Good for Trees, Bad for People?
3/19/06
As the kids tune in to Spongebob for their Sunday morning heroine (interesting that this drug has the same name as a formidable female character who accomplishes great deeds) and tune out of the world, I am wondering where all the Kamichibai have gone. Those Japanese storytellers who traveled from town to town telling stories, using pictures to illustrate their words. They would be as feverishly welcomed by the town's kids as our cartoon mascots are today by children on couches around the world. I should take the time to actually watch these things as I'm sure they fulfill pretty much the same niche as the human parser of tales once did. Narratives with beginnings, middles and ends, character arcs, plots, morals, etc. But what I wonder is how kids receive these stories (especially as they are broken up by crass commercials that now squawk behind my back) when plunked down in front of a screen as opposed to around the town square with an active figure before them. My own kids report home with much more excitement when there's a school assembly featuring a guest artist or dance troupe, than on this weeks episode of Spy Kids from Nickolodean. There must be a more visceral engagement with the live arts than we get when all cushy and cozy; I can think now of a recent Shakespeare production we watched, where I could feel the actor speaking to me personally. I have never gotten that from a screen, no matter what the size or content.
Same question for all the letter writing we used to do. That craft has gone the way of the rotary phone, replaced my email, IM-ing, cell phones. The trees are happier, spared more pillage perhaps in the need for paper, but probably not as we use up more with computers, drafting endless versions of our latest opus, whether the board report of erotic novel. The medium does change the message. WHen you have to sit and think through a communication to Aunt Jane and write it by hand, it must be different than the rapid fire missive sent off as an after-thought while drinking your coffee and balancing your checkbook. You're waiting for your yoga class and think it would be good to talk to a friend, give them a call and get an earful of complaints about the plumber not showing up on time, the BMW's Bose speakers breaking and the precious little pooper taking his first steps...towards teh Nanny! All you wanted was to say hi, connect and you become the repository for someone's bad mood. Had you waited for the brunch you had scheduled you might have had a real give and take, but now you enter your yoga class feeling taken advantage of, muscles tight and Chi on edge. Or you get into an I-M argument with your ex- just because, well, you can. Ten years ago, it would have had to wait until teh next custody hearing. I am reminded of the demographic truth that one of the best ways to lower birth rates is to introduce electricty to a culture. The first thing a town does with it is plug in a television where perhaps that same Kamichibai once sat.
So the trees are sitting back, taking a deep breath as we get battened around by our radio waves, ethernet, and telecom satelites. I did my part this morning, eschewing the 2 huge Sunday papers for a little screen time. But they sit there tempting me into their pages, with news of a world much larger than the printed words or the 256 color inked photographs I will see with my eyes. That newsprint, those paper-bound books, those hand-written letters, those live "illustrated" stories are more than just that. They are the keys to the doors of our imaginations. If we lose those, we will have lost a far greater resource than all the forests with which Mother Earth has blessed us.
As the kids tune in to Spongebob for their Sunday morning heroine (interesting that this drug has the same name as a formidable female character who accomplishes great deeds) and tune out of the world, I am wondering where all the Kamichibai have gone. Those Japanese storytellers who traveled from town to town telling stories, using pictures to illustrate their words. They would be as feverishly welcomed by the town's kids as our cartoon mascots are today by children on couches around the world. I should take the time to actually watch these things as I'm sure they fulfill pretty much the same niche as the human parser of tales once did. Narratives with beginnings, middles and ends, character arcs, plots, morals, etc. But what I wonder is how kids receive these stories (especially as they are broken up by crass commercials that now squawk behind my back) when plunked down in front of a screen as opposed to around the town square with an active figure before them. My own kids report home with much more excitement when there's a school assembly featuring a guest artist or dance troupe, than on this weeks episode of Spy Kids from Nickolodean. There must be a more visceral engagement with the live arts than we get when all cushy and cozy; I can think now of a recent Shakespeare production we watched, where I could feel the actor speaking to me personally. I have never gotten that from a screen, no matter what the size or content.
Same question for all the letter writing we used to do. That craft has gone the way of the rotary phone, replaced my email, IM-ing, cell phones. The trees are happier, spared more pillage perhaps in the need for paper, but probably not as we use up more with computers, drafting endless versions of our latest opus, whether the board report of erotic novel. The medium does change the message. WHen you have to sit and think through a communication to Aunt Jane and write it by hand, it must be different than the rapid fire missive sent off as an after-thought while drinking your coffee and balancing your checkbook. You're waiting for your yoga class and think it would be good to talk to a friend, give them a call and get an earful of complaints about the plumber not showing up on time, the BMW's Bose speakers breaking and the precious little pooper taking his first steps...towards teh Nanny! All you wanted was to say hi, connect and you become the repository for someone's bad mood. Had you waited for the brunch you had scheduled you might have had a real give and take, but now you enter your yoga class feeling taken advantage of, muscles tight and Chi on edge. Or you get into an I-M argument with your ex- just because, well, you can. Ten years ago, it would have had to wait until teh next custody hearing. I am reminded of the demographic truth that one of the best ways to lower birth rates is to introduce electricty to a culture. The first thing a town does with it is plug in a television where perhaps that same Kamichibai once sat.
So the trees are sitting back, taking a deep breath as we get battened around by our radio waves, ethernet, and telecom satelites. I did my part this morning, eschewing the 2 huge Sunday papers for a little screen time. But they sit there tempting me into their pages, with news of a world much larger than the printed words or the 256 color inked photographs I will see with my eyes. That newsprint, those paper-bound books, those hand-written letters, those live "illustrated" stories are more than just that. They are the keys to the doors of our imaginations. If we lose those, we will have lost a far greater resource than all the forests with which Mother Earth has blessed us.
posted by Barbery at 9:42 AM
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