adminBlessing Musariri Shelling the Nuts
A couple of months ago, I was having a conversation with a staff member from my old high school. We had a good laugh about some of the antics of the students of my time. Among these were crimes such as stealing fruit from the nun’s orchard, eating in school uniform outside the school premises, bunking afternoon classes, throwing a shoe out of a classroom window and other misdemeanours. I said, goodness we were naughty and she said, no, that was nothing, the kids today are not just naughty, they are out of control. We didn’t have time to break down the nature of the contemporary school-goer’s crimes, but I can well imagine. Sure, in my time a few girls fell pregnant before they got to write O-Levels and as far as I knew, this was the height of naughtiness. It happened to girls who lived lives that were well outside my scope and I couldn’t access that reality. Most of us were well ensconced in the comfort of our extended childhood. We were naive.
Our lives went something like this: growing up we experienced the transition from black and white televisions that came with legs to colour TVs and the introduction of VHS, rap music and the ultimate—afternoon disco sessions in sub-level clubs. These were the highlights of our lives and if we needed to go anywhere that our parents could not or would not take us, we walked to the nearest bus stop and got on a bus or caught a pirate taxi. But let me rewind a little bit. TV started at five o’clock and there was a strict order to programming.
First came the colour ball, the checkered squares and high-pitched tone announcing that any minute now TV will start so you had better be bathed, shiny with Vaseline and in your pyjamas before the national anthem plays or you would miss the first cartoons of the day. Children’s programming would continue until about six and then there would be a variety of other shows.
Eight o’clock was signalled by the drums announcing the news and that meant bed-time. On days when we were allowed up beyond eight o’clock, bedtime would be dictated by the first kiss that happened on a show. A simple kiss would signal the end of our entertainment and it would happen like this: a man and a woman start looking into each other’s eyes, they say whatever soft words they need to say to each other before drawing closer and I would sense the collective dismay gathering in all of us.
Oh no! why? Lips would part and at the first contact, either one of my parents would say these words exactly, “What does this teach you?” Of course, no one could or would dare to venture an answer. There was no possible answer that would change the outcome anyway.
Sometimes we would just sit quietly and hope that was the extent of it, but of course, the inevitable followed, “Go to bed”. These days, television is much much more than this, and I stopped watching movies in the presence of my parents a long time ago. It had become so that one would have to suddenly remember they had urgent business elsewhere in the house the minute a romantic scene came up because there was no telling how far the actors would go.
In music videos, during my teenage years, everybody was dressed in actual clothes or something related to the nature of vigorous exercise. Music lyrics, while sometimes racy, were more subtle than they are today. The first instance I knew of racy lyrics was when the song, “Push It” by Salt-N-Pepa was banned from the radio.
That was the first hint that the song was about something risqué but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what the fuss was all about. After all, weren’t they just singing about a way of dancing that mean pushing your hips out rhythmically? When I say we were naive, I am not joking, but maybe at this point I had better speak for myself. It’s very possible that I was the only one who didn’t get it.
That’s what happens when you never see what happens beyond a kiss and an implied descent to a bed or sofa on TV. It also happens when you watch TV with a book in your hand and attention so divided it becomes a problem only calculus can solve.
I used to roll my eyes every time one of my parents started the “When I was your age” monologue, but I get it now. For a long time watching the evolution of images on television I used to marvel at how open-minded and progressive life was becoming and I used to sigh every time my mother asked the question, which she still asks to this day, “How come the men are dressed so nicely and the women are hardly wearing anything?”
I’m surprised to find myself now asking the same question. I’m surprised to find myself telling my teenage nieces to wear shorts of a more moderate design when leaving the house and not to walk around showing people their underwear. It’s difficult to explain the origins of this new discomfort, in an age where, side-boob is the new cleavage and hip-high slits are the new side slits and plunging necklines are the new backless and love scenes on TV are virtually soft porn and everyone is watching and downloading shows on their phones, tabs and laptops where pop-ups will bring pornography onto your screen when you least expect it.
Perhaps it’s the loss of boundaries that is alarming, the extent of the exposure we are experiencing and the fact that it is growing in leaps and bounds. It’s all there now in cyberspace, coming to a digital screen near you at the simple click of a button. Pop culture has convinced young women that they must parade around in barely there clothes for young men in flashy cars who have a lot of money at their disposal for drinks and the party lifestyle.
In my day we all piled into whatever car was available and fund-raised surreptitiously during the week for enough money to go to the movies, to pay for afternoon session, ice-cream at the Dairy Den and maybe share a Coke between two or three of us. Maybe we snuck out a change of clothes, which involved something mid-thigh and a top that showed a lot of shoulder and maybe a hint of midriff, high heels were for school formals and the office and handbags were an encumbrance.
Leaving the house to go and hang out with our friends and the funds required was not the basic human right it seems to have become today and when we were out with them we used to talk, face to face and be fully present in the moment. There were no selfies, or snapchat or something else to look at on your screen while talking to those around you.
Telephone conversations took place, initially over party lines, where little old ladies would often say these words, “You girls have been on the phone for long enough, other people also want to use the line”, and later when private lines were available and you could hardly talk for the constant reminder from your parents that you were running up the phone bill and why couldn’t you talk at school?
Sure it’s wonderful to have all the innovations and the ease of access to information, however I think filters are required. Not censorship necessarily, but personal filters. It’s more and more difficult to monitor the information and images our children are accessing and parenting requires a higher level of diligence.
What does this mean in terms of our young people’s development? Is it necessarily a bad thing? Are they smarter, more accomplished and advanced or just more distracted and entitled?
They definitely have more options, but this comes with a bigger requirement for responsibility and understanding of how everything translates into actual life.
With all the technology around us we are basically living in a global reality show in which we are the actors as well as the audience and anything goes.
Is this progress?
Cultural evolution has taken us through the various stages of full cover, to moderate, to minuscule to barely there, and one day we will all be standing naked in front of each other with nothing left to imagine.
Online Reporter