The Ideal Child
One of the consequences of discontinuing our cable television service has been the renewal of our Netflix account. We had unsubscribed from that service months ago because we were watching too much cable TV.
But, after a period of struggling vainly along with nothing to watch but fuzzy PBS programming with poor-quality, staticky audio, we decided that we just couldn’t stand it anymore. So I signed us up for Netflix again. I cleared out our queue, which Netflix had dutifully saved, and I added to the queue…several seasons of different television shows we like to watch!
Everybody Loves Raymond…Dr. Who…Law and Order…Lost
It was actually Dr. Who that precipitated the resumption of our Netflix service. I was going to spend over a hundred dollars to buy Seasons 1 and 2 of Dr. Who, but after giving it some thought (and mentioning the plan to my wife, who is always more sensible than me about money matters), I decided it made little sense to disconnect cable and then spend hundreds of dollars on DVDs of the programs I like to watch.
I was paying the cable company over fifty dollars a month for basic service; at least Netflix only charges $18.00 a month for three DVDs. And overall the service is quite fast, not always next-day as they lead new subscribers to believe, but fast enough.
First to arrive was “Raymond.” My wife and I watched most of Season 1 in a few days time. As someone who has watched sitcoms all my life–indeed, as someone who can tell you the Friday prime-time lineup from 1982–I admit I don’t care for many modern sitcoms. “Raymond” is the only one I have watched with any degree of enjoyment, since Seinfeld went off the air.
What strikes me in watching “Raymond,” though, is how the best sitcoms in some way break with tradition, and yet remain the same in one respect: children are always, without fail, over-idealized.
There is no such thing as a naughty child in television land….at least, not the child of the protagonist and his/her family. In a sitcom, naughty children always belong to someone else, someone who is themself deficient in some way. There have probably been research papers written tracing this phenomenon back to its roots in early television, with such idealistic depictions of family life as Leave it to Beaver. I have not read those research papers; these are merely my own observations from a lifetime of mind-numbing tv-watching.
In an early episode of “Raymond,” Ray and his wife are having a conversation at the breakfast table while his five year-old daughter quietly eats her breakfast. Two infant twins sit in high chairs nearby, again quietly eating. There is no obvious mess on the floor or even on the infants’ high chair trays. Not a peep can be heard from the children who, like movie star animals, are looking off-stage at their handlers.
The parents are able to finish their conversation without interruption before the scene ends. It was one of the most unrealistic portrayals of family life I have ever seen on television.
Children never cry in a sitcom, or if they do, it is for comedic effect. Children don’t throw tantrums. Sitcom children aren’t rude to their parents. When their parents tell them it’s time to take a bath or brush their teeth or go to bed, sitcom children obey without complaint. Sitcom children only make messes when Daddy is left in charge…again, for comedic affect, because everyone knows only Mom can control the kids. Mom has to come home and find Dad hopelessly swamped by children gone wild. Mom looks askance at the helpless father, tied to a chair while his children run around whooping like Indians. Then Mom smiles and shakes her head. Cue the laugh track.
Watching “Raymond,” I’ve often wondered if the purpose of presenting these ideal children to the audience is not so much to instruct us in how our own children ought to act (and by extension, how our children fall short of the ideal).
Maybe the reason is that to depict a family dealing with naughty children would necessitate depicting discipline, never a good subject for comedy.
Ray and his wife would have to get angry at the kids, once in awhile. And we never see either of them angry. This is light fare! It’s good comedy, and in some ways a realistic portrayal of the stresses of living next door to one’s parents. But who can imagine Ray yelling at his daughter because she took grape juice into the living room and spilled it on the carpet, even after Ray told her to drink it in the kitchen?
Not to mention, the issue of corporal punishment would simply be off the table. Unfortunately, on film, spanking cannot be depicted as anything but abuse.
Not the stuff of comedy. Drama, maybe, but not comedy. Comedy requires children always behave, I guess. The singular sin of sitcom children is not naughtiness, but honesty. They exist to tell the truth. Thus Ray’s daughter tells a stranger that “Daddy likes to teach mommy to wrestle. They do it a lot.”
In that way alone, sitcom children aren’t too much different than our own.
We have a photograph hanging on our wall of Lynn and I in Paris. I am kissing her beside the carousel in Montmartre.
Once, the babysitter was looking at that picture, and Brendan told her, “That was when my Daddy and Mommy loved each other.”
“Oh, they still love each other,” the babysitter said.
“No, Mommy is always calling Daddy an idiot,” Brendan replied.
Lynn and I had to go out of our way to be extraordinarily affectionate with each other, after that.
