The Family That Veges Together, Stays Together
As a kid, I remember watching Amazing Stories with my parents. We’d order pizza, lay a blanket on the living room floor, and dim the lights. It was a Friday-night tradition.
Last night, at eight o’clock, I sat to watch NBC’s new series, Heroes. My three-year-old son was freshly laundered, and nearly ready for bed. In the first few minutes of the episode, one of the main characters was lying in a morgue, her skin peeled away and chest cavity exposed. I was thankful my son wasn’t in the room.
Later, a woman in a bra and thong had sex in a Las Vegas hotel room with a married politician. After she’d threatened to shove her heel through another man’s skull. Another character is a heroin addict who paints the future, but only when he’s loaded.
It’s heart-warming, really.
I know a lot of parents decry the evils of television. Instead of allowing their sons and daughters to atrophy into bowls of tapioca, they instead encourage their children to chronicle nature walks in homemade notebooks, using pastels and watercolors. It’s a wonderful idea. Yet the average American watches hours of television each day. Our family doesn’t come close to the national average, but we do watch television…our son included. Wouldn’t it make sense for us to at least watch television together?
It’s getting more difficult. Television isn’t produced for families, but for demographics. Specific ages, genders, races. Single men, married women, three-year-old boys. Right now, the only shows I feel relatively safe watching with my son are Spongebob Squarepants and Dirty Jobs. And Star Trek, which probably isn’t the best choice.
I know channels can be changed, and power turned off. I understand that, for now, what my son sees is ultimately my and my wife’s decision. But is it too much to ask that bloody corpses and lap dances be relegated to nine o’clock?
October 17th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
I know, even the commercials for several of those shows are too much for my two year old to look at - they run them during Deal or No Deal, things like that which are relatively baby-safe. AGH!