The Modern Age and Simple Tales of Morality
This year I turned 30 years of age. I’ll admit that I never felt like I had a driving passion that made me dedicate myself to a particular course in life. I am white and a male. Upon his death, my grandfather left his grand children a trust fund that allowed them all to attend college without having to deal with student loans. I attended my classes and participated in my college education. While I am a procrastinator, I was not one of those people who took their college education for granted and never attended classes. I showed up for classes even if I could have put in more work than I did. I am the definition of white privilege. I got a job at a bank after college and live comfortably. I understand that many people did not get the opportunity that I did.
My generation (that of the millennial) is defined by the older generations as one of privilege. A lazy generation that had everything handed to them. I will put aside the argument about the prior generations being the ones who ruined Social Security and brought about the current situation we are in with a resurgence of hatred and fascism and the election of Trump. What I will say is that our generation grew up with movies and media that had simple moral messages. The 80’s and 90’s were all about teaching kids in a basic way what was right and wrong. We all had that show or movie as a kid that we watched over and over. We would demand that our parents put on that movie again regardless of their consternation that we would want to watch the same thing over and over. For me, that movie was Ernest Goes to Camp starring Jim Varney in the role he would be most known for. You might think that is silly and that the movie itself is not good. I can understand that point of view. We are all biased when it comes to the media we grew up on and I love this movie. I just watched it recently and still love it.
I know that there are problematic parts in my childhood favorite movie. The appropriation of Native American culture is on full display in this film. White campers take part in old Native American ceremonies in Kamp Kikakee. It is shown that the older man who “owns” the land and his grand daughter are the last of the tribe Kikakee. Part of accepting our heritage as Americans is that we committed genocide against the Native American peoples of this land in order to conquer it. In Ernest Goes to Camp, Ernest loves the camp he works at and wants nothing more than to be a camp counselor who shapes the mind of young men coming to the camp. He is a simpleton but one who has definite beliefs in what is right and wrong. So much of the media from this time revolves around this black and white concept of goodness. The bad guys vs the good guys. In many cases in the 80’s that involved the red scare and painting Communists as a villainous force. In the case of this movie, it was a summer camp versus a mining company set on defrauding the camp of it’s land. It was a corporation versus a camp that sought to teach kids that the land deserved respect and that more generations should be taught these Native American beliefs (however distorted through white culture in the 80’s) that the land belongs to no one.
Many of my generation live in terror of what is happening today. Donald Trump is trying to create safe spaces for Nazis and the KKK. The USA (which has always been guilty of imperialism) used to at least use the rhetoric that we were a free society trying to bring democratic values to other countries. We can no longer pretend like this is the case. We see on Twitter and other places that people keep using what-aboutism type arguments when it comes to the morality of our President’s actions. They try to claim the Democrats are just as bad if not worse. They repeat lines of logic espoused by networks like Fox News and try to tell us we’re better off with Trump who is denying Transgender members of the Army basic healthcare and the same rights of existence as other volunteers and who is actively supporting Nazi groups and racists like former sheriff Joe Arpaio. Fascist regimes have not survived long in the past and I think we will eventually overcome this crisis but that does not mean that we should devoid ourselves of helping new generations continue this fight.
You might be sitting there thinking, “What does this have to do with Ernest Goes to Camp?!”. What I am here to argue is that these childhood movies that we grew up with that have simple moral messages are important. To some of us, it’s obvious that you should protect marginalized groups and try to be their ally in anyway you can. It’s a simple moral fact that these folks who are outsiders should be listened to and given the benefit of the doubt. The only other option is to give corporations and politicians who actively benefit from the suppression of these groups the same benefit of the doubt. I just don’t see how you can do that.
I was raised in a Baptist home. We went to church every week and were taught a strict doctrine of what was right. When I went though, I saw people who claimed to be men of God call families “those negroes” and generally not treat people with the respect I knew they were due the same as all other humans. I gave up on organized religion while at the same time taking Jesus’s message of loving your neighbor as yourself to heart. Part of what brought me to this conclusion were these simple children shows that clearly showed that fighting for what is right matters.
