Childrens' stories and even lullabies have always sounded creepy. You know "rock-a-bye baby" for example. And I get asked "Daddy, why did they put the crib in the tree and let the baby fall and get hurt!???". I didn't think much about it first, then once I did, it does sound a bit off.
Then my kid is freaked out about Santa. "What? This person in funny clothes will break into our house, at night, while I am asleep, and I am supposed to be happy about it". Yeah that is pretty creepy too.
Then Elf On The Shelf. Wife said all the friends are doing this thing with their kids. We decided not to, it is too strange. Now reading this it makes it even worse. You know back in the day it used to be "God is watching you. Don't do bad things. Don't think bad thoughts. Etc.". That is very effective brainwashing. Once done on a child they will cary guilt and this nagging feeling of being watched and critisized with them for life (Hey isn't that Super Ego? I saw someone drop Slavoj Zizek's name, he would know). Today not many people are religious but I think they are earning for a substitute. Perhaps unconsciously if you will. This is that substitute -- "Elf will see you mix salt in the sugar bowl and will punish you".
I've been watching the original Thomas the tank engine with my son and was a bit surprised to notice the theme around obeying the Fat Controller's authority.
He is a mostly benevolent authority figure who helps the engines out of their scrapes, but engines that defy him or disturb the peace are punished. In an early episode he left an engine bricked up in a tunnel. Quite a few engines have also been sent away as well.
It is slightly funny to see childhood again through adult eyes but I'm not sure what I'll do when my son is old enough to understand these things. Im sure the idea of being left alone in a tunnel would have terrified me as a child. :)
My daughter loves Caillou, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caillou, which is a fairly educational show focused on social relationships and the challenges that young kids run into. Overall it is actually pretty good and doesn't have strange authority figures. But Caillou is a whiner who has tantrums, and my daughter now whines and has tantrums almost exactly like Caillou. I'm pretty sure she learned it from the show.
So all these shows have consequences, even the good ones. I'm not sure what is worse, whining and tantrums or deference to authority figures?
Without choosing sides, I think it's pretty clear that Caillou's creators are presenting an approach to parenting that involves encouraging kids to emote. Which is often not a lot of fun to be around, of course, but the opposite approach could amount to telling kids to shut up because you don't want to know how they feel. My suspicion is that kids will self-limit eventually, as part of developmental growth, and that worrying too much about either extreme is probably pointless. My gripe is that Caillou's pacing is so vague and dreamy that essentially almost nothing happens in an entire episode.
Caillou is pretty much the worst children's show I have ever seen, the hate is not undeserved. He constantly whines and has tantrums and his parents always give in, just teaches children to be insufferable to get your way.
Interesting, we have also noticed that our daughter is now saying the resigned "Well Ok" with a sigh (or whatever the English translation is) as the eponymous character. I had not noticed the link to the tantrums though...
We forbid our children from watching Caillou. We explain to them that the way he behaves is not acceptable or allowed in our home. We don't want them to think Caillou's behavior is okay. They self-police now.
Art is derived from culture. Subconscious, no, that's old hat. Just think of art as 'reality' with substitutions consisting of a selected subset of permutations of commonly used contemporarily composed and defined symbols. It's all swappy metaphor. We exist in realty first. Art may enforce culture, but reality comes first. Otherwise, insanity, literally.
I think you're wrong about that. I also think you're wrong to conflate your apparent phobias about religion with Elf on the Shelf and government control.
Well it depends where. In US you are probably right. But! The pun works there as well. The Elf is just a pointer (or a type) to God. You know first teach them about the Elf then once that is internalized teach them about God.
The ultimate effect is to induce self-sensorship. I think that is critical. This is not unlike the Panapticon effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon ) described by Bentham and then expounded and implemented, one can say, by a surveilance society. Before that religion and God served as that mechanism -- induce self-sensorship and behavior control by positing an omniscient and ever vigilant God. Once you've convinced the person they are being watched. You don't have to actaully watch them.
If your kid is old enough to understand the concept of breaking and entering yet still believes in Santa, then you need to have a talk to with your kid. :)
They didn't verbalize clearly like that, but after talking about it and telling them Santa will come down into the house, I got back a "I don't like Santa. I don't want him to come".
