12-19-2012, 06:17 PM
Hi Rowan,
I think this is a really interesting thought to follow. I wonder what the differing childhood experience has been if you a drew a dividing line between those born say over 25yrs ago and those in the last 20 (I might have got my divide a bit off but there will I believe be a clear divide if this is assessed alongside the changes in media presentation and content).
As a child of the 60's I hardly spent any time in the house. There was one or two Saturday programmes that I occasionally watched and on a Saturday night we used to sit as a family and select (well mum or Dad did) something suitable normally a comedy, certainly nothing with swearing or unseemly behaviour. The 6pm news was something to be taken in and respected as a credible source of information. (Although spin had been in use during the war, it was not widely perceived as a manipulator of the public news). I spend my days wandering loose around the area and getting up to all sorts of dangerous activities (that today would have a child in court or counselling and certainly would have the parents being investigated by child authorities) Everywhere was dangerous, the school playground had play bars and swings with tarmac underneath. One child did die from our village from a accident on a farm. But I lived in wonderful ignorance of the hundreds of other tragedies that occurred around the world or even in a town 20 miles away. The only time I felt the fear of the evil in our society was when the daughter of the bus company that drove me to secondary school was kidnapped and held for weeks before suffering some dreadful end. The news reported that she was snatched from her bedroom and after this I was a bit paranoid for a few weeks about keeping the window locked regardless of the weather. But my point is in all this reminiscing that, apart for really local news our community did not feel the need to particularly know about all the other tragedies. There were plenty of charitable events to raise funds for starving children or homeless people or perhaps some victims of a natural disaster, these things still were noted and acted upon, but the rest of it was considered sort of not relevant to our lives.
This was a community attitude that I’m describing here from my childhood memories of such. I don't think that people didn't care and I don't think that there was less crime (although I think that the scale of the violence in crime has definably gone up and I think this is directly attributable to media coverage)...it was just that it was considered bad form, inappropriate and intrusive to delve into the misfortune of others. (This was true for shame based activities and pain based occurrences).
For my two penny worth, I think that what has happened with the rise of the influence and usage of the media based entertainments is that people have got normalised and desensitised to violence and antisocial behaviour. In the UK there is a wide selection of family / life dramas and sitcoms and all of them portray a grungy, abusive, foul-mouthed and violent society and this is then what people come to look upon and emulate as normal and acceptable. These programmes started of as fairly tame by today’s standards, but as the population that viewed these programmes matched their moral standards and expectations to those of the show then the producers sunk to new lows in order to have the best sock value story to entice their viewers to stay with their show. Things that I knew about (such as two girls kissing and being lesbians) and were the subject of shameful bad taste jokes behind the shed, have now become normalised for any child watching a school drama available for viewing at the tea time slot. People should have a right to choose how they live their lives, but I don't want it to be forced on me or my family and then be told this is the new normal that I have to enjoy. I think the media tried to force too many agendas that have been foistered though the system motivated by money or power / politics. I have mostly opted out of watching TV. I hardly ever watch the news or buy a paper because I don't like or trust the information I'm fed as being truthful. The media has become too much of a political animal for my taste. I have come to accept that I am now no longer current and as such I have opted out and to some extent this is wrong in that I have abandoned my obligations to watch and monitor the world around me and to speak in season as my personal moral compass leads me. (Hubby now spends a lot of time on the so called intellectual broadsheet blog sites, "speaking" into the absurdity and crass cut n paste mentality that exists out there. But he reports that some days he is just wearied by the seer volume of numpties out there who don’t seam to have the ability to reason through, to the final and brutal conclusion, the reality of the outworking of their comments…they just don’t think they are cut n pasting from other sites because they think it makes them look clever).
I think that the media is as controlled and manipulated by the weight of the need to be the same as everyone else as any individual or institution. All of the different aspects of media tend to cut n paste off each other for creativity and steer on what is new and approved. As a result it is all getting dummed down to the lowest common aspect. Less intellect and reasoned independent thought. More violence and grunge.