Ernest Goes to Camp is a slap stick 80’s comedy with a message about resistance against unchecked greed. Many Pixar movies and other children’s movies probably have similar simple moral messages. It is my belief that while there is no simple solution to how government should be ran, treating your fellow man with love and respect should be an easy thing to understand. We are all citizens of this country and entitled to our opinion but that does not mean we should be quiet in the face of injustice and hate. Calling out our fellow citizens or refusing them a platform when they espouse hatred of other people in our country is important because true freedom cannot exist when one group seeks to deny others that same freedom. This is the simple message that our childhood media tried to convey (with differing success).
The point of this post is to implore you new parents and teachers or anyone who has influence on the next generations out there to find good media to show your kids. Even so called “dumb” media is okay so long as it has a distinct moral message (that different kinds of families are okay or that you should protect the marginalized). Our children don’t need complex takes that show the gross underbelly of our political system. Some parents may think that kids need to learn for themselves what their beliefs are but you shape your children so much more than you realize. Respect for the law is important but what is much more important is respect for human life. In this time of doubt and the resurgence of hatred, teach your children what is right above all other things including the law. There is no gray area when it comes to loving your fellow man and stopping those who want people to not be considered human. That is why you should not look down upon this simple media for children that teaches them lessons without considering the harsh realities of life. They can learn those harsh realities later. What is most important is that they know what love looks like and that other people are not so different from them. Movies like Ernest Goes to Camp taught me that and so does other media that comes out today.
It is your responsibility as the older, jaded generation to introduce idealism to your children. These days, we might only see darkness and the resurgence of evil but we must impart in the next generation a will to fight these people who would seek to bring back an age of hatred. Look past your own lifetime and depression. Your kids can learn the harshness of life later on, right now they need to be inspired. They need to know deep down how important love and compassion really is. The next generation is always more important than our own. I’d love if the fight against tyranny and hate could end with us. I’d love to think that we could throw off the yoke of hate that the GOP and Fox News’s of the world have instilled in many people. The fact is that this fight is one that has gone on for centuries and will keep going on for much longer after we are dead. Think of your children and the next generation of people who will fight this fight. What they need at a young age is not hard truths that will make them as jaded as you are. What they need is idealism and a tough foundation of morality to build on. Later on they can learn about the evils of Capitalism and how it hurts people or how systematic racism is prevalent in every part of our society. What they need now is simple moral lessons like we learned from our shows in the 80’s and 90’s and kids movies of today. This will become the bedrock of their beliefs. You must accept that you might not be around to win this fight. Don’t be angry at the next generation, be hopeful. We so want to be the ones that win back the hearts of the country. The ones that see the corrupt cast down and the oppressed win their rights. It may come to pass though, that future generations will have to be the ones to win this fight for us. To that effect, treat raising your kids as just as an important a front as protesting the current presidency and the resurgence of hate groups. Your child could be the next civil rights leader to make true change in this country and that all starts with a simple moral imperative.
I used to think I was a conservative Republican based solely on what the people around me believed. Then I thought I was Libertarian. Finally I realized that all of that went against what actual messages I absorbed from my childhood media. I had to accept that the people I knew and loved did not actually line up with what was right. I have the strength of this belief (oddly enough) from movies and media like Ernest Goes to Camp and other shows of the time that told me simple moral messages about respect and love. Children should be inspired by messages of goodness. They should have this simplistic basis of what is right and wrong before we dump on them the nuance of the evils that Capitalism can cause or show them how some people are more privileged than others. All these things are indeed problems but when these kids confront them, they will know they are wrong because they have that baseline within them of basic human respect and love.
In conclusion, don’t think that you are doing your kids wrong by showing them this simple media with simple truths in it. It may ignore the nuance, it may ignore the current state of the world but it gives them a foundation of love to grow on. Idealism can be dangerous in adults who want to think that everything will be okay and that goodness will win just because it is right. The thing is though, these adults can be course corrected. They can understand systematic problems that won’t go away easily. What our children need to know is though is that hate is bad and love is good. They must have a foundation before they can build a more nuanced truth. It’s simple messages like Jim Varney’s goofy slapstick Ernest going against a mining corporation for the sake of some kids who were forgotten by society that is needed. Don’t push your kids to grow up too fast. This is a time they will remember forever. We all remember what inspired us as kids. The darkness can come later. Right now, they need to know that they will be fighting for.
