[Frederica-l] Dallas Morning News: Open Season on Beauty

[Frederica at aol.com]

This opinion piece appeared this morning in the Dallas Morning News. It 
started when I wrote an email to a few friends after seeing this movie with Hannah 
-- I felt dejected and kind of hopeless about all the ugliness that surrounds 
us. One of my friends, Rod Dreher, edits the "Points" opinion section of the 
DMN, and asked me to turn it into a publishable piece -- not a movie review, 
but an essay on this problem. So I polished it up and added a bit of humor and 
some biting comments and sent it back. Rod said no, what he wanted was the tone 
of sadness in my original email. He said that a lot of people probably feel 
the same way. So I rewrote it with that in mind. I think it was a good call -- 
I've gotten a couple of emails from readers already. 

here's the URL:

http://www.frederica.com/writings/open-season-on-beauty.html

******
"I didn't like the part in the restaurant," Hannah, my 6-year-old 
granddaughter, said. We were leaving a screening of Sony's new animated feature, "Open 
Season," and I was trying to remember any scene in a restaurant. When she said 
it was "too messy," I realized that she meant an early scene where the movie's 
lead characters, a suburban bear and a one-antlered deer, run loose in a 
mini-mart. After they rip open candy bars, gulp down slushies (bypassing the use of 
cups), and get a tongue tangled in the hot dog roller, the place is a sticky 
disaster. 
 
I said, "I didn't like the next part, when you see the bear through the 
window, and then he throws up on the window." The memory of that fountain of 
candy-flecked green rose to mind. "Oh," she said. "I didn't know that was supposed 
to be throw-up." 
 
Grandparents have had all kinds of post-movie conversations with kids over 
the last seventy years or so, but this is probably the first time it's included 
a lesson on identifying vomit. 
 
After I took Hannah home, I just felt sad. This is a movie about talking 
animals, so it can't be aimed at kids much older than she is. But there wasn't any 
element I could honestly say was enjoyable -- nothing that sparked wonder. 
There was lots of skittering and slamming and noise, and the screen often filled 
up with images that were just plain ugly. 
 
For example, early on the deer wants the bear to promise to be his friend. So 
he hocks up something slimy and spits it into his hand, then holds it out, 
dripping, for a shake.
 
Not much later the deer and bear are lost in the forest, and the bear needs a 
toilet. He asks the deer, "Well, what do you do?" The deer says, "I don't 
know," and releases a stream of turds.  
 
The deer (who walks on his hind legs) offers to carry the bear's teddybear 
backpack. He straps it in front, over his crotch, where it waggles as he walks 
along.  
 
Sure, potty-talk has always been funny to kids. But grownups didn't teach it 
to them. They had something more significant to impart: stories to help 
children prepare for the world they were growing into. The best stories were complex 
and unafraid to deal with tragedy, like Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little 
Mermaid," or Carlo Collodi's "Pinocchio." 
 
Earlier generations of parents complained that cartoon versions of such 
classic tales stripped them of all subtlety. The process has gone a step further in 
a movie like "Open Season," where the plot presents only a starkly polarized 
pair of teams, good guys versus bad guys, and then whips up a frenzy of 
vengeance. 
 
There's an innate human craving to identify an "other" whom you can hate with 
a full, free, undivided hatred. But till recently children's entertainment 
did not feed that urge. In fact older stories, like "Kidnapped" or "The Count of 
Monte Cristo," used examples of unjust treatment to show a hero responding 
with mercy and renouncing revenge. Does it really prepare our children for a 
global culture when today's stories instead celebrate self-righteous glee and 
violent revenge?
 
I talked this over later with Hannah's mom, and she brought up one of her own 
pet peeves: Bratz dolls. These are plastic gals who have huge 
cartoon-goldfish lips. They wear torso-hugging, midriff-baring clothes, enormous platform 
shoes, and a sly expression. They're for girls 4 to 7 years old. When Hannah 
first saw them she said, "Why would anybody want a doll that's ugly?"
 
Megan said, "There's something creepy about the popularity of these dolls. 
Shouldn't little girls want things that are beautiful? Why do they reject beauty 
and wholesomeness at such a young age?" 
 
I inherited a picture book that had belonged to a great-great-great aunt, and 
inside the covers she'd drawn pictures of beautiful women. I guess girls have 
always done that, but in her case it was 1870, and the women are wearing 
ballgowns adorned with tiers of lace, with petticoats and pantaloons underneath. 
In the 1960's, I drew women wearing a sheath dress and a mink stole, with hair 
in a Grace Kelly chignon. Do little girls now draw smirking women with exposed 
navels and heavy eye makeup? Has "edgy" become the new "beautiful"?
 
The usual retort is, "So just don't watch these movies" or "Just don't buy 
those dolls." But you don't have to buy this stuff; it leaks under the door. 
American entertainment culture has reached into every corner of the world, and if 
it's not in your home, it's in the home of the kid who sits next to yours in 
school. If you still don't think snot is particularly funny, and don't think 
it's a good idea to luxuriate in revenge fantasies, you're in the minority. 
This ugly, mean-spirited stuff is mingled with the very air we breathe. 
 
So when I'm leaving the mall with Hannah I'm behind two middle-aged women who 
are laughing and loudly using the F-word. We pass a guy coming in wearing a 
t-shirt with an obscene message. Outside, there are obese teenage girls with 
too much pasty flesh spilling out of too-small clothes, trying to look haughty. 
 
Hannah is a quiet, modest, self-possessed little girl, and unlikely to ever 
find such things appealing. But I can't help feeling sorrow that she's growing 
up in such an ugly age.
 



********
Frederica Mathewes-Green
www.frederica.com
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