Not my Hero...

Last night was our last childbirth class, and the last hour was supposed to be devoted to teaching relaxation techniques. I'm actually a fan of relaxation, but last night wasn't exactly what I would call relaxing. Here's why...

Having very pregnant women lay on a concrete floor (okay, I realize this can't exactly be helped) is never really the pinnacle of relaxation. To make it a little more awkward, the substance abuse meeting across the hall decided that watching childbirth class through the door was more entertaining than anything else they could do on their break. I'll admit that by this point I was seriously questioning my ability to pretend that I was completely relaxed and lying on a beach somewhere.

The true deal breaker, however, was not the floor or the rehab audience, but when the instructor talked about music and then turned on Mariah Carey's Hero, I was done. It didn't help that we'd just finished a cheesy 80s Lamaze video that featured the dad changing into a muscle shirt for the delivery, but I'm pretty sure if their had been a exam, Greg and I would have failed. Here's to hoping that Michael J. Fox (circa 1980s with lots of hair gel and a muscle shirt), Mariah Carey, and local substance abuse support groups stay far far away from my hospital room.

FAQ

Q: Do I need a works cited for my (insert assignment here)?
A: Yes, if you are asking this question, then the answer is probably yes. Clearly you have some item that you think might go on such a document, so you should probably have a works cited page. If you don't know what you would put on the works cited page, then you probably wouldn't be asking this question. I promise you that you will not get in trouble if you create an works cited page that your instructor doesn't want, but if you repeatedly ask this question for every assignment, you're grade might actually start to suffer.

Boots

Another reason it shouldn't snow in April...I'm stuck wearing my snow boots. It was icy this morning and it seemed like a really good idea to just wear my snow boots for extra traction. Um, I can't get my snow boots off now. So I sit on the couch grading watching tv and wearing my red snow boots. I forgot that I had be able to pull my boots off at the end of the day and that that would require being able to reach the bottom of my feet. I'm glad it didn't snow on Friday when Rakicy was out of town or I might of had to sleep in my snow boots.

Child Actors: Terrorized or Talented

The Today Show did a story this morning about a recent controversy over a NYC public service announcement about smoking. The controversy, according to the article, isn't about the message of the psa as much as it is about whether or not the boy in the ad is really acting or whether producers actually made him cry. Here's the full psa.



I really wish this had happened back at the beginning of the semester when we were discussing Shirley Temple and child actors, but I still find the arguments really interesting. Personally, the ad is very had to watch, but then again a lot of the stop smoking psa are hard to watch. According to the story, viewers were flooding DHS with calls about the appropriateness of the ad. Most of these complaints claimed that the ad was more too emotional, both in the sense that it "manipulated viewer's emotions" and the sense that the boy's emotions were too powerful to be acting.

This begs the question how old does someone have to be in order to act and/or manipulate their own emotions. I've babysat for plenty of toddlers who are quite capable of turning tears on and off. If we are going to make the argument that this child is too young to act in this way, then theoretically, he would be too young to be acting in another (happier) situation as well.

I find it interesting that while crying or upset children appear in movies and on television shows, the real objection here seems to be to the use of the child body to manipulate adult behavior. No one seems to be concerned about the welfare of the child actor when the child cries over the death of a pet in a movie. So why is this child actor so much more traumatized?* The comments about the story reveal that maybe this isn't really a case of a traumatized child or the impossibility of child actors.

The newsvine comments on this story quickly shifted away from outrage about the kid crying and toward outrage about the ideological content of the psa. One person noted:

So, if I don't have kids, I don't have to stop? Thanks!

And several other objected the idea of the psa in general:

What the hell is the government (any level of government) doing wasting our tax dollars to advertise! Friedman can kiss my a**! I dont need a nanny from the government taking care of me based on his vision of what is best!

I'll spare you the couple of other thousand comments about whether or not smoking (first-hand or second-hand) really causes cancer, what the government should or should not spend money on, and what products should or should not be taxed. There were even some comments that made a case for legalizing marijuana.

While I'm not sure that I can quite defend Donny Deutch's claim on the Today Show that

“Kids are very good actors. Maybe sometimes they make a kid cry, but if it saves 20,000 lives for five seconds of crying, I’ll take it.”

The outrage, at least from the internet comments, seems to actually have little to do about the actual child. The outrage instead seems about using the child in an ideological way.** Nearly all of the adults who have commented on the psa talk about the manipulation of the adult audience through the image of the crying child. While I will admit that the narrator does address the ad at parents, a think are far more interesting discussion would be about the manipulation of child audiences through images (however constructed) of children, but that will have to be a blog post for another day.

*The comments that objected to the child being made to cry, claimed that this would traumatize the child actor. I don't think I buy this extreme either, as by that theory any child who was ever told no or had something taken away would be forever traumatized. A television producer (stranger) who takes away a toy to get the child to cry might actually be less traumatizing than an older sibling who takes away a toy.
**Clearly the people who raised such objections have never taken my children's literature class or they would have realized that the child is always used ideologically.

Banned for Doping

According to Google, I am currently ineligible to participate in the Olympics (or any other professional sport) because of doping.

I'd admittedly really bad at "staying off my feet" and since I don't watch soap operas, I tend to only manage to follow these instructions if I can surf the internet.* Yesterday, I got put on Terbutaline to stop my contractions and when I was googling this drug, I was amused that articles about the this substance being banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency** routinely include the factoid that it is used to stop labor as well.

Given that Terbutaline isn't even usually prescribed until the third trimester of pregnancy, I'm wondering if this is a case of Wikipedia providing a little too many random bits of information for newspaper reporters or if there is a large number of women who are 7 and 8 months pregnant and also competing in professional supports. Clearly this news means that my plans of becoming an Olympic gymnast must be put on hold until I receive my Theraputic Use Exception.


*In December I had to stay on my left side for about a week which was extremely inconvenient for web surfing even on a laptop.
**It's primarily an asthma drug that increases your lung capacity by relaxing the smooth muscles in the lungs.