The Eleventh Commandment - Try to Keep the Content Relevant

Saturday I watched ABC’s great Easter tradition, the broadcast of The Ten Commandments, and couldn’t help but think of how dated this movie has become. The Nile either looks preposterous, blown up on a blue screen behind Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner, or cheap, a man-made pool populated by plastic plants. The epic dialogue is stilted and stale, and the actors sound like they’re practicing their lines alone in front of the bathroom mirror. And as a network broadcast, it lasts nearly five hours long. If US Air played The Ten Commandments on the flight from New York to San Francisco, the pilot’s pre-landing instructions would cut off the eponymous note-taking scene on Mount Sinai.

But this is one of the most financially successful movies of all time. Adjusted for inflation, it’s the fifth highest grossing film of all time, have grossed almost a billion dollars in 2010 dollars. And it first premiered when my dad was about 12, which would explain why he almost always watches it this time of year. In their early teens, kids latch onto media and do so disproportionately to its actual worth. This explains why I view Meatloaf (the singer, not the lunch special), Zelda (the video game, not the novelist’s wife), and Emo (the comedian, not the whiny music) as important contributions to western civilization on par with the Mona Lisa and Shakespeare.

Which leads me to wonder – as I plan out the content to introduce to Dream Weaver, how much of it will enrich his/her life and how much of it will look ridiculous, like a former NRA president quoting the Bible in front of a blue screen? TV shows, movies, music and books that move me might come off as anachronistic tedium to my kid. And I might not be able to distinguish between the two until I see his/her eyes rolling back into his/her head.

J.D. Salinger’s recent death brought this issue up for a number of educators who wrote about how Catcher in the Rye affected and inspired them. Many noted sadly that the book no longer appeals to their students the way it did to them. Holden Caufield’s distaste for phonies is alien to teenagers’ lexicon; his ambivalence toward prep school cliques doesn’t ring true to a generation interconnected 24 hours a day through texts and Facebook.

Personally, Catcher in the Rye never did it for me. But The Princess Bride did. Its combination of humor, adventure, and camp is planted in me, and blooms every time I see it on USA. I’ve read the book. I quote it with friends. But one of those friends said something horrifying to me a couple years ago: “It looks cheap. It hasn’t aged well.” I was appalled. He might as well have said that Holly, my beloved childhood dog, deserved to die.

But he’s right. I watched it again not long ago, and its special effects look like someone stole some of Jim Henson’ high school art projects. And, quite frankly, I hated myself a little bit for agreeing with that guy.

That doesn’t mean I won’t show it too my kids. I bet Jim Henson’s high school projects look pretty cool to elementary schoolers. But how many of my favorite childhood memories will make Alicia explain to our kid (not without reason), “This probably seemed a lot neater when daddy was your age.” Like The Ten Commandments to a 12-year old in 1957. Ouch.
Be content,
John