by Kat Atherton, JOU 1005 student
A story about how music helped me cross political boundaries and get to know my neighbour
It was a warm autumn morning when I first really met my neighbour David. I had seen him around before and we always exchanged blithe niceties, but I knew he was not exactly in the same political aisle as I was and because of that I had never really found an interest in getting to know him.
That afternoon, I had gone outside to have a cigarette and enjoy the sunshine; he was rummaging in his garden, blaring Marble House by The Knife. I had heard his music wafting on the summer breeze before, generally something like Sinatra or Enya, but The Knife? Experimental Synth-Pop seemed a strange pick for a man in his seventies. I was struck by curiosity about this man and his evidently eclectic tastes.
I edged towards the low sitting chain linked fence, cigarette in hand, to investigate what I could only imagine must be an auditory hallucination, only to be met by Davids usual, “Oh hi Katherine!”
David is an unusual man. The eldest child of Italian immigrants, he was raised deep in the bustling heart of Chicago in the 1950s. When he was 27 years old, he moved to Boston to become a teacher, worked on a Navajo Reservation School in New Mexico, and then came to Colorado. His childhood imbued in him a deep passion for stories in all aspects, whether that be via television, movies, podcasts, or music.
Radio ruled the world when David was born in 1947. He recalled sitting around in the living room of their Chicago apartment as a child, listening to Miss Brooks and Jack Benny, the shows his father liked. They didn’t listen to a lot of music in the house while he was growing up, but they listened to all the radio plays!
Later, his family would sit and watch those same plays performed on the television.
He remarked, “In about 1954, and I don’t know why this is because we were not a wealthy family, but we were one of the first families in our neighborhood that had a television. People would actually come over on TV night, twice a week, our neighbors would come and watch television. There might be 12 or 15 of us, and most of them were adults, but some of them had children and they’d come over. We would watch these one-act plays and some of them had real big stars. Like Paul Newman made a lot of TV shows in the beginning of his career and Robert Duvall, I mean just blockbuster people.”
He watched his first movie with his father and his brother when he was only six years old at a theater in Chicago called The Paradise. The movie, titled “Them”, was a horror film; “It’s a horror movie about giant spiders and it was really, really scary. You felt the tension as soon as you sat down. You didn’t even see the monsters, really see them, until the very end when there were suddenly hordes of them just coming at the town!”
There were no movie ratings at the time, but his parents never seemed too concerned. 1934 through 1986 was marked by the Hays Code, a set of self-imposed industry guidelines for the censorship of media. This code was set in place by Will H Hays, the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, with the expressed desire to “ensure that no picture should ever lower the morals of those who see it” (Mondello, 2008). This self-policing encouraged studios to err on the side of wholesome, and the McCarthy Hearings of 1954 certainly did nothing to dissuade their caution.
So, once a month his mother would have the girls over for cards, and his father would take him and his siblings down to the local cinema to see whatever was playing at the time without much worry about their young children. He watched films such as the 10 Commandments, and Ben Hur. The movies were so long, he recalls, that they would serve full meals at the theaters and have intermissions. It was such a family tradition that even after they got a television in their home they would still go, once a month, to the theater.
He still loves watching movies and TV today but worries about what children today are being subjected to.
“Everything was really so clean back then when I was a child.” He admits. “These writers didn’t want us to use that low stuff. To use a bunch of expletives or four-letter words. So TV was clean. I’ve probably seen 100 comedians in my life, OK, and the funniest ones are the ones that don’t use four letter words. They’re the funniest! And that used to be a benchmark. If I could make you laugh without being vulgar or without being blue, as we call it, then I’m a better comedian than somebody that needs that. Now they can just say whatever, especially if you have Netflix or Amazon.”
He expressed a strong concern for the crude nature of media today, and how that has affected children, “I don’t want my 6-year-old nephew to see stuff like that, and I don’t want my neighbor’s kid to see it and feel pressured to look like these people [on TV]. Because there’s not much of a filter anymore. I know we can’t go back to the days of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, but some of the stuff kids watch today really worries me.”
“At puberty children begin to crave social rewards, such as visibility, attention and positive feedback from peers. In contrast, [brain] regions involved in our ability to inhibit our behavior, and resist temptations (i.e., the prefrontal cortex) do not fully develop until early adulthood” says APA Chief Science Officer Mitch Prinstein, PhD in his February 14th, 2023, written testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee.
Though I am not sure returning to the days of I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver would be wise, today’s depictions of childhood certainly have taken a turn for the risqué. During adolescence, children develop their own identities and ideologies. Self-esteem is an important part of this development during this period, and an adolescent’s self-esteem is likely to be affected by the depictions of childhood and development they see in media, something David and I share concerns about.
Media is inherently neither good nor bad. Just as a hammer can be used to fix a desk or bludgeon someone’s brains in, a tool’s worth is dependent on its use. Media can help bring people together, like friends and family packing themselves into a small Chicago apartment to watch the only television in the neighbourhood, or a girl reaching out to someone she hardly knew because of their esoteric taste in music. It can also be used to tear people apart, through political radicalism or self-hate.
“We’re very polarized these days. TV has made it seem as though, if you don’t agree with me, you’re my enemy. It’s just horrible. That’s horrible.” David said. And you know what, he’s right. That is horrible.
Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash
References:
[Last name redacted upon request], David. Personal interview. 19 March 2023.
Mondello, Bob. “Remembering Hollywood’s Hays Code, 40 Years On.” NPR.org. August 8, 2008. https://www.npr.org/2008/08/08/93301189/remembering-hollywoods-hays-code-40-years-on.
Prinstein, Mitch. “Written Testimony of Mitch Prinstein, PhD, ABPP Chief Science Officer American Psychological Association Protecting Our Children Online Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary.” American Psychological Association. 14 February 2023. https://www.apaservices.org/advocacy/news/testimony-prinstein-protecting-children-online.pdf?_ga=2.64548143.1845280305.1681072549-738325250.1681072548
