disenchantment
Magic Roundabout; disenchantment; childhood
Reading about the Magic Roundabout movie puts me in mind of the only lecture I really enjoyed during my Critical Theory M.A. course.
Speaking on the subject of disenchantment, the lecturer explained what he meant by referring back to the good old days of television, when the evening news bulletin came on straight after the children's telly; in particular, The Magic Roundabout. One minute you're in a magic garden with Florence and Dougal, and the next, Zebedee says, "Time for Bed" and you get Robert Dougall reading the news.
For children, this was the continually repeated moment of disenchatment. For my own kids, the equivalent of this is the nightly end of CBeebies broadcasting at the ripe old hour of 7 p.m., or the moment I swan into the room like I own the place and switch over to ITV3 to watch The Practice, if I'm lucky enough to be home for it.
But, of course, that's just a metaphor. You could equally use the end of the long summer holiday, the first day back at school, whatever strikes your fancy. The real moment of disenchantment is a much bigger thing; it could be when you stop believing in Father Christmas; or when you realise that life is hard, some people are not very pleasant. "They fuck you up, your mum and dad," wrote Philip Larkin, but when do they do it, and how?
These questions haunt me as I watch my two girls growing up, when half the lifetime of one is the whole lifetime of the other. And I wonder when they'll look at me with the sad eyes of disenchantment, with the knowledge they've been lied to for their whole lives. Last night, CJ was getting excited because her "favourite grown up programme", 3rd Rock From The Sun was about to come on (ITV2, just about every day at 7 p.m.). She was jumping up and down. Didi joined in: "We're going to watch 3rd Rock!"
Two minutes later, I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner and I hear Didi's small little voice say, "I don't like it 3rd Rock." In general she doesn't like men being silly, it's a thing. A couple of weeks ago she was dancing at CJ's school disco, and suddenly stopped stock-still, like a statue. Later she explained it was because she didn't like "the man," meaning the DJ, because he was silly.
Maybe their moment of disenchantment will come when school discos stop being called school discos. For me, the beginning of fuckup dates back to my 8th birthday, when the world stopped revolving around me, the youngest of my parents' 6 kids, because that was the day my mum went into hoppital to have the seventh. Not his fault, but I carried a lot of resentment around about that.
You want to hold on to it for kids, the enchantment, you don't want it to stop. This last Christmas, we took them out for the usual trip round the house, chasing the ringing bell sound, while the presents magically appeared back in the salon. But CJ had too much experience, and knew that the place the be was back in the room, because that's where Pere Noel was going to be leaving the presents. So you're physically holding onto her, trying to maintain her illusions.
Reading about the Magic Roundabout movie puts me in mind of the only lecture I really enjoyed during my Critical Theory M.A. course.
Speaking on the subject of disenchantment, the lecturer explained what he meant by referring back to the good old days of television, when the evening news bulletin came on straight after the children's telly; in particular, The Magic Roundabout. One minute you're in a magic garden with Florence and Dougal, and the next, Zebedee says, "Time for Bed" and you get Robert Dougall reading the news.
For children, this was the continually repeated moment of disenchatment. For my own kids, the equivalent of this is the nightly end of CBeebies broadcasting at the ripe old hour of 7 p.m., or the moment I swan into the room like I own the place and switch over to ITV3 to watch The Practice, if I'm lucky enough to be home for it.
But, of course, that's just a metaphor. You could equally use the end of the long summer holiday, the first day back at school, whatever strikes your fancy. The real moment of disenchantment is a much bigger thing; it could be when you stop believing in Father Christmas; or when you realise that life is hard, some people are not very pleasant. "They fuck you up, your mum and dad," wrote Philip Larkin, but when do they do it, and how?
These questions haunt me as I watch my two girls growing up, when half the lifetime of one is the whole lifetime of the other. And I wonder when they'll look at me with the sad eyes of disenchantment, with the knowledge they've been lied to for their whole lives. Last night, CJ was getting excited because her "favourite grown up programme", 3rd Rock From The Sun was about to come on (ITV2, just about every day at 7 p.m.). She was jumping up and down. Didi joined in: "We're going to watch 3rd Rock!"
Two minutes later, I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner and I hear Didi's small little voice say, "I don't like it 3rd Rock." In general she doesn't like men being silly, it's a thing. A couple of weeks ago she was dancing at CJ's school disco, and suddenly stopped stock-still, like a statue. Later she explained it was because she didn't like "the man," meaning the DJ, because he was silly.
Maybe their moment of disenchantment will come when school discos stop being called school discos. For me, the beginning of fuckup dates back to my 8th birthday, when the world stopped revolving around me, the youngest of my parents' 6 kids, because that was the day my mum went into hoppital to have the seventh. Not his fault, but I carried a lot of resentment around about that.
You want to hold on to it for kids, the enchantment, you don't want it to stop. This last Christmas, we took them out for the usual trip round the house, chasing the ringing bell sound, while the presents magically appeared back in the salon. But CJ had too much experience, and knew that the place the be was back in the room, because that's where Pere Noel was going to be leaving the presents. So you're physically holding onto her, trying to maintain her illusions.
posted by Anonymous at
Friday, January 21, 2005
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