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Why wouldn’t you drop $100 on two seasons of Doctor Who? I would… Uh… yeah.
I have cut down my movie buying considerably, not just because of the home buying, but because I was running out of storage and finally said: you do not need to buy everything you ever liked.
I do need the second season of Doctor Who, because Who is not a habit I am willing to give up.
I admit I have an obsessive collective thing. I’d really like to be able to complete my Kids in the Hall collection, MacGuyver and La Femme Nikita. All of these will cost a bundle. So I refrain. I also refrain from buying the finally cheaper set versions of X-Files and Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
For now. I think at some point I’m going to be unable to not get those things.
But I think for shows that I would only rewatch once … Netflix or renting would be a better idea. I have yet to try Netflix, mostly because I don’t get to watch a lot of rented movies any more.
WoW is one reason, but there are others.
Maybe I could rewatch MacGuyver that way, for instance. On rewatching, the show isn’t quite as good as I remembered. Good enough … but still not worth owning all the seasons. And I should admit I have three (and haven’t finished them all yet, though it’s probably been a year.)
I’ve done a lot of purging over the last several moves and I think I’m running pretty lean. I think my movie/tv collection could get leaner, but I’m loathe to separate myself from something that cost me so much money.
If I had it to do over again, I might not have bought quite as many Doctor Who tapes, and just bought the ones I really really loved.
Comment by Mel B. — Friday, 2 February 2007 @ 2:04 am
We bought every season of “Alias” except the final crappy season (season 5). We were a little pissed that they took such a good show off the air just because Jennifer Garner didn’t want to do it anymore. She is not one of our favorite actresses, right at this moment.
Still, we’ll probably buy Season 5 just to complete the set.
I own all of the Simpsons seasons that have been released on DVD. Other than that, we haven’t bought any other television shows. Dr. Who was a real temptation, but I’m glad I didn’t buy it. The prices on some of these DVD sets are outrageous, like the X-Files, Star Trek, etc. They are basically preying on us geeks. You don’t see Season 4 of “Dharma and Greg” costing sixty bucks, do you?
I started watching Season 1 of Who last night. Good stuff. However, I think I like the Doctor from Season 2 better, so far. And I missed the closer to season 2, so I don’t know whether Rose lives or dies (don’t tell me!). But I want to watch all the episodes in order until I get to the end of Season 2.
Comment by greypilgrim — Friday, 2 February 2007 @ 8:49 am
So where can I go to get me one of those sitcom children??
In recent weeks, Elliot’s been developing an attitude–the stubborn “No!”, the selfish screaming, “Mine!”, the “I’m going to run far, far away and not come back,” the not entirely teasing “I’m going to shoot (bite, kick, hit) you.” Discipline seems to get harder, not easier, with age. But maybe that changes by the time they’re 5.
Comment by Dawn — Sunday, 4 February 2007 @ 4:49 pm
Does it get easier? I don’t know. Brendan has his mean, stubborn moments, even at five. As recently as a couple weeks ago, he got very upset in Wal-Mart when I would not buy him a toy. On our way out, he said, “I don’t like you. You’re mean to me ’cause you don’t buy me ANYTHING.” Tears were streaming down his face as he said it. It was pretty pathetic…but at the same time, it was almost difficult not to laugh.
I know that sounds weird, but it was just so untrue, what he was saying. I felt like laughing, which I suppose was better than feeling like slapping him in the mouth.
However, what we are dealing with at five is not so much tantrums or anger, but independence issues. We want him to stop coming into our bedroom to sleep in the middle of the night. We want him to be able to wipe his own bum without us having to do a “butt-check” to make sure he actually did a good job. We want him to clean his room the first time we ask, instead of the third or fourth time, at which point we are yelling at him.
The thing about five is that you can talk to your child and find out why they are angry, when they are yelling at you. I don’t know if you can do that at 2 or 3. When he gets upset, can you ask Elliot some questions to determine why he is angry? Sometimes if you can determine the source of their anger, you find that it has nothing to do with simply having a naughty child. Maybe he has (to him) a legitimate reason for being angry.
Comment by greypilgrim — Sunday, 4 February 2007 @ 5:06 pm
I much prefer those times I have difficulty keeping from laughing to the times I feel more inclined towards violence…I think my response has much to do with my own mood/exhaustion level at the moment.
Sometimes Elliot can verbalize why he is angry, but he has a hard time realizing how overblown he’s being about something. (”No, you can’t stir the curry on the stove because it’s very hot.”) And most of the time, his reasons for anger are, from his point of view, legitimate. It’s just not always easy to be patient and find alternatives to what he wants to do.
Comment by Dawn — Tuesday, 6 February 2007 @ 2:26 pm