We've all watched them. We have all sat there and thought to ourselves, 'What in Gods name is wrong with these people?' and 'Why am I watching this'? Yet somehow, we can't seem to pull away.
People generally start out on these shows familial, and genuinely interesting. But as fame always has it the 'plastic' so to speak takes over. The producers get hold of their personalities and fill their pockets and they end up money hungry self centered conflict ridden messes. We've seen them come and go. That's right people, Fakeality TV. OH I'm sorry, Reality TV. Granted, I am myself guilty of the pleasure of watching an others demise on screen. Everything from the very first Real World on MTV to now Keeping up with the Kardashians, Little People this Little People that, John & Kate plus 8 to now Kate plus 8. The Duggars. Bret Michaels Rock of Love, I could go on. Just to give you a perspective here is a link to the ridiculously insane list of all the reality shows that have ever been in existence. This list is pretty eye opening. (Copy and Paste if necessary.)
http://www.realitytvworld.com/realitytvworld/allshows.shtml
So it made me think. What is it about these shows that compels us to follow them? Scandal, drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, and even shows ending in murder. Yes, Murder!! Then of course you have the innocent shows with the 'family'connotation but are they really just wolves in sheep's clothing?
Even the most wholesome of these shows holds some bit of drama and intrigue. If anything, those shows almost force me to question why they are doing this. However we know why. Money. But why are you watching it? Is it to escape from your own life or drama? Or mine? Is it to sneer at the whining of a spoiled brat bride? I do have a theory about this.
In Howard Sterns movie Private parts(which is about his life) NBC couldn't understand why he was getting such high ratings. But the rating information told them that people whether they like you or not will tune in to listen. Because they just want to hear what you are going to say next. Now if you know anything about Howard Stern he's out there. Anything racy or even slightly in the direction of gross or distorted good or bad, it's usually on his show. Well, I believe it's the same with Reality TV. The more you dislike, the more you may want to know. The louder, more obnoxious, more dangerous and ridiculous things seem with these characters, the better for us. Why? Because it's safe. We thrive on it. It's something to look forward to when you in your life have had a crappy day. Or week. Or month. Or if you just feel like it's all you've got. It's a way to get inside of a life of people who are mostly rich if not billionaires and living vicariously through them. Most of us will never own million dollar houses or Ferrari's. Or have a personal 'everything' assistant for every need known to man. But it sure would be nice to pretend it. And to revel or baulk or whatever it is that sucks you in. It's certainly nice to know you'll never be stuck on a deserted island with a slough of strangers to persecute and possible wilderness to conquer but what if? And these shows also do something extremely important. They give you a view of what people, big, small, rich, poor, middle class, educated, or otherwise, can be like. They are cunning and manipulative in convincing us that they are real, honest to goodness human beings. When it's so quite obvious that they aren't.
So what about you? Why do you watch reality TV?
Friday, September 10, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
When do we teach our kids about death?
Death is an inevitable part of life. Yet for a parent it's that gray area that you don't ever want to touch upon with a child. Ever. We all want to keep our beautiful innocent children young forever don't we?
aahhhh if only(sighing)...OK, maybe not. Hey I don't want to change diapers forever!
But why not discuss this subject well before they have the opportunity to learn from an uninformed scary source? Or from other kids who maybe had a hard hitting very real approach by losing a family member from cancer. Or their favorite pet be it a goldfish or a dog. My husband and I had that reality just recently. Our dog who is my daughters playmate and 'best fwend dog' as she calls him got sick. He ended up having a walnut sized cancerous tumor growing on his stomach lumen(don't ask me what that is) and it turned his intestines inside of itself. He lost 19 lbs. in 9 days and we had to make the decision before we knew what the mass was whether to go ahead with the surgery or put him to sleep. Needless to say, I wept. But it hit us like a brick that if the worst case scenario was going to happen, 'how are we going to explain this to her'. I also reminded him that she would continue to ask every single day for quite a while before she gave up and moved onto something else. But Luckily for him(and his name is Lucky) he is OK now. After raking us across the coals financially, we averted the crisis situation and still have a few years to spend with our spastic, crazy lab.
Now on to a more trivial yet influential example. I'm not allowing critters in my home. I used to try to remove them humanely because of my love of insects. I am referring mostly to spiders and carpenter ants. But I have since become a mom and my protective animal instinct is very present. So now as soon as I see an insect that is not a beetle I kill it. I just have it in my mind that beetles could care less about anything other than fruit and vegetation so I assume they won't bite. Will they? Well, in any case, my daughter follows me around everywhere. So she sees that. Well, she sees everything I do. And one day my son will as well. So there is reasoning behind it. I have no idea if the spiders are poisonous or if she ever got a bite from a carpenter ant would cause a very unwanted allergic reaction. And I am already full aware though the thought freaks me out, that these things are crawling on them at night. Come on, we all know that spiders crawl everywhere at night. How else did you get that nice red bump on your leg? Then there's my husband. Killing bees, flies, and anything else that creeps him out. (Or scares him regardless if he admits that or not) He even started talking about eradicating the adorable little chipmunks on our property lately! I had to be their advocate though because they don't really do anything to us. However think about it, they are rodents. And they are dirty and can still spread parasites and diseases with their urine and feces.
