Essential Baby blogger Joseph Kelly
When Maisie was born and I became a father for the first time, I had one of those hand-on-heart moments where I swore to myself that I would protect my family from all adversity for as long as I lived. I have been forced to add a caveat to that pledge along the lines of “unless I am, in fact, the source of that adversity”.
Last weekend it was cold and wet and the girls were pretty lethargic. Susie suggested that I could go up the street and hire a DVD. She threw out some titles like Singing In the Rain, Bed Knobs and Broomsticks and Fiddler on the Roof. The parameters of the mission were clear: go and get a video that Susie and I could sit through as well as the kids.
I wrapped myself up in my winter coat and moved for the door. At that instant Maisie decided that she’d join me, so in the end the two of us rugged up for the journey. A Maisie initiated conversation about the different uses for hoods on jackets occupied us from the moment we crossed our threshold until we darkened the door of the video store. Once inside Maisie wasted no time in familiarising herself with the snack food section of the store while I scanned the classics.
Susie and I have, no doubt like countless parents before us, enjoyed the fact that we can revisit the movies of our respective childhoods through our kids. And we consider that in showing the girls the classics we’re not only teaching them good taste, but for the most part showing them movies with a strong moral or social message. Like the Wizard of Oz with its allegories of political and social life in America in the 1890s, or The Muppets Take Manhattan with its theme that Muppets can not only rock, but can rock it in the big smoke. The point is that each of the movies that Susie or I choose for Maisie and Frances says something that we think is important for the girls to hear.
So when Maisie found me down one of the store’s aisles and informed me that she HAD to have a copy of Bratz: The Movie I was at first hesitant. The idea of Maisie watching a group of teenage girls dress up, put on make-up and talk about teenage girl stuff seemed all at the wrong speed for my angel-faced six-year-old. I patiently tried to explain to Maisie that the four glamorous teens on the front of the DVD couldn’t possibly be as interesting to her as the idea of dick Van Dyke driving a flying car. She was unmoved.
Maisie then told me how the girls at school had all been discussing High School Musical 3. Maisie felt that she had to add something to the discussion and that in buying her a copy of the Bratz movie I would be saving her from being forever socially ostracised. I had to admit that while the movies we had so far chosen for Maisie meant that she could impress her friends by comparing Rex Harrison’s performance in Dr Doolittle with his stunning turn in My Fair Lady, she wasn’t exactly at the cultural cutting edge. Emboldened by twin feelings of fear and guilt, I bought Maisie her Bratz DVD.
When I got back home Susie, without any outward signs of hysteria or overreaction, calmly informed me that in buying the Bratz DVD I had destroyed Maisie’s childhood, robbed her of her innocence and turned her into a shallow, vacuous, pop-culture slave. Susie’s mum and sister were far less restrained.
After watching the movie with Maisie and Frances I have to say I haven’t noticed any discernable changes. There was a scene involving an elephant, which Frances loved, a scene involving a food fight, which Maisie loved, and an all-singing all-dancing number at the end which we all loved. It didn’t have any of the mysticism, lyricism or wit of the classics but, then again, it never claimed to. And even though I had to dig very deep to find it the movie did have a strong social message: nice girls get the boys while bad girls get dumped in the swimming pool by elephants. And isn’t that something we should all be teaching our kids?
Are you wigged out by the Wiggles or do you go barmy at the mention of Barney? Are there certain pop-culture phenomena you are determined to keep your kids away from? Comment on Joseph Kelly's blog.
Read Joseph Kelly's blogs
