Skullduggery Pleasant and the problem of violence

Dudelet (who’s nine) has recently got into Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant in a big way. He’s devoured the first one in about two days and is currently storming through the second. There are, of course, various things about the books I’ve forgotten. Like the swearing, for example.

“You know how I’m not supposed to swear?”

“Yes.”

“So how come this children’s book has so much swearing in it?”

“No it hasn’t.”

“This character says ‘Damned key!’”

“Ah. Well. That isn’t really swearing.”

“Can I say Damn? Damn!”

“No you can’t.”

“What about ‘bloody’?”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“It’s not my fault – you gave me the book!”

“Yes – but…”

Yes, but what?

Actually, the swearing in the Skulduggery books doesn’t go any further than the occasional ‘bloody’ and only ever by the bad guys. Mostly. The violence, though, is another thing entirely. My God, but Skulduggery Pleasant and his friends are pretty bloody violent individuals. But according to the discreet little note on the back, the novels are suitable for children of “9+”.

One swipe of the sword took the fingers on his left hand and he howled in pain and staggered back and she jumped. She planted her feet on his chest and swung, the blade flashing in the bridge’s lights as it took his head.

Eek. Or is it different because it’s happening to a troll? And am I a hypocrite because I’ll let him watch this or Avengers Assemble but I won’t let him see Skyfall? Supermum’s puzzled about the last one. She thinks the Marvel films are too violent (but I’d argue her tolerance of little elf’s Barbie fixation ceded the moral high ground long ago) and she used to worry about Doctor Who. So what’s the difference? Why is Skullduggery acceptable? Why are The Hulk and Thor positive role models? And why does the idea of my nine year old watching James Bond make me queasy?

Supermum asked me this in the car once, with dudelet listening attentively (we’re pretty open about these discussions).

“It’s because it’s too sexy, isn’t it?” dudelet said.

“What’s ‘sexy’?” asked little elf.

As it happens, I do have an answer (though not about what sexy is) and it’s to do with that old fashioned fall guy, the Moral Compass. Skulduggery Pleasant has one. The Mighty Thor has one. Even Ironman has one.

James Bond doesn’t.

Bond might as well be Loki. He likes killing. He enjoys watching his enemies suffer. He treats women with contempt and uses them as toys. He stumbles through the kind of ambiguously grey moral universe that only adults should be asked to navigate. For all of the cartoon dismemberments, beheadings, eviscerations, zombifications and sundry other horrors, there is never any doubt about right and wrong in Skullduggery’s universe, even if the characters themselves struggle to orientate themselves along the compass points they know they ought to follow. And, compared to The Hunger Games or the horrors of Garner’s Red Shift, it’s fairly knockabout stuff.

Barbie, though. That’s plain unforgivable.

Do you draw the line at particular books or films? I suppose we all have a limit. What’s yours?

The Return of Listen With Dudelet

It’s felt like it’s been ages since dudelet listened, really listened, to a record with me. At some point, the toddler who’d boogie in his seat to Aphex Twin or the five year old whose favourite record was Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible became the eight year Harry Potter fanatic who only wanted to listen to the John Williams soundtrack and build towers in Minecraft.*

Attempts at “What do you think of this?” or “Do you want to choose anything?” met with a shrug or a “Whatever.” Meanwhile, Minecraft seemed to be colonising most of the conversations we were having.

Don’t get me wrong – we were talking a lot. But it was 40% Bin Weevils, 40% Minecraft and 10% whining about being required to get off whichever screen he was accessing either of them through. (The remaining 10% tended to be me commiserating with him about the latest bout of appallingness from his little sister. But that’s another story).

Anyway, there seems to have been a sea change. Possibly he’s humouring his rapidly aging father but he caught me the day before yesterday listening to Led Zepellin 2. He paused, then sat, nodding along to the first few bars of ‘Ramble On’.

“I really like that,” he said.

“Uh huh,” I said. I felt like a caveman (well, we were listening to Led Zep) keeping a hungry wild dog in my peripheral vision as it edged cautiously towards the firelight and a scrap of left-over reindeer meat.

