Dear Marjorie,
I don’t mean to be breezy about drecky pop culture or about parents’ fears. I just don’t think there is much the Britney-haters of the world can do, given, not to put too fine a point on it, capitalism. Pop culture is big business, and it’s entwined with the rest of the system in sneaky, snaky ways: As you point out, Britney creeps in everywhere, on little flat feet, often in the company of her cool new best friend Bob Dole. That an old-fashioned curmudgeon like Dole could inveigh against sexy movies while running for president, then move immediately to pitching Viagra on TV–and in New Yorker ads! What would Mr. Shawn say?–and now be advertising Pepsi with the suggestive Ms. Spears, who is young enough to be his granddaughter, just shows you how unstable and porous the categories are. Individual parents can keep some stuff they hate out of their kids’ lives–we gave up TV when ours broke down (and I really miss it!)–but probably not a lot. That poor deprived seventh-grader not permitted to see Hannibal will see it on video next year on a sleep-over. And he’ll think it’s really neat! And maybe it is! As individuals, the best parents can do is to give their kids a sense of critical distance from commercial culture–so they can enjoy it without being swallowed up by it. After all, you and I both enjoy parts of it, no? As a society, we could be providing kids with an enriched cultural life that would include everything from free first-rate, after-school programs to community gyms and swimming pools to bringing back the “frills” (music, drama, art, gym) that have died the death of a thousand budget cuts, but that is “elitist,” costs money, and involves being concerned with all children, not just one’s own, and taking those children seriously as something more than test-takers and logo-wearers and couch potatoes in training. That, and getting rid of capitalism. Put that on the to-do list for sure.
I can see why you feel that Heins lacks sympathy for the parental-protection impulse that lies behind some of the urge to censor and why that bothers you. I suspect that in our hearts, you and I don’t believe that the material we hate has no bad real-world effects (as opposed to the stuff that the fundamentalists hate, which has good real-life effects), despite the “inconclusive” studies. But–I speak for myself here–much of the cultural effluvia that strikes me as harmful is completely mainstream. Anorexic fashion models with breast implants! The Bible! Pearl Harbor! If even one kid joins the Navy because of that 10th-rate nationalistic extravaganza, that will be more harm than Deep Throat ever did to its horny viewers. As for the Bible, that is definitely one book that many a young girl has been ruined by, and many a young boy, too. And I’m not even thinking of that child-abusing church in Atlanta where they strip the kids and beat them in public and marry them off at 14.
“I see you’ve come round to one of your favorite themes,” says my sweetie, who’s been reading over my shoulder, “lambasting the Bible.” I think that means it’s time to say goodbye. I hope Slate readers interested in the issues will read Not in Front of the Children, a useful and apparently controversial book, and then join the ACLU, get involved in the schools (unless they are right-wing fundamentalists, in which case they should kick back, watch some pornography, and listen to Britney Spears), and–this is important–overthrow capitalism.
This has been fun, Marjorie. See you at the movies,
Katha