Especially for Parents
News and Commentary by Sharon Secor
May 2004
Cultural Conditioning and Trickle Down Coarseness
As a parent, when my child exhibits poor behavior, my first step is to correct the behavior. My second is to reflect upon my own, to see if it has contributed to hers. If she uses poor manners, not saying please and thank you, I, in addition to correcting her, must think about how I speak to her. Do I create an environment conducive to her learning good manners by addressing her respectfully and using please and thank you in my directives? It is in this light that I view the recent photos that have disappointed the world, photos of grinning U.S. soldiers engaged in the sexually explicit humiliation of Iraqi prisoners.
American soldiers enjoy a distinction that separates them from almost every other military in the world—a nearly universal understanding that both civilians and prisoners alike can expect fairness and basic respect from an individual wearing a United States uniform. Indeed, as writer and radio talk show host Larry Elder pointed out in a widely published May 13, 2004, column, as WWII came to a close, "German soldiers stripped off their uniforms and jumped into the Elbe river, swimming naked to the west side so they could surrender to Americans rather than to the Russians." For despite their role in the dreadful acts of the Nazi government as a whole, German soldiers knew that they could expect decency from American soldiers.
Viewed against the background of this traditional distinction, these photos are that much more disturbing. A picture of a grinning soldier posed with two young boys that were holding a sign stating that the soldier killed their father and then made their sister pregnant, painfully clashes with what we know of U.S. soldiers giving their own food rations to hungry children. And, that is a very mild photo in comparison to some of the other pictures, depicting physical and sexual humiliation and brutality.
Correcting the behavior of the individuals involved is not enough. In addition to punishing the individuals responsible, we should consider the degree to which we, or rather, our culture shares culpability for these behaviors. We should consider the social environment we have created.
In today's world, in terms of both what is technologically available and the shifting of family forms and functions, popular culture has almost as much influence over the moral development of many children as parents do. As television and radio personality Bill O'Reilly often points out, in many families, popular culture has more influence over the life choices children make than anyone else. And, he's right. In far too many families, children interact more on a daily basis with various forms of popular culture than they do with their parents.
The quality of this influence has degenerated to the point that from early childhood on, children are conditioned to be more accepting of violence, of humor that has its base in varying combinations of vulgarity, humiliation and cruelty, and of a cold, ugly sexuality that is devoid of emotional connection. This is the culture that many of today's young adults have grown up in. Their perceptions of self and others have been built upon it. It is the culture that many of today's tots absorb and will contribute to the essence of who they are.
Like movies, such as the debacle that was the film version of the book The Cat in the Hat, a film that included bathroom humor, vulgar language, and even sexual innuendo, including an allusion to a sex magazine-style centerfold, television, popular music and video games are rife with examples of this trend towards coarsening. There are also many examples to be found within the books and toys that make up the popular culture of young children.
During the past few years, a particular genre of children's fiction has been rapidly gaining popularity. According to an Associated Press report by Martha Irvine and published on CNN.com on May 5, some parents refer to the genre as "poop fiction", evidently a play on the phrase "pulp fiction".
Some of the most popular books include the William The Farting Dog books, by Glenn Murray, William Kotzwinkle, and Audrey Colman, recommended for ages 5 to 8, Zombie Butts From Uranus by Andy Griffiths, and the Captain Underpants series, written by Dav Pilkey. This series, also for young readers, includes such titles as Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants, Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman, and parts one and two of Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy.
According to the AP report, 6-year-old Kaylee Paul enjoys the Captain Underpants series so much that she has begun to create her own series of work, which she described with a giggle as being "about a chubby man who farts wherever he goes."
In a companion piece to a February 11, 2004, New York Post article by Suzanne Kapner describing a "revolting revival" of vulgar toys, Lorena Mongelli wrote of the concerns that some child psychologists have about this type of material. Among the toys described in Kapner's article was Gooey Louie, a game in which children "pull boogers from Louie's nose, all except for a super-long booger." Louie's brain pops out if the large one is removed. Another is the Gut Busting Flea, based on a cartoon called Mucha Lucha!, a WB Network program. It is a flatulent fighting bug. Spin Master, a Canadian company, has created 21 dolls, each of which releases its own individual stench when squeezed.
"These toys violate social taboos and blur the line between what is acceptable behavior and what is not," wrote Mongelli, expressing the concerns of child psychologists. Playing with these toys can contribute to "antisocial behavior." Paraphrasing Alan Siskind, child psychologist and head of the Jewish Board of Family and Children Services, she continued, "these toys increase the child's fascination with bodily functions and encourages the enactment of lewd behavior."
Allowing or encouraging children to revel in these types of books and toys may set them up to be more receptive to "humor" of the sort put forth by Howard Stern and his ilk. Stern has become quite wealthy from his blend of "potty humor", sexual deviance, and humiliation of and outright cruelty to others. Combined with the continuous stream graphic violence and sex that is presented as entertainment, and at times presented as education, in our culture, it increases the risk of children becoming slaves to the ultimate fix of deviance, cruelty and humiliation—pornography.
Perhaps that can offer a partial explanation of the strange goings-on at the San Francisco Art Institute, which is a graduate school. According to Ben Shapiro, author of Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth, in an interview with Jamie Glazov for FrontPageMagazine.com, Professor Tony Labat assigned the creation of a work of performance art to his students. One of his students, a Jonathan Yegge, committed—or rather, performed—an act which included a bound and gagged male. Yegge and the male engaged in oral sex and in deviant and dangerous sexual acts that involved each other's fecal matter. Shapiro said "the school condemned Yegge—for not using sexual protection." Shapiro spoke of the pornography classes at many major colleges throughout the country and told of one course at the University of California at Berkley that includes students taking pictures of their genitals and "then exchanging the photographs and attempting to match up genital owners with pictures of their genitals."
The soldiers involved in the shameful behavior in Iraq are primarily of a generation that has been raised in a culture awash with such images and concepts. Their smiles and thumbs up are not that surprising when one considers what vast numbers of Americans consume in the name of entertainment.
By allowing the "pornification" of America and the "trickle down" coarseness that is its inevitable result, we are changing the essence of the moral character of our nation. We can add the military to the list of good things in America—our educational system, art, literature, music, intimate relationships and even childhood—that we have allowed to be tainted by setting aside of standards of basic decency. We need to correct our behavior as well.