved, not lost my enthusiasm for life, not gotten weary of the harrowingness of it all… maybe I would now live in a land less populated by teen idols… maybe.
Then, as they do, things fell apart. My husband lost his job. The magazine folded. I got let go from the Teaching Artist position for reasons I am still not clear on (too emotional I suspect though I have no overt evidence. If they had wanted unemotional people they should have put a call out for Quaker Artists!) And, as these things have a way of infiltrating all nooks and crannies of life, my husband and I entered a protracted and supercilious period of battle… to be right… as all battles of marriage seem to be. Which of course led to child behavioral issues which led to, wait for it… iCarly permeating our house, what seems like 24/7.
As all parents know you have to make concessions sometimes to keep the peace. And if you don’t, well then you are a dictator, or a member of the Greatest Generation. It started as “just iCarly, nothing else”. Said concession stemmed from some serious and persistent fuss/misbehavior and downright stubbornness and refusal to change the channel, which stemmed from little sister’s intense neediness, which stemmed from the long battle which… well, as above. It has grown to Big Time Rush, Victorious, and various other teen laugh track comedies, and a venomous need to see every single special every single time it airs. The justification to which is “but it’s the Special!” Duh-uh!
It is impossible, for me at least, to separate achievements from how I feel about everything else about life, including my kids’ childhoods on which I am a contributing editor. One could distill it all down to enthusiasm I suppose, but you would lose the subtleties. As I was enthusiastically going about my creative life in that time before things fell apart and after the long, lonely-time in the beginning of my exile, I could WOW them with my passion, my enthusiasm for life and them. Who needed TV! We had activity instead. They were also a great deal younger, a great deal less jaded by the long battle, and we were all still in that period of hope – that point in time of very early familydom where there is still the possibility of more – maybe more children, a dog, maybe a move to a new and better (or old and better) place. Children themselves being still so incompletely formed, as toddlers, seem to embody possibility. We had not yet hit the grooves of family life. Those grooves which are children’s particular personalities and proclivities. The grooves of daily life. The grooves of holidays, celebrations, school. The grooves of how you treat each other. There still seemed time to enlarge our family (which I wanted but the husband decidedly DID NOT!) or change its rhythms to something slightly more coordinated and soft, not the hard jerky inconsistent syncopation groove we now live in.
And when that something that swooped underneath the knees of me and washed away all that hope, I grew more cynical (if that is possible), and tiresome, no doubt. And tired. So I caved. And now we are in some sort of horrible TV groove. As I was trying to imagine how we could get some iCarly out of our lives, and remembering fondly the relative calm of shows on Noggin, like Oobi and Franklin, Little Bear, even the craziness of The UpSideDown Show, I realized all that had led up to that moment of weakness.
I have a congenital inability to hold on to and recount for all within earshot my achievements. I don’t want to think about what I did once. I actually flush with embarrassment when I think about or talk about my various accomplishments. “Stuck up” comes to mind – obviously a song I heard so often in childhood it is permanently etched in my psyche and rears up on hind legs when even the thought of tooting my own horn emerges. I don’t want to rest on my laurels but new ones are so hard to grow out in this desert, my beautiful prison, though I keep trying. I want to do.
I wonder though, had I a little more reminisce and a little less angst to accomplish, if I might have been able to hold it all a little more together, not caved, not lost my enthusiasm for life, not gotten weary of the harrowingness of it all… maybe I would now live in a land less populated by teen idols… maybe.
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