Allow me to bury the lead.
I've done a lot of bar mitzvahs.
Meaning, I'm the guy that the wealthy and well-to-do hire to entertain
at the party, mostly leaving it up to me to sit among the younger
crowds and draw caricatures while the parents kibitz and judge one
another in the next room. I've seen this behavior of the privileged
offspring in its own habitat and have interceded with parental
authority many times. Many in my business take a deep breath before
accepting the bar mitzvah gig. Not for any anti-Semitic reason except,
simply, that which we refer to as the 'Bar Mitzvah Kids.'
Bar
Mitzvah Kids are not all Jewish. They're of all faiths and
nationalities who, as classmates of the honored child, come to share
food, cake and company. They also share the common bond of being sired
by people of privilege, power, and wealth. Theyve grown up seeing their
parents judge people by their dress and their accumulated possessions.
They've witnessed their surrounding adults treating employees and
people theyve hired to serve with supercilious indifference or the
commanding demeanor of an indifferent high potentate manipulating the
destiny of its lowly subjects.
As an artist trying to make a buck, I've come up against ten-year-olds
who have threatened to have me fired, twelve-year-olds who order me
back from my break, nine-year-olds who have attempted to hit me on the
back of the head because I've dented their self-image. In turn, I have
taken young teen boys by the back of their necks when they've spoken a
racist remark to a Mexican waiter; I've spoken crude and frankly to
haughty junior princesses who have questioned my abilities, and Ive
actually reprimanded children when theyve thrown food at each other and
at me.
Where are the parents of these children of the
damned? They're away. Savoring their distance: Dont bother me I know
he/shes that way -- why annoy ME with it?? I'm just the parent?
[BB]
So
why, now, am I starting my point here, in this paragraph? It will
better explain why I finally reached my breaking point watching an
inane show like LISTEN UP, the new CBS sitcom starring Jason Alexander
and Daniella Monet as his fifteen-year-old daughter. While watching the
show, I took that same deep breath I take when Im asked to do a bar
mitzvah. Simply, Miss Monet plays a Bar Mitzvah Kid--over privileged,
under supervised, with waaaaaaaay to much self-esteem to have survived
my presence if directly related to me.
In episode one, she
punches a docile brother, tells her father he's always wrong and bans
him from her life with the pretentious authority of a middle management
clerk at a Wal-Mart. And Alexanders character just takes it without
ever considering how this little bitch got this way. And the laugh
track orchestrates this premise with its programmed approval.
Monets
character would be interesting if it weren't so pedestrian. EVERY kid
on TV is a Bar Mitzvah kid. And since television has pandered to the
family viewer, all we see are chubby dads married to beautiful women
who apparently sire mouthy, too-hip-for the-room Bar Mitzvah Kids who
really deserve that one good smack across the face... The guiltiest is
The Disney Channel, programming its young viewers to treat every
problem in their life with the same self-obsession as a thirty
five-year-old neurotic.
My theory on the origins of The Bar
Mitzvah Kid does blame television. Television is not human. Humans put
things into it. There is, however, an incestuous nature of television
personnel. Parents hire their children, children develop projects that
reflect their own life experience and, unfortunately for the rest of
America, their life experience is that of The Bar Miztvah Kid:
over-privileged, self-centered; the kind of
the-world-knows-nothing-I-know-everything sort of hubris that will
forever prevail and nurture our American society that has now fully
developed into a self-centered nation.
I certainly cannot
fault one show like LISTEN UP with aiding in the demoralization of
American society. But from where I sit, it sure as hell reflects a lot
of what I see first-hand, and I yearn even more for a day to come when
we recognize self-centered behavior as annoying rather than cute.
ESPINOZA 10/01/04
Tags:
tv Television kids world Family america 