Ever since it came out, I have told my children that he is cute, but he's a spy. He is not allowed in our house. I tell them that I would never tell Santa about their mistakes so they can be assured of getting presents under the tree. What kind of pressure is that for a young child?! One of the rules is that you aren't supposed to touch the doll. I tell my children that if they see that subversive bastard (I don't use those words to them), they should grab him with both hands and throw him out of our house. My daughter was worried he would run back to Santa and tell what she had done, so she decided that if she found him she would throw him in the fireplace. I settled on putting him in a box until after Christmas. I can't condone violence, even to a doll. We named him Google.
We have C. Popinkins appear on the holidays. He has no effect on the children's behavior. It is more like where is Waldo? They like the story too.
The experience is a good yearly reminder to me just how differently my children perceive and understand the world than I do. At Christmas time, we and many other families make a special effort to bend the world a bit towards their way of thinking.
Even before the doll there was the whole "Santa knows who was naughty" routine, which I consider "black parenting" (don't know the proper English word).
A few weeks ago HN had a story about a plush toy which "checked in" with the vendor using RFID beacons. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8578802
I wrote "Coming soon, the Internet-enabled Elf on the Shelf. In stores for Xmas! .. It sees you when you're sleeping. It knows when you're awake. It knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. You better watch out. Brought to you by Google and the U.S Department of Homeland Security."
Good grief, what a hideous concept. It would make an interesting social science study to see whether ownership of/interest in purchasing this toy correlates with authoritarian attitudes.
If you need a mental purge after encountering this I recommend Slavoj Zizek's Pervert's guide to Ideology. The 'Elf on the Shelf' embodies the Lacanian psychoanalytic concept of 'the big other'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pervert's_Guide_to_Ideology
Not authoritarian attitudes per se, but propensity to internalize the sense that one ought to behave as if one is being watched because A.) it's likely that it may very well be true and B.) the punishment / reward structure in place is both justified and aligned with overseen personal choices.
It would be interesting to see if this toy specifically correlates with these feelings (would be a hard multi-decade study to design...) but I do think there is the point to be made at large that we exist in a surveillance state, and in fact that since at least the 1700s these forces have been very powerful in shaping Western culture. (For that I would suggest reading Foucault, Gilliom, J.B. Rule and Dandeker.)
but we argue that if a kid is okay with this bureaucratic elf spying on them in their home, it normalizes the idea of surveillance
Bazollocks. Before the Elf turned up, my children had already become used to two far worse "spies" that can follow them around the house and issue summary justice: their parents! The idea that surveillance is universally nefarious and undesirable, even when limited in nature or scope, seems a tired and stereotypically American trope to me.
There's a pretty massive difference between being watched and/or sanctioned by some strange, foreign, powerful figure and being "surveilled" and disciplined by loving, interactive parents with whom you are emotionally bonded and who also otherwise care for you, provide for your every need, painstakingly explain wrong and right, etc.
"The idea that surveillance is universally nefarious and undesirable, even when limited in nature or scope, seems a tired and stereotypically American trope to me."
Clearly there are some obvious benefits to some surveillance, but whether or not they outweigh the negative aspects is an issue that's clouded by the fact surveillance isn't being done legally, reasonably, or in a limited scope a lot of the time. The problem arises when everyone feels they're under surveillance but no one seems to see the benefit. I think people would be much more willing to accept (limited) surveillance if we weren't continually told that crime rates are worsening, we're constantly under threat from terrorism, and everyone is a suspect. Couple that with the fact that most of the media coverage of surveillance is when it's being misused and you have a recipe for people not wanting to be watched at all.
This was perpetuated by our kids' school and our kids actually explained the rules to us. It made me extremely uncomfortable. It has a certain "presence" about it that is tied to the story of its supposed purpose. I find that it absolutely brings this strange feeling of opening your home to an outside influence. That description is somewhat vague, but the feeling is absolutely real and visceral.
So, there is the authoritarian component. Beyond that, I didn't like the idea of this little thing intruding on our responsibility as parents and, to some extent, usurping our authority by presuming to share it. It is odd to defer to this silly little Elf. We don't need an Elf to help us raise our kids, thank you very much. I'm also not a big Santa fan for this and other reasons.
So, in some ways, this thing is conditioning parents as well. We have been "put upon" by our school to continue this, which lends a subtle pressure to conform to societal norms, no matter how new or questionable. And, in this case, that norm is to defer to some outside authority, with whom we are completely unfamiliar.
