The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Recently I have begun to reflect upon the impact of ugliness on our children.  No, I am not talking about a person who may not meet our cultural standards of "prettiness" or "handsomeness."  I am referring to ugliness as the opposite of beauty. In a more philosophical sense.  I know, I know, this is a Mommy blog, and I am attempting to write on philosophy - perhaps a grand undertaking considering that I will write this amidst the chaos of a semi-clean house (but hey, I'm OK with that now...see the previous post!), and diaper changing, and meal preparing, and homeschooling, but I can give it a shot!  You see, its an important thing to consider as parents.  Beauty and ugliness; bear with me as I dive into the filed away lessons I learned in my college philosophy classes!

Beauty has long represented that which is good.  It is a metaphor for goodness, and since God is good, we can say that true beauty also points us towards God.  Now, lets be clear about what beauty is and is not here.  Beauty is not what our culture refers to as "hotness."  Its not superficial.  The beauty I am referring to is what you witness when you see a magnificent sunset, a gorgeous garden, something that takes your breathe away and leaves you in awe and wonder, something that brings you peace and happiness - even if just for a moment.  Like how my husband feels when he gets his first glimpse of me in the morning...OK, maybe not.

Beauty is hard to quantify, hard to define, but we all know true beauty when we see it, and if our hearts are right, we can recognize God as the beginning and end of the beauty.  Take a sunset.  When we witness a breathtaking sunset, we can recognize God as the artist of such a sunset.  We can also recognize His love for us - for Who else but a loving Father would create such beauty simply to make us happy.  God is a show off.  He loves to show us how much He loves us, and beauty is one of the ways He does this.  Nature is full of Beauty - just look at the sky, a garden or a single perfect rose.  Art conveys to us beauty - both in nature and in the human form.  Don't get me wrong, seeing a beautiful man or woman can in fact draw you closer to God - not tainted by lust or jealousy - the human being is created in His Image after all!  God created beauty - in nature, in persons, so that we could get a glimpse of Him and His love.

Conversely, ugliness has traditionally been a metaphor for evil.  If beauty points us towards God and His love, ugliness does the exact opposite.  If God is the end of Beauty, than Satan and his evil is the end of true ugliness.  Now let us also be clear on what ugliness is.  Ugliness is the absence of beauty.  It too is not superficial.  It is deeply rooted anti-good.  Our language here gets in the way or our understanding.  Generally when we say something is "ugly" we are simply referring to it being not nice to look at; but real ugliness is much deeper than that.  It is the antithesis of goodness and beauty, directing us away from God.  If beauty is the metaphor for good, than ugliness is the metaphor for evil.

Why am I bothering to bring this up on blog for moms?  Because we have a responsibility to teach our children how to recognize beauty and ugliness, good and evil.  I believe that this task has become much more difficult, even since the time that we ourselves were children.

Nowadays there are so many confusing messages about what is good and beautiful, and what is bad and ugly.  These messages come packaged in books and movies, TV shows, magazines, fads, and fashion.  I may sound like I am pining for the bygone days (or even for an earlier era in which I did not live) but things used to be much more cut and dry.  Think of some of the old children's books, and their illustrations - "Goldenbook" selections for example, and books illustrated by Eloise Wilkin, or old movies and their imagery or animation, or think of the appropriate clothing for different occasions.  There is a huge difference!

Let's take a closer look at a few examples to help me make my point:  One of my favorite examples is the story of Sleeping Beauty.   Let's use Disney's "animated classic" for our example since its most likely that we've all seen it.  In that movie we are shown very clear depictions of good and evil.  Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) is beautiful - not only does she have flowing hair and lovely features, but she is gentle,  kind, generous, sweet, and loving - in short, she is virtuous.  You see, her beauty is a metaphor for her goodness.  Scenes involving her include cheerful happy backgrounds, or a beautiful forest.  The Prince who eventually rescues her is handsome (masculine word for beautiful) and brave - and literally given the sword of Truth and the Shield of Virtue.  On the other hand, Maleficent, the evil nemesis, is ugly.  There is nothing beautiful about her.  Even her voice is given a timbre that is displeasing.  Whereas Sleeping Beauty's castle is lovely, Maleficent's Castle is ugly and dark.  Her cohorts are gargoyle-esque, and deformed.  There is nothing pleasing or even remotely beautiful about her or anything associated with her.  This disparity is purposeful.  This type of illustration clearly defines what and who is good and who and what is evil.  A child watching the movie may not understand all the metaphors or symbolism, but he or she will easily identify who the "good guys" are and who the "bad guys" are.

