Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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On Violence

Posted September 07, 2007
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I am hoping my children grow into the kind of people who will not drop an anvil on your head. I pray they won't blow your face off at close range so that you end up staggering around with a frayed and blackened stump for a neck only to return moments later covered in little white cross-shaped bandages, with angry steam puffing out of your ear holes. Let them never once con you into looking through a telescope at the glorious moon only the telescope turns out really to be a cannon that blasts you to ashy smithereens. Nor do I want them to flatten you with a mallet into an accordion-shaped version of yourself or fancy themselves up in a kind of misogynist drag, all fishnet stockings and false eyelashes and hourglass figure, the better to trick you and flatten you with a mallet into an accordion-shaped version of yourself.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm just not sure how I feel about the cartoons Ben and Birdy have been watching lately. We've been renting all the old Looney Tunes for them, and I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I hate that they're so violent. And sexist. And racist. I do -- I hate it. Sexism and racism are good only for keeping people oppressed, not for laughs; and comical violence, during this time of war, feels totally obscene. But then the cartoons are so funny -- and not simply offensive-funny or hee-haw slapstick funny, but truly witty. Bugs Bunny is as clever as anybody you'd want to meet, and it's deeply satisfying to watch him outwit his dim antagonists. Ditto the Pink Panther, Road Runner, and Tweety, powerful underdogs all. I love to see true intelligence represented so vividly when so much seems dumbed down these days; I love the excellent soundtrack; I love the puns ("A Hare-Raising Tale"). Plus, Michael and I enjoy a giant kick of nostalgia with every one ("Duck season!" "Rabbit season!").

Because the newer stuff -- well, the newer stuff can be great. But I am struck by the fact that the very tenets of humanity I want my children to master -- sharing, cooperation, kindness -- are often presented to them in such a smarmy, unappealing package. Kids or animals whine out oily, moralistic messages to one another, and it's all a little thin, a little depressing. I'd rather children be chasing each other with water balloons and whiffle bats than suffering over what to get their moms for Mother's Day or how better to show Grandma they love her. And I'd rather watch Yosemite Sam high-dive head-first into a bucket of set cement than watch two cartoon children moan at each other about whose turn it was to use the Hippety-Hop. I know! This is rich coming from a woman who used to edit books so heavily that when my father was once reading the kids The Cat in the Hat Comes Back I had to hiss at him, "We call those poppers, Dad, not G-U-N-S."

Speaking of which, Ben wanted to play Clue last night -- "Real, grown-up Clue!" -- and so we did. We guessed "Colonel Mustard in the Billiards Room with the Rope" and "Professor Plum in the Library with the Knife." (Ben kept saying hilariously revealing things like, "Wait, remind me what I do if I have all of them.") And the whole time Birdy was milling around anxiously, saying, "I don't know any real dead people. I only know Martin Luther King, who I don't even know." The same Birdy whose eyes glittered with tears later that evening when we so much as mentioned The Lion King. "When Benny watches it, someone will have to go in a different room with me and read books or do a puzzle," she says, parroting the very reassurance we've offered her. "Because it is too sad and scary when the dad dies." "I know," Ben says. "I don't even want to watch that part myself. I want to fast-forward as soon as the music gets too rumbly." What you have to understand is that these are kids who have never actually seen The Lion King. They love all the songs and know most of the story, and they plan to see it one day -- in fact, they practically study for it, like it's the LSATS or a trek in the Himalayas. But there are still tender hearts beating gently in their chests: they can handle smish-smashing and boom-banging when every cartoon somebody is sure to spring happily back to life -- just nothing that might be really and truly sad.

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On Violence

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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