Watching what kids shouldn't watch -- with kids

God help me, but South Park cracks me up.

And Family Guy.

And they make Gabe and Middle Daughter laugh, too.

This morning, Gabe and I were giggling at the Colbert Report.

And last night, Middle Daughter and I hooted and howled through a segment of Dave Chappelle's Show.

My friends are a little surprised that I'll let a 10-year-old boy watch some of this stuff. South Park is truly vile, and irreverent beyond all hope of redemption. That's what's so liberating, and so damn funny, about it.

Family Guy is a crude and even more cynical version of The Simpsons, with a good helping of Hollywood dish and some really good musical interludes thrown in.

The Colbert Report is helping Gabe understand that, as screwed up as the world is, it can also take itself too seriously. And it's also helping him understand current events, in a warped way.

Middle Daughter's taste in TV runs to teen dramas and MTV's Real World, but she and I share the same irreverent, even tasteless sense of humor (proven by the fact that she dragged me to see Team America last year, at which I laughed so hard I cried).

I remember, growing up, that we all watched The Wizard of Oz on TV every year; and that we watched Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Laugh-In, Family Classics and Garfield Goose with Frazier Thomas, and a lot of baseball.

(Me True Ann-Sister's memory probably includes the TV's gradual and initially benign intrusion into family life, what with earlier incarnations of Gleason's show, Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and the like. Between the six of sibs, the morphing of TV from comforter to carcinogen could be clearly mapped.)

Now, though, TV is a cultural weapon and economic aphrodisiac: news is viciously slanted and horrifyingly oversimplified, commercials pit one lust, and one generation, against another, and we are exhorted to buy with a frenzy that suggests our very lives depend on it.

I think that's why they say that you should watch TV with your kids. Of course, when "they" say that, they assume that you'll be censoring or blocking certain shows. And my tendency is just to watch what they watch, because they want to laugh, and so do I. If we all share a sense of the absurd, a certain scatalogical streak, a helpless fondness for slapstick, and sharp satire on the news of the day, shouldn't we enjoy them together?

Or is it better not to go near the damn TV?

--T.A.

Comments

[Danny Miller]

At least those shows are funny. What I'd really worry about is if they were listening to those right-wing lunatics on radio talk shows.

I've never let "age appropriateness" enter into my daughter's cultural education. We watched "The Graduate" together when she was six (gulp!) and at seven her favorite song was the one sung by the junkie hooker in "Rent." On the other hand, we're both big fans of "The Sound of Music," doesn't that balance everything out?

(You should watch everything on TiVo and fast forward through the commercials which are the only real enemy.)

[Cynthia Samuels]

Coming right after Danny, I think the TiVo idea is great. The only thing I would add is that they have a new, free service called KidZone that lets you record programs you think are appropriate for your kids and lock out the rest - both live and recorded.
Someone with the perspective of this site would probably appreciate suggestions of GOOD shows even more that the control of viewing. KidZone actually provides suggested viewing for each age group -- from three different groups with a variety of perspectives -- both sides of the Lakoff paradigm. Full Disclosure - I do some work for TiVo but I am writing this because I love the idea of this service . I raised two boys I can see where it would have been useful -- especially for working parents who can't always be there after school.