Then there's today's TV, movies, influence of other kids, and even something as simple as clothing, at any given moment it can come up. Look at the movie Toy Story.(my daughters new favorite movie!) Woody the cowboy pushes Buzz Light year out the window because he's jealous that he's taking all of Andy's playtime. At which time all the toys begin to yell at him and call him a murderer as they believe Buzz died in the fall. Obviously they realize later that he isn't dead, but that's just one example.
Granted, my child may only be just under 3 but she is extremely intelligent. So much so that she has already used the words kill, die and dead. And not in the right form. So at some point sooner than later I will have to talk to her about it. So, in doing research on the topic I found a site that offers a list of books that teach kids about death in an honest, yet gentle way. Here's the link for those that are interested. I hope this helps in your quest to teach your kids about death and I do hope you plan to anyway. After all as king Mufasa says in 'The Lion King', 'We are all a part of this great circle of life'.
http://www.parenthood.com/article-topics/books_that_teach_children_about_death.html
aahhhh if only(sighing)...OK, maybe not. Hey I don't want to change diapers forever!
But why not discuss this subject well before they have the opportunity to learn from an uninformed scary source? Or from other kids who maybe had a hard hitting very real approach by losing a family member from cancer. Or their favorite pet be it a goldfish or a dog. My husband and I had that reality just recently. Our dog who is my daughters playmate and 'best fwend dog' as she calls him got sick. He ended up having a walnut sized cancerous tumor growing on his stomach lumen(don't ask me what that is) and it turned his intestines inside of itself. He lost 19 lbs. in 9 days and we had to make the decision before we knew what the mass was whether to go ahead with the surgery or put him to sleep. Needless to say, I wept. But it hit us like a brick that if the worst case scenario was going to happen, 'how are we going to explain this to her'. I also reminded him that she would continue to ask every single day for quite a while before she gave up and moved onto something else. But Luckily for him(and his name is Lucky) he is OK now. After raking us across the coals financially, we averted the crisis situation and still have a few years to spend with our spastic, crazy lab.
Now on to a more trivial yet influential example. I'm not allowing critters in my home. I used to try to remove them humanely because of my love of insects. I am referring mostly to spiders and carpenter ants. But I have since become a mom and my protective animal instinct is very present. So now as soon as I see an insect that is not a beetle I kill it. I just have it in my mind that beetles could care less about anything other than fruit and vegetation so I assume they won't bite. Will they? Well, in any case, my daughter follows me around everywhere. So she sees that. Well, she sees everything I do. And one day my son will as well. So there is reasoning behind it. I have no idea if the spiders are poisonous or if she ever got a bite from a carpenter ant would cause a very unwanted allergic reaction. And I am already full aware though the thought freaks me out, that these things are crawling on them at night. Come on, we all know that spiders crawl everywhere at night. How else did you get that nice red bump on your leg? Then there's my husband. Killing bees, flies, and anything else that creeps him out. (Or scares him regardless if he admits that or not) He even started talking about eradicating the adorable little chipmunks on our property lately! I had to be their advocate though because they don't really do anything to us. However think about it, they are rodents. And they are dirty and can still spread parasites and diseases with their urine and feces.
Then there's today's TV, movies, influence of other kids, and even something as simple as clothing, at any given moment it can come up. Look at the movie Toy Story.(my daughters new favorite movie!) Woody the cowboy pushes Buzz Light year out the window because he's jealous that he's taking all of Andy's playtime. At which time all the toys begin to yell at him and call him a murderer as they believe Buzz died in the fall. Obviously they realize later that he isn't dead, but that's just one example.
Granted, my child may only be just under 3 but she is extremely intelligent. So much so that she has already used the words kill, die and dead. And not in the right form. So at some point sooner than later I will have to talk to her about it. So, in doing research on the topic I found a site that offers a list of books that teach kids about death in an honest, yet gentle way. Here's the link for those that are interested. I hope this helps in your quest to teach your kids about death and I do hope you plan to anyway. After all as king Mufasa says in 'The Lion King', 'We are all a part of this great circle of life'.
http://www.parenthood.com/article-topics/books_that_teach_children_about_death.html
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