Enough ranting for now.
I think this is a really interesting thought to follow. I wonder what the differing childhood experience has been if you a drew a dividing line between those born say over 25yrs ago and those in the last 20 (I might have got my divide a bit off but there will I believe be a clear divide if this is assessed alongside the changes in media presentation and content).
As a child of the 60's I hardly spent any time in the house. There was one or two Saturday programmes that I occasionally watched and on a Saturday night we used to sit as a family and select (well mum or Dad did) something suitable normally a comedy, certainly nothing with swearing or unseemly behaviour. The 6pm news was something to be taken in and respected as a credible source of information. (Although spin had been in use during the war, it was not widely perceived as a manipulator of the public news). I spend my days wandering loose around the area and getting up to all sorts of dangerous activities (that today would have a child in court or counselling and certainly would have the parents being investigated by child authorities) Everywhere was dangerous, the school playground had play bars and swings with tarmac underneath. One child did die from our village from a accident on a farm. But I lived in wonderful ignorance of the hundreds of other tragedies that occurred around the world or even in a town 20 miles away. The only time I felt the fear of the evil in our society was when the daughter of the bus company that drove me to secondary school was kidnapped and held for weeks before suffering some dreadful end. The news reported that she was snatched from her bedroom and after this I was a bit paranoid for a few weeks about keeping the window locked regardless of the weather. But my point is in all this reminiscing that, apart for really local news our community did not feel the need to particularly know about all the other tragedies. There were plenty of charitable events to raise funds for starving children or homeless people or perhaps some victims of a natural disaster, these things still were noted and acted upon, but the rest of it was considered sort of not relevant to our lives.
This was a community attitude that I’m describing here from my childhood memories of such. I don't think that people didn't care and I don't think that there was less crime (although I think that the scale of the violence in crime has definably gone up and I think this is directly attributable to media coverage)...it was just that it was considered bad form, inappropriate and intrusive to delve into the misfortune of others. (This was true for shame based activities and pain based occurrences).
For my two penny worth, I think that what has happened with the rise of the influence and usage of the media based entertainments is that people have got normalised and desensitised to violence and antisocial behaviour. In the UK there is a wide selection of family / life dramas and sitcoms and all of them portray a grungy, abusive, foul-mouthed and violent society and this is then what people come to look upon and emulate as normal and acceptable. These programmes started of as fairly tame by today’s standards, but as the population that viewed these programmes matched their moral standards and expectations to those of the show then the producers sunk to new lows in order to have the best sock value story to entice their viewers to stay with their show. Things that I knew about (such as two girls kissing and being lesbians) and were the subject of shameful bad taste jokes behind the shed, have now become normalised for any child watching a school drama available for viewing at the tea time slot. People should have a right to choose how they live their lives, but I don't want it to be forced on me or my family and then be told this is the new normal that I have to enjoy. I think the media tried to force too many agendas that have been foistered though the system motivated by money or power / politics. I have mostly opted out of watching TV. I hardly ever watch the news or buy a paper because I don't like or trust the information I'm fed as being truthful. The media has become too much of a political animal for my taste. I have come to accept that I am now no longer current and as such I have opted out and to some extent this is wrong in that I have abandoned my obligations to watch and monitor the world around me and to speak in season as my personal moral compass leads me. (Hubby now spends a lot of time on the so called intellectual broadsheet blog sites, "speaking" into the absurdity and crass cut n paste mentality that exists out there. But he reports that some days he is just wearied by the seer volume of numpties out there who don’t seam to have the ability to reason through, to the final and brutal conclusion, the reality of the outworking of their comments…they just don’t think they are cut n pasting from other sites because they think it makes them look clever).
I think that the media is as controlled and manipulated by the weight of the need to be the same as everyone else as any individual or institution. All of the different aspects of media tend to cut n paste off each other for creativity and steer on what is new and approved. As a result it is all getting dummed down to the lowest common aspect. Less intellect and reasoned independent thought. More violence and grunge.
Enough ranting for now.