Sunday, August 2, 2009

Guys and Dolls, Scout Meetings and Little League


Ed Yourdon via Flickr

As a parent your job is to sit through a ton of boring shit. Moms and dads waste hours and hours watching school plays, dance recitals, softball games, and school concerts. Moms and dads fund raise for new uniforms and preside over scout meetings. It's not enough that you have to watch your own boring child perform, you have to watch a lot of other people's kids do their thing too. I have no interest in going camping, I really don't want to take kids camping. I have never enjoyed a production of Guys and Dolls or Our House or Death of a Salesman. I totally hate team sports. I imagine that as a parent it would be my job to feign interest in all these things and that's not for me.

I was reminded of this issue with child rearing the other night. My husband and I went to see Funny People. Adam Sandler portrays a grouchy, lonely, wealthy comedian who becomes severely ill. The illness is supposed to shake things up for Sandler's character and bring him to the realization that his life is shallow and meaningless. This message is delivered in heavy-handed, It's-a-Wonderful-Life style via an ex-girlfriend who's the living embodiment of fulfillment because... wait for it... she has CHILDREN.

In case you didn't get the message that Sandler's character is a miserable, loathsome, childless asshole, the point is driven home during a pivotal moment in his attempts to win back his girl. She shows him footage of her child singing Memory in a school play and the child's supposedly earth-shattering performance brings mommy to tears. Sandler's character, because he's an asshole of course, is unimpressed by the performance and admits that he's seen Cats on Broadway and that was better. What a douche bag, right? This is why he's dying alone, folks.

Thanks, Hollywood, for once again making another movie glamourizing parenting and casting people without children as great big monsters who die alone. This is the kind of bullshit that bullies the ambivalent into parenthood and leaves them wondering why they don't derive the same epic joy and satisfaction from parenthood that movie characters obviously enjoy.

Kids' plays and team sports are boring to a lot of adults. Finding them so does not mean you're a ghoul, it means you're probably a normal adult. It's frustrating to see this sort of pro-parenthood propaganda telling adults there's something wrong with them if they don't find these things enjoyable. Just for once I'd like to see a movie where an adult without kids isn't demonized or doesn't eventually come to the realization that despite their seemingly satisfying life, children are obviously what's really missing.

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