Media with My Daughters: vol. 1

November 26, 2008

Let me say right up front: I am out of it. I rarely watch television. I have not seen a grown-up movie in several years. I do not listen to popular music except for what my daughters listen to: the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana), and their cohort. So, I am not in touch with popular culture.

This is not a wise admission by someone who is supposed to be a commentator on Culture. One of my principle contentions, however, is that there is no popular culture, there are only splintered cultures, fragments that co-exist and/or collide. Given that, my wife and I try, in our family, to offer a world-view with some integrity, with some sense and cohesion.

That has its challenges. The other day, I was driving with my two daughters (ages 9 and 11) in the car and I had an “oldies” station playing on the radio. “The Age of Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” came on. A song from 1969, it, like most songs from the past, brought forward a whole composition of events, feelings, personages, and thoughts. I began a verbal rift on “The Age of Aquarius”, unsolicited by my daughters who, to their dismay, could not walk out of a moving car.

“This was a huge hit in 1969,” I told them, “a song from a musical called, ‘Hair’.” “What’s Aquarius?” they asked. “Well, I know it’s one of the signs of the horoscope.” I had to continue on quickly because I knew that they do not know what the horoscope is and I also know that I could not explain it without immediately jumping into some critique of animism or paganism. “Well, it’s a system based on the alignment of stars and planets and in this song they were saying that a particular alignment would herald peace and harmony in the world, a hope that was widespread and heartfelt in 1969 because we were in the th ro es of the Vietna m W a r … …,” and my voice trailed off and I stopped, not just because it was a monumental task to explain the zeitgeist of the 1960’s but because I saw both the foolishness and the loftiness of the shared culture of the 1960’s (there was shared culture then but, ironically, that shared culture of the 1960’s came to destroy the possibility of a shared culture). I was momentarily in touch with the both the idealism and the hubris of those days when we really thought we could change the world.

We changed the world and the world changed us. We didn’t stop the Vietnam War and we didn’t stop any other wars, either. We did usher in the digital age and the fragmentation of communities. We staved off nuclear destruction and we made skepticism dogma.

For all the good and evil that has been accomplished since the late ‘60’s, there’s been no dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Trying to explain that long-ago time to my daughters, I felt a little silly, as if I was sitting there wearing a Nehru jacket and a large peace medallion around my neck. My daughters are very tolerant, though, and so did not point out that my youth’s expectations had been inflated.

Back in the 1960’s, they often spoke of the “Generation Gap.” It did exist and it was severe, but it was often referred to as a new or unique phenomenon, as if the parents and children of the 1960’s were the first and only generation to feel this chasm across which some things could not be communicated. Now, with my children, I see that there is always a Generation Gap, a difficulty of passing on what had been, a disconnect by which some things that are very normal to one generation just don’t make a lot of sense to the next.

For the most part, that is probably a good thing. It indicates movement, maybe even progress. For example, the next song that came on the Oldies station was, “In the Summertime”, a song that Mungo Jerry (baptismal name?) sang in 1970. The lyrics go,

In the summertime when the weather is hot
You can stretch right up and touch the sky
When the weather's fine
You got women, you got women on your mind
Have a drink, have a drive
Go out and see what you can find

If her daddy's rich take her out for a meal
If her daddy's poor just do what you feel …

I think that’s when I changed the station to Disney Radio. My daughters didn’t flinch, but I did. I didn’t want them exposed to such an awful and outdated attitude toward women. It’s more than embarrassing that, back then, we would listen to that song while heading off to the beach and not think anything of it. So, I’m glad that there’s a Generation Gap.

Teaching the next generation what is of value, what is worth spending your energies on, helps us examine our own interior orientations, the values and scars and narratives we carry with us and that help or hinder us to move ahead. It sure makes car trips interesting! Maybe I’ll take out some family photos of the early ‘70’s and try to explain the clothes …