One of the things I like most about setting kids on-line research tasks, other than it feeling a bit more relevant to their future lives, is that I get an insight into how they interact naturally with the outside world. We are all aware of the evolving ways in which producers market their products at children, but here I get a daily focus group of consumers, and I get to watch their responses.
That morning I had been listening to Mark Kermode rant against the latest Fast and Furious offering. Why are people still going to watch this? He couldn't understand. What these films seemed to offer was nothing remotely original, interesting, high quality, or in any other way worthy of merit or consideration. Each iteration of the franchise was just another pre-packaged, formulaic identikit version of the one before. Within a few seconds of starting the research work I had set for him, a lengthy trailer for the film had popped up on Sean's monitor. He knew he wasn't in trouble, he was on a web-site that I had suggested he go on, but it had started playing automatically and he wasn't able to skip it for about another 20 seconds. "I am definitely seeing that." "Me too," echoed his neighbour, without missing a beat.
Kermode, in his defence, can't be expected to understand what the film does offer them. But I have some ideas.
It's helpful to look at a counter-example of someone who doesn't buy into the franchise. Another student, Jay, can't stand these films. At 13, he is about the same age as Sean, but his tastes have gone in a very different direction. Once he scratched 'My Chemical Romance' on the back of his hand in blue biro. Jay, like Sean, is bright. But they have quite different backgrounds. In short, Jay comes from a stable and reliable home environment. I was impressed when I met his father who, after he had finished work one afternoon, had sought me out at the school's parent's evening. Jay's father was interested, articulate and, crucially, there.
Sean's father has been in and out of prison a few times, and the last time he was meant to 'engage' more with Sean's life, it didn't go very well. Sean's school file is littered with letters from well meaning but infuriatingly transient professionals that flesh out the familiar litany of concerns - missed appointments, drugs, domestic violence. Sean used to look up to his Father. Sean was apparently playing XBox with his father when he was last arrested. Saw him being taken away, but didn't see him again for a year. Sean's behaviour has declined drastically in the years since.
What Sean was buying, when he decided he would be getting tickets to see the latest Fast and Furious, was not the excitement of the story (he knows at the start how it is going to end, and also doesn't, I'm afraid, have the attention span to follow the plot all that well). What Sean was buying was two hours sitting with everyone else in his social group. Two hours of what the psychologist Henri Tafjel called 'in-group identification'... constructing "a sense of belonging to the social world." Two hours with all the millions of boys his age who were also seeing it that week-end. Two hours wearing the clothes they were all wearing, eating the same food, using the same phone, drinking the same drinks. Two days afterwards all talking about the same film. Sean is adding bricks the second and third strata of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: safety, and belonging.
I will never be able to fully appreciate the security that something like this brings to someone like Sean. Essentially, those will be the safest two hours in his week. In that group he cannot be touched. He doesn't have to answer any questions. He doesn't have to consider his responses. As long as he follows this crowd there is no risk of failure, there is no risk of humiliation, there is no risk of isolation. I cannot fully appreciate the security that he feels in this situation because I never have, and hopefully never will really experience the insecurity he feels in his daily life both at school and at home. Places where that terrifying triad of risks - failure, humiliation, isolation - are ever-present.
And it is precisely because the film is so mainstream that is its strength. Strength in numbers. It doesn't matter if the hero is the most cliched, wooden and unrealistic fantasy, when you look at who the real "heroes" are in Sean's life. The more Sean has been exposed to the weaknesses, the frailties and the defeat of his own male role model, the more it makes sense when he seeks out the opposite extremes in those on the screen. Kermode gleefully mocks Vin Diesel's clunky dialogue, but here's what he doesn't mention. Vin Diesel's character does what he needs to do. He achieves his goals. He is still there at the end.
Jay, unlike Sean, has had real life heroes who have (at least in part) taken on this role for him. Only then does it make sense that Vin Diesel's character will appear to Jay as fake, wooden. Because a hero will only appear fake if you are able to call up a genuine image of a real-life flesh and blood alternative. He won't, if you can't.
And besides, Jay, unlike Sean, explicitly doesn't want to watch the same films as everyone else. Nor does he want to wear the same clothes, drink the same drinks, buy the same phone. Here's the ccrux of the matter. Opting out of the mainstream is a luxury for those who know that they will return to homes where they have all the physical, emotional and economic safety that they need. And when you realise this thenthe motivations of Jay and all those who will follow 'alternative' lifestyles starts to make even more sense, because when you have all of these safeties, then you want to break away from the 'nests' of mainstream culture, lest they become suffocating. When you have secured all of Maslow's lower tiers of need, the last one remaining is self-actualisation. Achieving this is not only helped by distancing yourself from mainstream culture, but indeed it necessitates forging your own path. Going alone. Travelling off the beaten track. Look at the people who take gap years when they finish school. Look who applies to Universities in different cities. It won't be Sean. And not because he isn't smart enough, he is. But Sean is not interested in self-actualisation. He just wants to feel safe. And for this, today, all he needs to know is what to wear, what phone to buy, what film to see.
So I decided to wait until the whole ridiculous 60 second trailer had finished. And then I told him that the film looked rubbish. And that was also what he needed to hear.
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