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involved in the design and implementation of Sega’s Virtua
(virtual reality game for the home market). He is also concerned,
and argues that virtual machines can be employed in
malevolent ways: ‘Either by themselves or through the agency
of others, they can speak to and subvert us at our most vulnerable
inner selves. We have created the most potent technology
for mind control since the advent of human culture; if
we remain ignorant of this potential we will inevitably pay a
heavy price for it. The potentials for addiction and enslavement
do not outweigh the potentials for creative play and
communication, but to ignore one and focus on the other is
both short-sighted and foolhardy.’
Popular culture has been identified as the primary resource
for young people to learn about family life, friendships,
sexuality, health, alcohol and other drugs, gender roles, and
many other parts of life; what is attractive, what is cool,
what is fashionable. ‘There is little doubt that television has
become a substitute for adult supervision,’ writes Dr. Robert
Blum, Professor in the Department of Paediatrics and Head
of the Division of General Paediatrics and Adolescent Health,
University of Minnesota.
During this pivotal stage of self-development teens experience
acute self-consciousness, hormones are racing, their bodies
are changing, and they’re struggling to form a self-concept.
Then, whammo! Teens are bombarded by overwhelming and
impossible images of perfection, which heightens that anxiety
by constantly confronting every kid with a mirror reflecting
back the message that they’re not good enough as they are.
There’s often a kind of official and systematic rebelliousness that’s
reflected in media products pitched at kids. It’s part of the official
rock video worldview. It’s part of the official advertising worldview:
that your parents are creeps, teachers are nerds and idiots, authority
figures are laughable, and nobody can really understand kids except
the corporate sponsor. That huge authority has, interestingly enough,
emerged as the sort of tacit superhero of consumer culture. That’s the
coolest entity of all, and yet they are very busily selling the illusion
that they are there to liberate the youth, to let them be free, to let them
be themselves, to let them think different, and so on. But it’s really
just an enormous sales job.
Mark Crispin Miller: media critic, professor at New York
University, and the author of Boxed In: The Culture of TV.
We are no longer just living in a survival of the fittest society.
To reach the status of success requires you to be cool, and
have super human looks, unachievable unless you are born
beautiful, or willing to undergo body modification, in the form
of surgery, steroids or starvation, over work, over exercise…
over achieve, fuelled by anxiety that you either fit in or you
don’t! The rest who don’t conform to stereotype, and haven’t
yet reached a stage of personal self-confidence, experience dissatisfaction,
anger, shame, depression and insecurity.
As a society, are we becoming disconnected from our innate
connection to our body’s intelligence? These self-appointed
authorities encourage us to look to them for solutions that lie
within our unique identity, creating instinctual distrust and
dependence upon contrived role models and products. Being
that each person has such a subtle unique combination of
genetics, hormones and body type, why is it that people are
being herded into one or the other category: have/have-not,
more/less, fat/thin, attractive/ugly?
The net effect of all of this marketing, all of this disorienting
marketing, all of the shock media, all of this programming designed
to untether us from a sense of self, is a loss of autonomy. You know,
Wake Up!
Pro-active parenting
It is important for girls (and boys) to explore the
impact the culture has on their growth and development.
They all benefit from, to use an old-fashioned
term, consciousness-raising. Once girls (and boys)
understand the effects of culture on their lives, they
can fight back. They learn they have conscious choices
to make and ultimately responsibility for those choices.
Intelligent resistance keeps the true self alive.
Mary Pipher, PhD: Reviving Ophelia
Moderate/eliminate your own seduction and reaction
to the media world. If our children see us as parents
who are always striving to have more or to always look
younger, we shouldn’t be surprised if they follow our
lead. If we model a life of contentment to our children
they will be able to see us as people who have learned to
be fulfilled with who we are.
Talk with your children about advertising and marketing,
help them to understand the industry behind the
hype. If we attempt to directly oppose it, pitting our
censorship and views against media reality, our children
switch off, feeling that ‘we just don’t understand’. It is
about exposing and educating our kids in ‘media savvy’
so they can liberate themselves from commercial indoctrination.
Celebrate individuality and diversity, encouraging children’s
originality and self-confidence.
Educate yourself to become free of cultural conformity.
Take the opportunity to watch documentaries by the
likes of Michael Moore etc, and read some contemporary
philosophic writers.
Keep up and stay relevant! Buy a copy of Dolly or
Seventeen, watch MTV, stay tuned into what your kids
are learning outside of the school classroom. It is likely
they are far more switched on than you are aware of.
Turn off the box and get out of town. Holidays and weekends
spent in nature bring us home to ourselves, allowing
reprieve from electronic, visual stimulus. Allowing time
to reflect, to integrate, and sleep on new information
aids stabilisation of new material in memory.
The reality our children are living in requires our vigilance
as parents to stay informed and abreast of these
issues. There is no time for apathy or complacency — our
role as the primary influence in our children’s life is fast
becoming redundant and our ability to keep in place the
simple things, to nurture, nourish, provide support and
time out is becoming a must!
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