Though I wasn’t entirely interested, my partner wanted to watch last night’s Academy Awards, so the three of us drove over to her parents’ place (we have no cable, on purpose) to watch who would be “honored” with an Oscar. For the most part, it was a relatively benign experience, though there were moments when we had to distract our 6 year old boy or take him out of the room. Some notable moments:
• Trying to cover his eyes every time a movie featuring gunfire suddenly popped up. Thanks to “Avatar” and “The Hurt Locker“, this became challenging. We’re trying to raise our son to be unaware of the use of firearms as much as possible. Sure, he’s been to friends’ houses where there are Nerf guns present, but he calls them “launchers”, and is (we hope) unaware of the death-dealing nature of real guns. Someday, of course, this will come to a head, but we believe by that point he’ll have developed the necessary understanding to deal with it all. But it is kind of a problem when you have something that interests a child — the cartoonish nature of the graphics of “Avatar” and “Up” combined with the serious violence of “Hurt Locker” and “District 9″.
• Explaining to my son that there are hundreds of people involved in the making of any movie, not just the people who come up to receive the award. It’s kind of a difficult process to describe, the notion that nothing of what you seen on screen is real. The people are actors, saying things written by someone else, wearing clothes designed for them, walking around an environment with some degree of artificiality — even if it’s just the lighting — right down to the people in the background who are just passing by. None of it is real. This turned out to be a great conversation, as it seemed to open to my son the idea that he too could work on a movie some day, in some capacity.
• Describing the process of selection of winners. This is a thornier issue than you might think. If you like a movie and think it should win, what does it mean when it doesn’t? Do you just have bad taste? Explaining critical thought is a toughie to a 6 year old, who has pretty strong ideas of what he likes and dislikes. And that’s even before any talk of “politics” or “favoritism”.
• Picking up on what excited my son. While he enjoyed seeing clips of movies he hadn’t seen, what really drove his attention was the constantly changing backdrop. Every time a new element would appear (what was the idea behind that wall of lamps, by the way?) he’d say “What is that?” and there wasn’t always a good explanation for him. I had to admit: as a visual phenomenon, the Oscars isn’t the best. The majority of the time is spent watching people talk, and unless you know the speaker or have a personal stake in what’s being said — neither of which can be said of my son — it’s all blah blah blah until you get to the next moving set piece or movie clip.
* Having to hurry my son out of the room when the suddenly announced tribute to horror movies appeared on screen. Thanks, Academy.
The final take away from all this for me was: Where does true value lie? If you and I disagree about the worth of a thing, are we both right or both wrong? Does it even then matter to make a judgment at all? What does it mean not to win an award of any sort? Isn’t the value in the effort, as researchers are now telling us we should emphasize to our kids? Is this idea reflected in our media? Watching the Academy Awards with my 6 year old son was more enriching than I expected it to be, and I’m happy that we did — if not for the reasons ABC hoped.
