Monday 16 August 2010

LameHeroes

Hello, and welcome once more to the internet equivalent of an angry child scribbling messages of hate on their parents bedroom wall, that’s right its everybody’s favourite blog called the Aldershot Woes… it’s the Aldershot Woes Episode 35: Lame Heroes.

I just a read a story that has me worried as a parent, and the main reason it worries me is because I think the polar opposite to it. The story was about a report US scientist Sharon Lamb has just published in which she states that today’s boys are at risk from too many “macho” heroes and that essentially today’s cartoon/comicbook/TV/movie heroes are to violent and not human enough, and this is effecting the modern boys progression in to adulthood, unlike the heroes of yesteryear… Well surely that’s a steaming pile of doody-logs? I am more concerned about the opposite, that today’s yoots have no “hard” roll models to follow and that my son will grow up cheering for softy emotional types and will look at me like a caveman who has just clubbed a puppy to death for entertainment when I try to introduce him to the Predator or an early Chan movie…

Today’s roll models are a bloody shambles and they have been for a while now and I think this is the key reason that so many kids these days get to 16 and start knifing the sh!t out of each other. For the last 8-10 years who has been the biggest “hero” for young kids… Harry Potter. When I was at school if you had a bowl-cut and glasses and your best mate was ginger, you were in for a bloody hard time. But no, a generation of kids have grown up thinking that the nicey-nice Hogwarts world of cuddly funny-spelled wonder is the pinnacle of entertainment. And low and behold they get to 15 the hormones kick in, they watch a bit of Commando one night on Bravo get over excited and stab someone in the face the next day in the playground… because they are not taught from a young age that violence is really cool in films and stuff but is really sh!t in real life. As they have never been introduced to it and desensitised to it they can not process it properly, they go from broomsticks to breadknives… What is scarier is that now the kids getting to the stabby age were raised on Tellytubbies as toddlers, then they went on to Harry Potter and now they are cuing up outside cinemas to watch vampires being done all wrong in the eyebrow-centric Twilight saga… Its no wonder kids are all flipping mental.

When I was a boy though my heroes were brave fighters, who used violence to resolve their problems rather than words, but by doing this by the time I was 15 I knew that jamming a screwdriver in to someone’s gums was a bad idea, as I had a glorified comic book notion of violence to fall back on which separated clearly reality and fantasy. Kids now though are nanny state handled to the point they can’t play Conkers with out goggles or Marbles with out 13 inch thick nuke-proof suits on… No wonder the second they get some freedom they have some excess fury to work off, usually in the form of a big old knife to some poor unsuspecting mush’s chops.

We have lost the real-life roll models for boys, footballers, as they are all now fancy Dan, high life tarts who dive over like drunk ballerinas the second they are tackled, so all that is left to encourage a bit of toughness in to your sons developing years and a bit of saneness in to their early adult years is fictional tough guys… So if you are a parent and you care at all about your boys development, sit him down and make him watch the entire 80s Arnie collection, at least 5 Steven Seagal films and anything else with good old fashioned mindless high-gore violence in. When he is getting laid at 15 instead of shedding blood he’ll thank you…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10957590

So there you go for more parenting lessons send a £45 cheque and an SAE to Aldershot Woes, The Internet, Aldershot, and I’ll send you the guide to teaching your kids the importance of not being to gullible…


Woe.

24 comments:

  1. More to ponder here than a week's worth of Entertainment Tonight episodes where our role models are interviewed snorting coke and banging hookers. Or sportsnight that keeps us posted on the latest spousal abuse incidents, assault, battery, weapons and drug charges and arrests of our sporting heroes.

    Take your son back to the era of John Wayne movies RBA, when good triumphs over evil every time. Do what you know you gotta do and be in his life, you be his role model. Read him the woes at bedtime and pack him off to kindergarten with Roy Of The Rovers.

    Most of all though, just hide the bread knife.

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  2. "now they are cuing up outside cinemas"


    This is either a pun of such genius that there is a genuine threat to the laws of thermodynamics,

    or a typo.

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  3. Yeah... thats a typo mate.

    Anything percieved as brilliant on my blog, typo...

    Cheers guys... trotts, i think your right mate, apart from the read him teh Woes bit... thats child cruelty.

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  4. Isn't bringing them up in Aldershot child cruelty?

    Or is it a cunning plan to implement your desensitize them to violence plan?

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  5. Nah Gaz, just a cunning plan of not being able to afford to live anywhere else... Though the grimacing misery of estate based domestic violence does go some way to highlighting the difference between reality and sanitised hollywood violence, i suppose.

    Never thought about it though really.

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  6. I love the way you bring up a meaningful, yet not overly profound topic each week RBA. You deserve an award just for that. I have just sent a cheque for 5 quid to Woes, The Internet, Aldershot.

    I don't agree completely that the only way to desensitise kids to violence is to introduce it to them early on. I think the key is to select what they are brought up on. Middle of the road, interesting yet intellect-stimulating stuff would allow them to grow up with a reasonable understanding of how the world works, and with reasonable thinking powers to figure stuff out for themselves. I have a one year old meself, and rather than the extreme of either Barbie/Little Princess or Guy Ritchie/Van Damme movies, I am feeding her Dora the explorer. Will let you know in 14 years if that works.