“It’s really…it’s got a good tune.”

“I’ve had that record for 32 years.”

“And it still plays?”

Little elf bounced in and sat down to listen too. A few minutes later, supermum stuck her head into the lounge, probably to find out what all the lack of noise was about (apart from the very loud music) and found little elf on my lap, dudelet leaning on my shoulder and John Bonham pounding through a slightly surplus-to-requirements drum solo (‘Moby Dick’ hasn’t aged well). She backed out again, quite quickly.

Yesterday, dudelet asked me to put on “that pretty song” again and gave us a full-on demonstration of virtuoso air guitar. Then I played him the guitar solo in ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and he wanted me to start the record again so he could hear it twice.

Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll see how he gets on with Baroness…

*I feel I should add that there are a million and one things he could be doing that are less worthwhile than the admittedly creative pursuit of Minecraft. But there’s only so many brick-by-brick descriptions a dad can take.

When I was nearly nine, we called it second year

I don’t remember much about being nine at my primary school in a sleepy seaside town in the North West of England. There was light, generally low buildings and wide roads and an aunt and uncle around the corner. There’s a picture of me in a cowboy taken in their garden. I could ride my bike around the block and visit my best friend D who lived around the corner (I remember that his father was an electrician. My mother had three sisters and a brother and there always seemed to be relatives and cousins cousins to visit. There was a botanical garden with aviaries and maze -like rose gardens. When the tide went out, the sands ran on for miles and miles. You could see Blackpool Tower across the bay.

At school, another aunt (actually, a cousin) was my teacher but she was stricter with me than anyone else as a consequence. Everyone in the class noticed it. There were children’s parties and another girl, K, whom I had an enormous crush on. I read and read and made up my own comic books. All my pocket money went on books. Eventually, I agitated for a weekly comic like the other boys and whilst they vetoed the Beano or the Dandy (except as an occasional degenerate holiday treat) my parents approved Look And Learn. Look And Learn featured the marvelous “The Trigan Empire“, a science fiction story set in a distant galaxy of imperial intrigue and warfare.

Eventually, my father got a new job and we moved down near Liverpool.

I suspect everyone has some sort of before and after moment in their lives demarcating the border between innocence and experience and mine would be the moment of that move. The house was smaller, the accents were harder (I was branded as a ‘poof’ on my first day at my new school) and our relatives were far away. There’s more but that’s enough.

The time since that change seems recorded in high-definition video. The time before, in sunset-kissed Technicolor.

Dudelet starts year four today. He’ll be nine in January. I’m so, so glad we failed to move house outside of London, despite all of my efforts to the contrary, and that he’s still in his school, with his classmates and friends whom I know he loves. I hope he lives his life in Technicolor a little longer than I did and transitions to all the harsh, bright high contrast of HD a little more gently.

Smoking

Dudelet and I are walking to the Underground on the way to pick up supplies from the Japan Centre.

“Look, those girls are smoking!” he says, clearly disapproving but also fishing for my reaction.

“Not good for them, is it?” I offer feebly.

“How did they get the cigarettes? I thought shops weren’t allowed to sell them to children?”

“Well, maybe they got an older kid to buy them. Some shopkeepers don’t pay as much attention as they should/“

“Did you ever smoke?”

Oh dear. Here it comes.

“Yes,” I say, wondering if I should lie.

“When did you stop?”

“January 1st, 1998. Wish I’d done it sooner. Hope it wasn’t too late.”

“When did you start?”

“When I was thirteen or fourteen.”

“Why?”

Why indeed? I’m stuck with being honest now so I plough on.

“I suppose I was trying to impress other, slightly older or cooler boys – at least I thought they were cooler at the time.” I decide to leave out the fact that I actually started smoking in Scouts.

“Oh. Were they a bit thuggish, then?”

“Er…possibly.”

“Mummy says she never started because she tried one cigarette and it was so disgusting, she never went near them again.”

“She was very sensible, then,” I say, half-wishing I’d given the same answer.

“Yes. Did I tell you I’ve started writing a script?”