All of this is made even worse by the fact that it is the product of one person's imagination, and was meant for commercial gain.
>subvert this by allying with the children against the elf
Not a half-bad idea. I guess the natural progression would lead to an inevitable coup against Santa as well.
>There's always the legend of Krampus to be truly terrifying.
Somehow hadn't heard that legend, but just looked it up. That's just plain wrong/traumatic. Why even bother with the carrot of Santa if you're going to go that far with the stick on the other side?
well, any religion (and Santa Claus is just a rare nice one among religions' artifacts) is about being watched and recorded (btw, now that we can do it ourselves may be can do away with religions :). Picking up on the Elf is kind of strange. He is at least not going to condemn you to an eternity in a boiling cauldron what "merciful Gods" typically would do out of "pure love for you soul". Or may be this is exactly why they chose to pick on him :)
(As satirized on an episode of The Office, and as Christoph Waltz recently discussed on Jimmy Kimmel.)
"Krampus is represented as a beast-like creature, generally demonic in appearance. The creature has roots in Germanic folklore. Traditionally young men dress up as the Krampus in Austria, Romania, southern Bavaria, South Tyrol, northern Friuli, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia during the first week of December, particularly on the evening of 5 December (the eve of Saint Nicholas Day on many church calendars), and roam the streets frightening children with rusty chains and bells."
I'm sure that makes for a very merry Christmas! :)
A little off topic, but in terms of kids' stories and dubious messages my favourite example is Rumpelstiltskin.
Firstly it shows an abusive dictator taking what he wants with force and threats (the King says he'll marry the miller's daughter if she creates enough gold for him, but kill her if she doesn't). This is not portrayed as a bad thing, and no justice is ever done for it.
Secondly it suggests that a contract freely entered into can be reneged upon later if you simply change your mind (the miller's daughter, now the queen, refuses to hand over the baby as she'd previously agreed to do, in order to save her life from the baby's father).
I suppose it could be argued that the contract was not entered freely by the miller's daughter, since she was under mortal threat. However, it was not the other party doing the threatening, but a third party (the king). Perhaps a lawyer could comment on this.
Or maybe it's just a nice story and I'm reading too much into it ;-)
No, those stories are not nice, most of them are pretty dark.
We have a very old edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales and the stories are horrible. I used to read them at my grandparents house when I was around 10 or 12 and some really gave me the creeps (like that you have to set the changeling on a pot in a hot stove to kill it).
I've been reading Grimm's fairy tales, and a few of them (heck, most of them) leave me wondering why the heck people would tell that story. For instance, there's one called "The Turnip".
There are two brothers, both soldiers. One is rich, one is poor. The poor one gives up soldiering and becomes a gardner. He grows a huge turnip, and gives it to the King as a gift. The King is impressed, and declares that the gardner shall be poor no more, and gives him gifts, proclaiming that he shall have even more than his brother.
The brother then gives the King gifts, expecting to get rewarded by the King and return to being wealthier than his brother. The King is impressed, and gives the brother the most impressive thing the King has--the giant turnip. That pisses the soldier brother off, and he hires murderers to kill the gardner brother.
The murderers lure gardner brother out to the woods, and prepare to hang him, but they hear a traveller approaching and panic, and only manage to get the gardner stuffed in a sack that they hang from a tree and then they run off.
By the time the traveller arrives on the scene, the gardner brother has managed to make a hole in the sack and get his head out. He hails the traveller, and finds out that the traveller is a student in search of knowledge. The student asks what the gardner is doing in the sack. The gardner tells him it is the Sack of Wisdom, and by hanging in it from a tree, one acquires the secrets of the universe.
The student begs to be allowed into the sack, and the gardner agrees to change places. The student rescues him, gets into the sack, and the gardner hoists it up the tree. The gardner then steals the student's horse and goes home. (Some versions have the gardner send someone an hour or two later to go cut the student down, some just end with gardner riding off on the horse).
WTF?
What is the point of this story? I don't see a lesson...no bad guys get their comeuppance. The guy that I thought was going to be the good guy (the gardner) ends up stealing from the naive student when it suits him. Is the lesson that it is really every man for himself and so when someone does something bad to you, go ahead and find someone else you can screw over to fix your situation?
