Hi kids, let's learn about life

Youth role models set astonishing new records for egotism

By Nury Vittachi
*
This is a key week in the history of youth culture for three reasons. Three of the world’s top role models for young people are poised to take the limelight.

                First, we have singer R Kelly, one of the top blues and rap singers of recent years. Mr Kelly has been charged with various unsavoury crimes involving children and is due to appear this week, [May 9] not on stage, but in court.

He recently expressed his deep contrition by saying in an interview (I am not making this up): "I'm the Ali of today. I'm the Marvin Gaye of today. I'm the Bob Marley of today. I'm the Martin Luther King, or all the other greats that have come before us. And a lot of people are starting to realize that now."

A lot of people are also starting to realize that Mr Kelly may soon have problems squeezing his ego into smaller quarters than those he is used to.

                Then there is the top selling female pop singer of the past decade, Britney Spears, who has a special gig today [May 6] in a court room. At the earlier hearing, judges decreed that wealthy mother-of-two Ms Spears does not have the ability to cope with (a) being wealthy or (b) being a mother of two or (c) being. Ms Spears expressed her humility by telling the media: “I don't like defining myself. I just am.”

                Many of us could probably think of good alternative ways of finishing that sentence.

                The third major role model for young people is Dan Houser, author of some of the world’s bestselling video games. Hitting shops this week is his latest effort, Grand Theft Auto IV. It teaches youngsters the following lessons about life.

All women are prostitutes or strippers.  Why save up to buy a car when you can just steal one? A good career choice these days is “transporter of illegal drugs”. No one but a fool goes out of the house without loaded weapons. Guns should be used at the slightest provocation. Driving is much more fun if you do it drunk or stoned. Add drama to your leisure time by running over innocent pedestrians. Drive-by shootings are also a good laugh. You get extra points if you shoot a police officer. Hire a prostitute and instead of paying, beat her with a baseball bat.

A few people dared to suggest that Grand Theft Auto IV might not be an ideal role model for children. Perhaps we shouldn’t market “murder simulators” to impressionable youngsters, said a lawyer named Jack Thompson.

Did Mr Houser respond by changing the game from age 15 to “adults only”? No. He replied by introducing a new character. A lawyer who looks suspiciously like Jack Thompson gets threatened by a gunman and replies: “Guns don’t murder people. Video games do.”

What do we do about people like the three role models above? The bad news is I don’t think there’s anything we can do. The good news is that being hugely egotistical is a surefire way of cultivating bad karma.  In the words of John Lennon: “Karma’s going to get you.” Mr Lennon wrote some great songs, but had a massive ego and a drug-addled private life. And events sadly seemed to prove him right.

Comments

[Peter Emmett]

It's going to be a sad day when you come home from work and your kids gets all excited running to you as you come through the doorway shouting "daddy, daddy, I finally did it!", you respond with a big smile and say "what did you do son?". He looks up into your face with a wide smile on his face pronouncing "I finally got laid in the back of a car I stole then killed the #$%#? AND got away with it, cooool!"

The again with all the crap happening at the moment with older people and their own children in various European countries, or with older people merrily bombing families in other countries into oblivion, it seems that no matter which form of electronic entertainment you turn to at the moment, role models are only to to be found in minutely small quantities.

[Vince A]

Apropos the current 'role models', let me quotejack George Bernard Shaw: "I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no reason on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves."

[Nury]

I hope you're right, Vince. It's funny, these days, I actually appreciate Walt Disney-Pixar movies for their good-heartedness and high morals: something I would have found cheesy in my youth.

There's a passage in Joseph Campbell's Hero With 1000 Faces where he points out that throughout human history, people always used a story (oral history, the Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament, the Ramayana etc) to base their lives around, to provide guiding moral principles and so on.

Only in recent decades has this practice been abandoned with moral law abandoned in favour of living with no story at all, or living by lawbooks and lawyers and loopholes. In his book (written half a century ago) he warns that the result will be a generation without values.

Interesting point, and I like the suggestion that are not just entertainment but have a deeper purpose.

[Shanoners]

Vince A is effing genius :D and so is Nury. Your site really makes my day.

[Mrs Wicking]

Ditto Shanoners.

I love logging on and reading your latest offerings Nury.

As for the youth of today and the influences on their lives - god help us!

[A reader]

Mmmm... What has changed?

I'm guessing that most kids would run a mile when their parents play R. Kelly's only hit (I Believe I Can Fly). Gary Glitter was also 'our' generation. Many 60's artists encouraged drug use. Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis married teenagers.

Britney - Judy Garland was a mess, though probably wore underwear down the Yellow Brick Road.

Did we all hum Carpenters songs on the playground? I remember violence being at the centre of most 'play'.

And as this excellent Economist article states,

"Socrates worried that relying on written texts, rather than the oral tradition, would “create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories" http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=4247084

Hasn't new technology always been frowned upon? Haven't people always used violence to entertain?

[GTA fan]

interesting, there's finally a reader who is more widely read than old vittachi himself! Your point of view is quite interesting, "a reader", can you tell us more please?

[Nury]

Thanks for the Socrates quote; I hadn't heard it and it is brilliant.