How I most recently failed our daughter

Dudelet, little elf’s brother, is eight and clever. Clever as in very clever, very academic but not at the extreme end of the scale. He learns easily (perhaps a bit too easily), has developed a ridiculous vocabulary for his age (I treasure the memory of his grandfather’s face when dudelet, at two and a half, gravely explained “…and this is a meditation stool”) and is one of the small group in his class who are sat together and given extra homework to “stretch them.” He’s also a bit moody, hyperactive, spends too much time on iPods, computers and GameCubes if given the change, and wakes up at 5am daily to read Michelle Paver. I can’t remember a time when he hasn’t clearly and cleanly distinguished between fantasy and make-believe. Most younger children walk a liminal line between the two if, at times, a slightly knowing one. For dudelet, his toys have always been toys from the moment he found words to express the concept (when he was nearly three). Imaginative play has always been story telling with a layer of ironic distance rather than projection. I sometimes feel he’s missed out.

Little elf, in contrast, rapidly acquired imaginary friends – in fact a whole imaginary family. She went through a phase of putting her babies everywhere and heaven help you if you sat on them. This was tricky because her babies were tiny and invisible. Her bedroom is full of monsters and fairies. Her toys talk and need their hair washed. Sometimes, they speak for her or she speaks for them (and therefore, for herself). Dudelet taught himself to tell the time and use a computer. Little elf has zero sense of time and seemingly no interest in acquiring one. She loves pink, dresses, ballet – a long list of normative little girl things.

Recently, we went to a parents evening. Little elf’s teachers and the classroom assistant sat behind the desk and beamed at her. Then dudelet took her off to play so we could have a conversation. We were in for a shock. Little elf was a bit disruptive. She didn’t want to play with others when she was supposed to. She’d only join in activities in her good time. She was cheeky. She threw things. She’d hide or pretend to be invisible.

Supermum and I looked at each other, baffled. We hadn’t expected this. Our four year throws the occasional (okay, regular) major strop but she’s usually…Well, there’s the drawing on the wall, the room demolition, the eating tantrums, kicking her brother, cheekiness…But she’s so funny…How could anyone…?

“Don’t get me wrong,” the teacher said. “we do love her. But she can be a proper little madam if she doesn’t get her own way.”

“But…” we chorused, trying to explain that we just didn’t recognise the portrait of a charming, manipulative little harridan that had just been painted for us.

The teacher scanned us both. She knows little elf’s brother who’s also got something of a reputation as a character at his school.

“She really is very clever, you know,” she said.

I confess, I think we both said “What?”

“Really smart – she’s a very intelligent little girl. She’s knows just what she’s doing.”

After which, the teacher went on to outline a strategy for managing her behaviour which has so far worked reasonably well. Meanwhile, we went away reeling. Little elf is clever. Why had we never noticed?

It isn’t that we don’t think she’s clever so much as dudelet has so thoroughly occupied the ‘clever’ slot in the family. Little elf had taken up the ‘charming, mischievous, cute” slot (and the speech issue probably doesn’t help).

How could I have let her down like that? How could I have allowed this to happen? And how typical! The ‘clever’ boy, the ‘charming’ girl! I’m so thoroughly ashamed of myself.

So I’m trying to monitor my behaviour, to look for ways in which I’m failing to actively empower her intellectually and (contrariwise) to be attentive to how I’m pushing dudelet into an altogether different stereotype. The other thing, of course, is to be aware that all stereotypes aside, they may well be expressing perfectly valid sides of their characters and identities to date. Who’s to say? It’s an ongoing project, parenting, and we can’t deny that she’s already equaling her older brother in sheer emotional intelligence. And, lastly, it could be argued that the fault isn’t that I’ve noticed she’s clever but that I put too high a default value on conventional evidences of intelligence. Little elf spins astonishing stories of giants and pirates and princesses and monsters who are invariably cut into little pieces. Dudelet likes to do sums, draw comics and invent sushi processing machines.

That’s enough navel-gazing – you get the picture. But, I’m still stunned by our failure to at least question the stereotypes we were setting up. Sigh.

Must try harder.