I've always taken them as child-friendly introductions to the idea that life is sometimes hard, and that bad things can happen to good people. I suspect, though I don't know, that children of Grimm's era were obliged to play a part in society far earlier than they are today, making such lessons quite valuable. (The idea of preserving innocence is relatively new).
>I don't see a lesson...no bad guys get their comeuppance.
Perhaps the lesson is that bad guys don't always get their comeuppance; most people can't simply be classified into 'bad' and 'good'; people might screw you over even if you trust them.
Pretty important lessons for children (and everyone). Even if you tell children only the fairy tales with lovely happy-endings, they will experience the truth of the schoolyard.
Under what circumstances do you prefer children to have to deal with these lessons? I suggest that Grimm is popular for good reason.
This interpretation of the panopticon and it's effect on behavior is based on Foucault's Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. The paperback is reasonably priced. The cost, however, is a trip down the rabbit hole of postmodernism.
"What makes the gaze of authority special is that the watched voluntarily simplify and order their own behavior to prepare to act on the desires of the watcher.
This is the reason authority induces power. Just by looking, it turns what it sees into a ready and waiting instrument capable of enacting its intentions within a space of desires. Authoritarian seeing is like a magnetic field acting on a domain of free agency."
...
"Why? Because authority exercised through direct coercive action is inefficient to the point of being useless beyond a certain scale. But authority expressed and exercised through the authoritarian eye is nearly infinitely scalable. The source of this leverage is of course the fact that humans (and agents in general), unlike non-sentient matter, can recognize and respond to being seen."
...
"The condition of a social system that has submitted to authority is a sort of self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating collective learned helplessness."
Rather, the hands-off “play” demanded by the elf is limited to finding (but not touching!) The Elf on the Shelf
I see a parallel with this and the concept of "black-box abstraction": If this Elf is an abstraction of surveillance, it's basically saying to the child that they should unquestioningly accept however it works, and not attempt to discover what it really is. That's what I think is the really disturbing part - children are being taught to not think deeply about and "dig into" how the world around them works, but to internalise the belief that everything "just works" like magic. I say this as someone who was known for (sometimes aggressively) disassembling all my toys when I was young. I'd probably give the Elf the same treatment if it existed back then. :-)
FWIW, Scandinavia has long had a tradition of "tomte" (elves, but not quite) watching over children before Christmas, so they can report back to Santa who's naughty and who's nice. As a parent, I find this mildly useful in keeping my kids on their best behaviour, and not particularly Orwellian.
The Tomte (Nisse in Norwegian and Danish) is close to what's called a gnome in English, and usually lives somewhere on the farm. As long as it is respected, and offered food for Yule eve/Christmas eve, it will help take care of the farm. If it is not respected, it will play lots of little or big pranks, like tipping over a bucket with milk, or opening the barn door to let the animals run off.
It does NOT spy on children, and frankly, they live in a completely different universe than the modern Santa.
My mother used to read us the stories of Tomte Tummetott when we were very little, thank you for reminding me of that. But was not the tomte's job to watch over the farm and farm animals and silently keep things in order? I do not recall them having much to do with Santa Claus.
> As a parent, I find this mildly useful in keeping my kids on their best behaviour
Indeed, I'm sure it's a useful substitute to talking to your kids like human beings deserving of respect and giving them real world reasons why they should not misbehave.
You're emotionally manipulating another human being through lies. But it's OK because they're underage and you're their guardian. Right.
Then my kid is freaked out about Santa. "What? This person in funny clothes will break into our house, at night, while I am asleep, and I am supposed to be happy about it". Yeah that is pretty creepy too.
Then Elf On The Shelf. Wife said all the friends are doing this thing with their kids. We decided not to, it is too strange. Now reading this it makes it even worse. You know back in the day it used to be "God is watching you. Don't do bad things. Don't think bad thoughts. Etc.". That is very effective brainwashing. Once done on a child they will cary guilt and this nagging feeling of being watched and critisized with them for life (Hey isn't that Super Ego? I saw someone drop Slavoj Zizek's name, he would know). Today not many people are religious but I think they are earning for a substitute. Perhaps unconsciously if you will. This is that substitute -- "Elf will see you mix salt in the sugar bowl and will punish you".