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EVERYTHING MUST GO!
Sony Pictures’ new film 2012 imagines how the governments of the world would prepare six billion people for the apocalypse. It’s conclusion? They wouldn’t. The film takes it’s inspiration from a number of prophesies which posit that the world will end (or at least undergo some kind of monumental environmental or spiritual change) on the idle Friday morning that is December 21st 2012. Lending particular credence to this prophecy is the Mayan ‘Long Count Calendar’ which, having been counting for over 5000 years, abruptly comes to an end on this very date. Evidently, for the Mayans, this is not merely a matter of nipping down to Tesco and getting themselves a new 2013 calendar: this really is the end. (more…)
From Aesop’s Hare to Mr. Toad, children’s stories and fables have usually had the dual purpose of calming little kids down and teaching them something about cultural morality. The tortoise won the race thanks to his perseverance, Rumplestiltskin lost what should have been his because of his reckless bragging and the third little pig, who built out of brick, didn’t get eaten because he adapted to the modern industrial method of living or something. But children’s stories have come a long way since the days of yore.
Television and the internet have drastically reshaped the way that we sedate children. Whilst you probably shouldn’t give your four year-old child beer or whiskey you can turn on a television. Unlike the tortoise and the hare, television stories do not need to withstand the levels of retelling as Aesop’s Fables have. Instead, they are inherently disposable: used and replaced, over and over again. Without this, children’s entertainment would not be the lucrative industry that it is. It is a consequence that moral content is just not as important/marketable as pure entertainment (normally in the form of rapid movements and bright colours.) Additionally, parents do not have anywhere near the control over what their children learn about when watching television as they would were they reading books with them. (more…)