Strictly for children

So there. That should be a relief to those of us who have worked ourselves to ulcers and cardiac conditions by just contemplating our children’s future. Thanks to educational aids like the World Wrestling Federation, MTV, Steven Spielberg and the makers of those half-a-dozen disasterfilms now playing in theatres near you, the future is secure.

I discovered the sterling qualities of this lot quite by accident. It was meant to be a pleasant Sunday outing, a movie, some popcorn, and maybe an ice-cream or two. That’s how I found myself in the company of six brats, all male, aged from 8 to 15: sons, neighbours’ sons, friends’ sons.

Since the movie was one of those awful Spielberg disasters with a lot of dinosaurs thrown in, the mother of the youngest, eight-year-old Vinay, drew me aside for a word of advice. Her son scares easily, she said. Keep him next to you and cuddle him if he feels frightened during the scary parts, she said. Ha. She don’t know nothing. Not about her poppet at any rate.When the movie began with those rather cute-looking Compys nearly eating up a little girl, Vinay wanted to see the injured body. When the Pachycephalosaurus (“ram head”) knocks a hole in an armoured jeep, he giggled. When the Spinosaurus seemed to gain on the villains, he trilled: “Slice them up, slice them up.” When Ma and Pa Tyrannosaurus rex broke an unfortunate gentleman into two he stood up, all four feet of him, to get a better look and pronounced that it was just like the Kitkat’ ad.

Finally, when one loathsome, toothsome, Jurassic delinquent, shouting obscenities in Spielbergian special effects, raged wild and loose in a modern city, I found myself involuntarily clutching Vinay in panic. Turning his saucer eyes on me in the dark, he whispered loudly: "Are you scared, aunty?"Who, me? Of course I was scared. Scared witless, in fact. But not our little wonder. "Good show, T-Rex," he shouted as the dino strode resolutely towards a private swimming pool and swallowed a pet dog.

Now here is a child fully prepared for the future. To complete his education there are all those oozy, pukey, slimy, drippy creatures available inMIB or Men in Black (with a catchline that goes: saving the earth from the scum of the universe). Since the film is promoted by Ray-Ban, it is not entirely surprising that the action heroes, even as they get swallowed whole by Aliens, wear dark glasses (do I hear angelic little voices demanding a pair of Ray-Ban Sport?) But then you do need some protection when you take on the scum of the universe, don’t you? Wonder if it will work against Hollywood scum, though.

As if all this were not enough, you now have a film thriller on a volcano blowing up in a “city where anything can happen” — from leaky faucets to the entire municipal water works coming through the living room carpet. Through it all, you are urged by a couple of jerks in a TV newsroom to “Please stay calm”. Good advice, but how can we with all those celluloid disasters heading our way?

Still, it seems to me that since the new generation will have to cope with global warming, dwindling forests, Indonesian-style smogs, and the national debt, they need all the help they can get. So we had better be grateful to Hollywood for providing them with a glimpse of the future. As for me, I’ve decided to campaign for a new Censor Board classification: CX’ or Children Only. Adults Strictly Not Allowed’.