This clear cut good vs. evil is important for children, because they see the world in a very black and white way.  They are still forming their consciences, their own understanding of good and evil.  Seeing this played out in literature, on the screen, and even in more subtle ways in modern media can help a child to internalize and understand that there are some things that are always good, and some things that are always evil.  Learning how to identify these things helps a child to grow in to a virtuous adult with a well formed character.  Older children can be exposed to this obvious and healthy juxtaposition in  C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, and J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Ring's Trilogy and The Hobbit.

On a more subtle level, being exposed to beauty helps a child to develop an appreciation for real beauty - and likewise, an abhorrence to counterfeit beauty.  Do you want your son to grow up respecting women and not treating them as objects?  Expose him to real beauty.  So many young men and boys fall victim to pornography and promiscuity because there is something in them that is yearning for beauty - and yearning for the the God of that beauty.  Do you want your daughter to dress appropriately and not flaunt her beauty in a worldly way?  Expose her to true beauty.  Remember that beauty always points towards God.  If a child is never exposed to this Truth, never experiences the whisper of God in something beautiful,  he or she will search for  this Truth in all the wrong places.

Beauty and ugliness are also metaphors for right and wrong.  For ages stories about right and wrong - lessons - have been cloaked in the disguise of fairy tales, folklore and stories.  In so much classic children's literature the brilliant illustrations clearly depict good and evil, right and wrong, using illustrative and literary techniques that make the good and right beautiful and pleasing to look at, and the wrong and evil disfigured and grotesque.  Once again this is an effective way that children are exposed to the ideas of right and wrong, good and evil.

Now take some of the modern day media and literature that our children are exposed to.  While there may not be anything intrinsically wrong with it, we should pay close attention to the subtle messages that  are being sent.  Some parents may think I am being too paranoid here, and some may take issue with my assessment of certain TV shows and books, but I stand by my assertion that there is a war for our children's hearts and minds, and this war is waged by the Father of Lies - who would like nothing more than to corrupt our children and confuse them from their infancy.

Have you noticed that some TV shows for children are just plain weird?  I mean terrible animation with strange multi-colored (as in purple and pink and green) characters with disproportionately sized body parts- even though they are supposed to human?  Other TV shows have unidentifiable characters - human-esque, but not quite.  These images are jarring and confusing to children.  We write them off as entertaining, but I fear that they can actually be moor damaging than that.  Jarring and ugly media desensitizes children to true ugliness.  It preps them for accepting more and more twisted and grotesque images, which in turn desensitizes them to true wrongness and evil.

This is actually one of the cautions I have for parents who allow their children to read and watch titles from both the Harry Potter and Twilight series.   Its also the basis for the objection that I have to titles that depict dragons - a classic metaphor for Satan - as friendly and helpful, and ugly, disfigured witches as "good"  (Glenda the good witch from the Wizard of Oz would be an exception because she looks more like a Fairy Godmother than a witch).  I  may sound nit-picky, but left unchecked, this type of literature and movie media  can plant seeds of confusion and doubt in impressionable minds.  Consider this excerpt from a review of Harry Potter (the full review is linked to below and I strongly encourage you to read it!):

On the surface, the Harry Potter tales fit right in with Goosebumps, Rugrats, and that gooey cerebral-like matter designed for throwing upon walls. Yes, pre-pubescent boys, especially, can think this stuff is pretty neat, hence there is a huge market for it. But if we want our children to love truth, goodness and beauty, then why are we buying them products that encourage their tendencies toward the grotesque? Of course, all great literature illustrates the dark side of human existence; however, the best authors do not intend darkness itself as entertainment. Like shadows in a landscape that make the bright spots all the more brighter, evil in fiction should serve as a contrast to the good. Perversely, Rowling presents her dismal world of the occult as a circus. Worse than that, she offers it as a desirable alternative to her caricature of normalcy.... I nevertheless consider her smorgasbord of magic, yuck, and gore an unfitting package for the truth. Moreover, her stories create the impression that some of us, like Potter and Dumbledore, could learn to handle occult powers and wield them for good. This is a grave error, for our intentions, however noble, cannot transform an objective evil into a good.(a)


