Our children are being consumed
To the Mitchell Library last night to see Tom Hodgkinson and Ed Mayo discuss parenting and the way in which children are being corrupted by consumerist messages.
I hadn’t heard of Mayo before, but his CV is very impressive; all those committees and think tanks he has been on have evidently helped shape him into clear, insightful speaker. Mayo looks like one of those very rational, analytical people with steel-rimmed spectacles and a bald head full of statistics. Thankfully, he was relaxed and witty with it, discoursing on the ways that advertisers get into the child’s mind.
With his shaggy hair and freewheeling speech, Tom Hodgkinson was the opposite of Mayo. Rather than rely on data and research, Tom uses anecdote and literary quotation. His message is one of contempt for TV, iPods, the internet, and Nintendos, whilst wearily acknowledging that it is impossible to deny children these things altogether.
The audience seemed slightly more receptive for Hodgkinson’s radical practicality rather than Mayo’s policy-based approach. Tom summed up the potency of capitalism in the insistent propaganda on every billboard and TV show, saying: spend more, be inadequate, become fulfilled by consuming, don’t think, look beautiful, work hard, do more. Against this onslaught it is virtually impossible to get an opposing message to stick in people’s brains for long.