Thursday, October 11, 2007

What Picture Are We Painting For Our Children?


This was a perfectly clean picture before I got a hold of it. The colors were correct, the smoke blended nicely in the background and it looked like an accurate representation of that day. Now I can't find the original (not that I need it) but this did get me to start wondering. What do children think who grow up in a Hollywood overlayed world? Where reality is blurred with fiction and they can't seem to distinguish where one begins and the other ends.

I remember when I was young and I thought I could become just as powerful as He-Man just by merely saying, "By the power of Grayskull, I have the power!". My father would play along and I could do anything I wanted to him for a limited number of seconds until my He-Man power wore off. That was then when cartoons were about as close to special effects as we could get. Now days we have movies like The Matrix and countless others that blur the line of reality and distort our picture of what is real and what is not. Like the picture above, if that is all I show to my children of the Statue of Liberty, that is what they will think it looks like as that is their only point of reference. Carry this mode of thinking over to the world. What picture will I give my children of the world and who will I allow to paint it for them? Will it be accurate or will it be distorted; blurring the lines of reality with fiction? What kind of picture are you allowing to be painted for your children?

No comments: