Mr. Schprock’s Guide to Irresponsible Parenting

Lesson 4: Inappropriate Entertainment

In the late eighties, my wife’s and my then 12-year-old niece came to stay with us for a week. We took her around Boston and showed her all the usual sights: the Boston Tea Party Ship, the Children’s Museum, Faneuil Hall, the Public Garden, the Top of the Pru, etc., etc., and even, toward the end of her stay, spent a day in Newburyport, a beautiful coastal town about an hour north of Boston that had a fair of some sort happening. On her last night, I was given the responsibility of choosing a movie to take her to. Robocop was playing then and, despite the R rating, I thought it might be an entertaining movie for us all to see. Hell, the stores were already selling Robocop action figures, so surely it had to be appropriate for older kids, right? Probably the R rating was only because of a bad word or two, but nothing our niece couldn’t handle. And what could be better than a Doer of Good Deeds in gleaming metal? Sort of a modern day Sir Lancelot, you know? So we drove to the theatre, I purchased the tickets, popcorn and soda, and we strolled in.

A half an hour later we strolled out, with my niece protesting my efforts to simultaneously block her ears and her eyes with my hands (try doing that — not easy). It turned out that right from the get-go the F-word was mentioned just a little too frequently, the violence was a tad too intense, and there was a men’s room scene where one of the characters, in a rush to leave the urinal and scoot out of there as quickly as he could, didn’t take the time to keep his pee pee from dribbling down the front of his trousers. Yep, the movie squarely earned its R rating and was, indeed, too strong for my niece’s impressionable mind. I couldn’t possibly watch the whole thing with her sitting next to me, because a keenly felt responsibility to monitor the imagery reflecting onto her retinas and the language vibrating her eardrums would torture my conscience from opening title sequence to ending credits. So out we went.

Okay, let’s fast forward to two years ago, shall we? When my youngest daughter was 12, she asked me to take her to a Marilyn Manson concert. Judging from what you’ve just read, what do you think my response was? Incredulity? Outrage? Anguish? Tears? A hasty call put in to the local exorcist? All of them good guesses and quite reasonable to expect. But wrong, wrong, wrong. My initial reaction to her request that I, her father, take her to a concert put on by this generation’s version of Alice Cooper was a profound sense of flattery. And do you know what I did? I took her.

Remember my squeamishness about the F-word? MM’s first words to the audience was “Hey all you motherfuckers!” Ouch! Strong stuff, no? Not very much like the Monkees, my band of choice when I was 12. And, of course, there were those lovely song lyrics of his, mercifully incomprehensible due to his propensity to practically swallow the microphone. And what else? Oh yeah, the two women on stage with him, ostensibly for back-up vocals, but really there to dance like strippers, only stopping just short of actually removing their clothing. Add to that the decibel level, which was dangerously high, and the audience, which looked like a Halloween costume party, and what you’ve got is a Family Value-Free Zone. My old Lutheran pastor would have needed ’round the clock medical care after this one. The Department of Social Services would surely have made my daughter a ward of the state had they known. In short, Daughter Number 2 and I had a wonderful time, and, to this day, she looks back on the event as a highlight of her life. She’s actually proud of the old man for taking her to it.

How could I justify it, you might ask. After all, Robocop was the very food of the devil for my niece, and yet, in the case of my daughter, Marilyn Manson — the devil’s own spawn — was acceptable? Hmm, that is a tough one. I think in part it was because I felt I knew my daughter and I thought she could handle it. Also, there was something in the old stratagem of co-opting the controversial rather than putting it out of bounds, with the effect of making the thing less an object of desire than it should be. And there was another reason, purely selfish: I was interested in going myself.

Before I agreed to take Daughter Number 2, I had her give me some MP3 downloads to listen to and I liked what I heard. True, Marilyn Manson’s lyrics aren’t what anyone would call wholesome, but he has an original sound that’s extremely interesting to listen to, especially the instrumentation, which is (in my opinion) complex and unique and appealing. You can tell he works hard on his music and goes out of his way to defy the mainstream. He takes a lot of risks. Antichrist Superstar has become one of my favorite albums. I can’t say I agree with what it stands for, but as music I find it enjoyable to listen to.

Well, the latest indication of my parental unfitness occurred a couple of weeks ago when I took Daughter Number 2 to The 40 Year Old Virgin. Have you seen it? I think it’s the funniest movie since Meet the Parents. It’s both innocent and profane and has definitely earned its R rating. Yet never once did I feel uncomfortable watching it with my 14 year old daughter sitting right next to me with all the F-words flying around and the explicit sex talk. Weird, isn’t it? I'm going to hell, right?

You know, maybe on the way home tonight I’ll rent Robocop. I don't think my kids have seen it yet.