I watched ET with my kids on Saturday. I hadn't watched it since I was 12 and they'd never seen it before, being only 5 and 7. We all loved it, and I'd never realised what a great film it was in many more ways than I'd appreciated as a child. I'd never noticed the child-like perception of adults, where the only recognised adult is Mary, the mother, important to the children, and everyone else is seen only in part until they intrude upon the reality of Elliot and ET and impose their significance. I'd forgotten too how influential it was to me - I remembered having toys but had forgotten how it influenced my cycling style! Both my boys want to do jumps like on ET now. I'd also forgotten the use of the phrase 'penis breath' which I hope to hear my kids using real soon...I wanted to write about this as it reminded me that I had an 'alien' love landscape picture to put up here - I'm sure I've seen this style of street art in a book before, but that was a book about Berlin and this was taken in Barcelona. It's a lovely textural piece, cut from flock wallpaper and stuck on the smooth metal side of a news-stand. It was on La Rambla, probably the busiest street in the city - amazing that somebody had the time to get this stuck up here without getting caught.
I found it after eating at a vegan cafe around the corner and I was feeling really positive about the memory. It's been spoilt now because as I type I have the news on and there are reports about a baby deer being stamped to death by some teenage boys in Upton Country Park in Poole, too close to Swanage. No doubt they were high on KFC and Maccy-D and too meated up to have any empathy left for something helpless on the ground. Really depressing. No more depressing that the millions of animals that will be killed today in the name of food, but really depressing nonetheless.
2 comments:
Interesting that you mention animal cruelty after talking about la rambla - all I can remember about that part of Barcelona was the poor caged white rabbits in the full glare of the sun without water to drink, and there were numerous birds being treated in the same way, too. So distressing. As is the newborn deer story. No wonder animals don't trust Man - keep well away from us, I say!
Spain doesn't have a very good record with animals, generally! It seems to me that the countries with the strongest adherance to egocentric religions (viewing humans as the ultimate creation in God's universe) that treat animals and the environment in the very worst ways. Though I doubt the kids who stamped on the deer have much knowledge of any religion - they've just been allowed to grow up without empathy.
We should be teaching our kids the deeper values of education, empathy and extrapolation at school - the three E's not the three R's!
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