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  7. AH, i have a 17month old daughter and a 4 and half year old daughter, and dora is doing them both proud... (Although Swiper fox is a definate negative impact when i can't find my keys)

    What you say is what i mean, i am just a bit thick so don't make it very well, and end up ranting like a daily mail reade in dole line... but just to clarify...

    What AH said... its all about the middle ground... Very Bhuddist.


    (thanks for the niceness too mate, much appreciated...)

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  8. AnfieldH - you are feeding her Dora? So you think that introducing her to cannibalism will help?

    Hmmm, interesting.

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  9. Dora was our puppy Gaz..so no cannibalism here..just animal cruelty..what sort of person do you think I am.

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  10. So you are saying that Scousers have moved up from eating rats to dogs. Dammit, that means a new chant will be needed at OT.

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  11. Will be easy Gaz..... just replace RATS with DOGS on the existing one. But ensure that the R's, W's and L's are put in proper places. e.g. Woy, Gellard, Tolles

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  12. 's right Gaz..we're moving up in society..rats to dogs and the day not too far away when we're eating our veggies. It's all part of the magic of Woy.

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  13. I watched Commando the other night. "Let off some steam Bennett." Classic stuff. Although it wasn't quite as good as it was when I was 14. Although today's equivalent of Arnie is probably Gok Wan so I'm lucky I was born when I was I suppose.
    My theory about kids being little bastards these days is that, in my day if I did something wrong I got a bloody good smack and didn't do it again. You're not allowed to hit kids or enforce discipline these days cos it's against their human rights. So they've grown up getting away with everything and not knowing what's acceptable and what isn't. I may be wrong, though. All them smacks round the head when I was younger have made me a bit simple.

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  14. My views on the Geordies upcoming season can be seen intheir usual place

    http://adampsb.blogspot.com/2010/08/up-against-it.html

    and there is a Sesame Street type poll based around the letter W.

    Afr more uplifting than that depresseing Aldershot stuff (also can I get more follwers please even if you don't post a comment it makes me feel better and I would also like 42 as I can tehn have teh answer to life the universe and everything on my site)

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  15. Wow, adam i have more than twice as many followers as you, and i am one of your followers but you are not one of mine... thats mad, and you write about real things where as i just spout nonsence about wasps and biscuits...

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  16. I totally agree with everything yo've ever said, ever!!! Wel, about the roll models anyways.
    I went to thecinema last night with the "fam", we had the choice between Shreak 4 in 3D, but as Utd were playing, I thought that would be too much Rooney for one night, and the Sorcerers Aprentice, I choose the later. It was an OK film, but the "hero" was a totally annoying weady, nerdy, squeky voiced cuntbucket that irrated the shit out of me the entire movie. I couldn't stand him, even my missus thought he was a twatbag, although the little lass (she's 9 going on 15) thought he was OK. GRrrr.

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  17. Hman, i knew you'd get it... all these modern day "heroes" are the kids that got beat up at school, we all love an underdog, but one that is flawed not a goody two shoes... Thanks for the words as ever broseph...

    Oh and Noel, Commando, yeah i'll agree not one of the ultimate Arnie classics but...

    "you know i said i'd kill you last?..... I lied"

    "aaaaaaarrrrghhhh"

    Magicdarts.

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  18. Good read RBA

    I blame elf n' safety for everything, not just conkers marbles etc, I remember schoolyards in winter with ice slides from one corner to the other, if you got hurt , tough shit, get up and do it better next time, no nambypamby teachers coming along and saying stop it

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  19. Cheers fellas... tone, you are the same age as my old man... and he had teh shite ruitinely beaten out of him by teachers... he had one teacher who would beat teh kids with a clown shoe??? and another who would beat pupils with the bible, as he said teh bible couldn't possibly do you any harm. That level of ironic violence towards children is what is missing from todays yoots... FYI, me pa beat me sick if i ever deserved it, and i did, fair few times, but never for teh same thing twice.

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  20. our RE(?) teacher was the weakest ever, so usually 20 out of 30 got some sort of punishment every week for taking the piss, schoolboy pranks

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  21. well ive got three small boys and they dont need to be introduced to violence because they routinely beat the shit out of each other. ive stopped trying to stop them because it makes them more violent. i now join in armed with a plank with a big rusty nail through it and they use metal ashtrays sharpened into kungfu stars.

    and as for superhero role models i just wnt to say that Batman is NOTHIN without his utility belt.

    NOTHIN!

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  22. Bloggy, do you sell the "plank o'nail" (no offence gaz)?

    I agree, my boys fight on a daily basis.....but i suppose that is down to the cage fighting school they go to 3 times a week.

    Seriously, i have the same fears. My boys need toughening up. I let the fighting go a bit further than i used to otherwise i dont think they would ever stand up for themselves at school.

    Great blog RBA.

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