And this review also lnked to in full below:


One of the greatest problems of the Harry Potter craze, as I see it, is the tremendous confusion between good and evil it is bound to generate among the youth, especially in the already-relativized ambience of our days. Children not only need absolutes, but seek them. (b)

As parents we have enough trouble from the continuous cultural bombardment that our families are under - constantly seeking to erode and undermine our values and beliefs.  Its too easy to assume that planting the kids in front of a "children's TV show" or letting them stay up late to read "children's or young adult literature" is safe and not deserving of our scrutiny; and honestly wouldn't it be nice to have something that we didn't need to be wary of once in a while?  But the Truth of the matter is that its our job - its our vocation - to guide our children's tastes and to limit what they can and can't consume when it comes to movies, books, and such.  They may balk, they may complain, but they will never doubt that you love them or that you have their Eternal interests at heart.

When I am faced with a situation in which my kids want to watch or read something that I object to on the ground that we have just discussed, I take the opportunity to explain to them my reasons why I object.  They may be young, but they grasp the Biblical exhortation of Pillipians 4:18:

"Finally brothers, [sisters] whatever is TRUE, whatever is HONORABLE, whatever is JUST, whatever is PURE, whatever is LOVELY, whatever is GRACIOUS,  if there is any EXCELLENCE and if there is anything worthy of PRAISE,  think about these things. " 

I use this quote to help my children understand that everything we do should help us to love God more - even when we are doing something leisurely.  "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows" (James 1:17).   It is helpful to introduce children, even young ones, to the idea that we should seek to please God with all of our actions - even when we are "just watching TV."  If something we are watching seems to be "too confusing" and makes it difficult for us to decide who is acting like they love God, perhaps its not worthy of our attention.  

It takes some time, but if your kids are anything like mine they will take to this line of thinking with zeal (and occasionally go overboard!).  We even have a list of perfectly harmless songs that my oldest son and daughter have deemed "fresh" just because of the sound of music!  (Fresh is our family word for 'rude' or 'sassy' or 'inappropriate.')  As they get older I am not necessarily opposed to allowing them to read what I consider to be more 'questionable' titles (whatever the Harry Potter and Twilight of the next generation may be) as long as we discuss them together, so we can decide what literary devices hold true God's Truth about beauty, and as long as they have by then developed the critical thinking and analytical skills necessary to identify the disparities in what they are reading or watching.  In other words, when they have formed their consciences and grown up enough to notice for themselves the obvious incongruence that may be present in what they are reading.  

For now though, my kids are young sponges,  and  they see the world as being very cut and dry.  I believe it is my duty to protect their innocence, and to help them firmly establish their understanding of right and wrong before exposing them to literature and media that may undermine my efforts to help them form their consciences.  If you feel the same way, navigating the TV, internet, and book stores can seem daunting.  I  have compiled a short list below of some resources and tips that you may find helpful:


**Update**  You may dismayed to check out this excellent blog post about the latest creepy (and totally inappropriate!) girl's toys.  Think Bratz dolls - undead.  Serisouly.
http://storiesforthehomeschoolheart.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/ugly-girls/#comment-128

For Reviews on Movies, TV shows, music and more with a Christian Perspective:

http://www.pluggedin.com/


Catholic Kids Shows:
http://www.ewtn.com/tv/kids/index.asp

*Stay away from the Tolkien rip-offs that are really just cheap "fantasy" that are rife with confusing messages about good and evil.  Tolkien's works are so magnificent because they are a complete Christian allegory - and the imagery he uses very clearly depicts good and evil.

(a) Is Harry Potter Good for Our Kids? (Review quoted above) http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0070.html


(b) Harry Potter and the Problem of Good and Evil (review quoted above) http://www.traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/d003ht.htm

Twilight for Catholics? http://catholicmediareview.blogspot.com/2008/12/twilight.html


Discussion on Moral Ambiguity of Twilight: http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=471332