«Я не трус, но я боюсь!»

Теперь - о некото­рых особенностях мента­литета. Мальчикам нашим вну­шают, что настоящий мужчина не должен выказывать свой страх. Поэтому простой россий­ский паренек смотрит "ужастики" с невозмутимым видом, по­давляя свой страх, порой запре­дельный. Правда, потом, ночью, он писается в кровать, чем удив­ляет родителей. Им невдомек, что сын просто стесняется при­знаться: я боюсь.

Злодей в западном боевике, как правило, - беспросветный злодей. Его можно только убить, уничтожить. По большо­му счету, это некое Абсолют­ное Зло, олицетворение дьяво­ла. И хотя оно в конце концов проигрывает, стоит заметить, что в православной культуре вообще не принято вступать в контакт с дьяволом. Этот образ вытеснен у нас в "подвалы" пси­хики, а регулярное извлечение его на поверхность сознания народа чревато ни много, ни мало массовыми психозами.

Да и положительный 3aпaдный герой ничем, кроме своей "вывески", от злодея не отличается. Так же убивает налево направо. Их будто назначили на эти роли: одного - быть плохим, другого - хорошим. А значит, их легко можно поменять местам. Это ж проще простого: пepeвесил таблички, и все. Кстати, так и произошло с "Терминатором". В первом фильме Шварценеггер гонялся за героиней, чтобы ее убить, и был натуральным злодеем, во втором - он же стал ее защищать и таким образом предстал перед зрителем в качестве положительного героя.

Петр Бердыкин

/ «АИФ», №20, 2000/

Set work

1. What is the English for:

черепашки-нидзя, психоз, затыкать уши, неприятие зла, опасность таится на каждом шагу, беззащитность, «пристроиться к большинству», воплощение силы, проявления зла, невроз, тик, заикаться, шмыгать носом, с невозмутимым видом, беспросветный злодей, православный, быть чреватым чем-либо, убивать налево и направо.

2. Render the above given article into English.

3. Do library research on Arnold Schwarzenegger. Speak about his career as an actor as well as his political activities. What films with his participation have you seen? How do you find them? Does he appeal to you as an actor? Is he well-suited for the post of California’s governor, do you think? Why was his but not any other name chosen by the journalist in the headline of the article?

IV. Points for discussion.

1. Do you think the journalist speaks objectively or does he play up the problem described?

2. Should children be forbidden to watch foreign cartoons?

3. Do you agree that screen violence discourages a person from re-enacting it in real life?

4. Do you share the journalists’ opinion that screen violence helps weak children rise in their own eyes?

5. Does screen violence germinate a number of phobias?

6. Have you seen the “Terminator”? How do you find it?

7. What seems to be the journalist’s purpose in writing this article?

Little angels, little devils

Society pays a price for idealizing children and separating them from the adult world

Marina Warner delivered her third Reith lecture last night and argued that nostalgia for an idealized childhood state has shaped our expectations of children in modern society – with dangerous consequences.

Drawing on evidence from the Romantic poets and Peter Pan to the trial of James Bulger’s child-killers, Warner says the contemporary “cult of the child” mistakenly insists that childhood is a state of innocence, entirely separate from the adult world.

In “Little Angels, Little Devils: Keeping Childhood Innocent”, her most political lecture so far in the series, Warner attacks government policy towards single mothers and childcare and argues that society cannot expect children to behave better than the adults they mimic.

Kipling’s Mowgli and Barrie’s Peter Pan are prime examples of the dominant theme in contemporary mythology – that children are separate from adults, she says. “Both reveal the depth of adult investment in a Utopian childhood state, and this can lead to disillusion, often punitive and callous, with the young as people”. Warner argues, citing the trial of James Bulger’s murderers as evidence. “Their trial revealed a brutal absence of pity for them as children. It was conducted as if they were adults”.

The 19^th-century romantic thirst for recovering the childlike state inspired a plethora of children’s literature, but ancient myths were sanitized for their new readership – with serious implications, she argues. The brothers Grimm, at the beginning of the 19^th century, trimmed away the eroticism of popular tales and shaped them into stories for children. Sex was dropped, but replaced by violence – especially in the form of “gleeful, retributive justice”, she says.

In Grimms stories, the wicked stepmother in Snow White dances to her death in red hot shoes, while Sleeping Beauty (who had borne twins to the Prince in earlier versions) is allowed only a kiss. “In the very midst of consecrating innocence, the modern mythology of childhood ascribes to children a specially rampant natural appetite for all kinds of trangsressive pleasures, including above all, the sadomasochistic thrills of fear”, Warner says.

The alienation of the childhood from the adult state, together with unrealistic expectations of how children should properly behave, has led to a new modern problem – the fear of the child” she argues.

Government policy must take account of the widening gap between the ideal of childhood and the reality; one of the fastest growing groups living in poverty in Britain is children with their mothers, Warner says.

“The same ministers who sneer about babies on benefit, and trumpet a return to basic values cannot see that our social survival as a civilized community depends on stopping this spiraling impoverishment of children’s lives”.

Out of the million jobs to be created in Britain before the year 2000, 90 per cent will be for women, but publicly-funded childcare is available for just 2 per cent of under-threes. “Meanwhile”, she says, “the Government has proposed to allocate L100 million to creating prisons for 11 to 13-year-old offenders”.

Warner argues that many of the problems faced by modern society stem from the mythology built up about the childhood state: “Children aren’t separate from adults, and unlike Mowgli or Peter Pan, can’t be kept separate: they can’t live innocent lives on behalf of adults … like the best china kept in tissue in the cupboard”.

In conclusion, she returns to her opening gambit – the story of Caspar Hauser, who was kept in a cellar in Germany until his unexplained release in 1828. He could not write, hardly spoke and was an object of mass fascination. The unfortunate child was denounced as a fake, and eventually murdered, in mysterious circumstances in 1833.

“We know by now that the man is father to the child, we fear that children will grow up to be even more like us than they already are”, Warner says. “Caspar Hauser, the innocent, was murdered, now we’re scared that if such a wild child were to appear today, he might kill us”.

Next week: “Beautiful Beasts: The Call of the Wild”.