A 'Mr. Ed' moment

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
In 1961, a series appeared on our television called "Mr. Ed."
Mr. Ed was a "talking" horse. You have no doubt seen it in reruns. This was a seminal moment in my life – dad decided the television had to go. His logic was anyone who would sit around wasting their time watching an idiot box with a talking horse was indeed an idiot.
We call this the "Mr. Ed Moment" in my family.
I did not live in a house with a television again until I got married in 1973.
This incident, however, provided me with some insights that I have never forgotten. I was 11 when the Mr. Ed moment occurred. In the early 1970s, I started going to movies regularly. Comedies were enjoyable, but others with even slightly darker plots produced a fearful reaction in me.
I'll mention three that might surprise you: "Gone with the Wind," "Dr. Zhivago," and "To Kill a Mockingbird." All three of these have suspenseful scenes which created a startled reaction in me in my early movie-going days.
My only conclusion, over the years, was that I was not desensitized to such matters because I had not grown up watching television.
Now, many years later, my sensitivity (or de-sensitivity, if you prefer) has caught up with my viewing habits and I no longer have this reaction.
Hollywood has been in the headlines more than usual the last few weeks.
The Tom Cruise and Kate Holmes divorce has been big enough that even I have paid attention. What I have been most interested in is the outcome for their daughter, Suri. Holmes is maintaining primary custody.
Cruise's reaction has been to say he is planning on buying a $50 million jet to shuttle Suri from New York (where Holmes lives) to Los Angeles (where Cruise lives). It is Cruise's stated intention to spoil Suri so she will want to be with him.
Look for a messed up 20-year-old named Suri Holmes-Cruise in about 15 years. We all know that spoiling is not about the person being spoiled but reveals the weaknesses of the spoiler. The adult Suri will have not a clue as to what is wrong with her or who perpetrated it.
Then we have the mess in Aurora, Colorado. Warner Brothers has tacitly admitted complicity by canceling the trailer to "Gangster Squad" which has a violent movie theater shooting scene. It is reported they are re-editing this entire soon-to-be-released movie. The alleged suspect, James Holmes, clearly has some mental problems.
Yet, what we are going to hear about is gun control. Blaming movies or movie stars for the way the general population reacts to real life is a discussion dismissed years ago. Violent movies, sexually explicit movies, certainly cannot affect us, can they? After all, we only go to them to be "entertained" – nothing more, nothing less.
Remember "The Fast and the Furious" in 2001?
After a number of deaths around the country linked it to people street racing after seeing the movie, Universal Studios, the movie's producer, said that any attempt to link accidents to its movie was unjustifiable and would confuse "cause and effect" (from a Miami Florida AP story at the time).
In the same AP dateline, it was reported that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that the year the movie first came out, 2001, at least 135 people died in accidents from possible [street] races, almost twice as many as the year before. No connection? You be the judge.
My own "sensitizing" experiment, albeit an unwitting one, along with other evidence, leads me to believe Hollywood can have a very poor influence on us.
All the signs are there to indicate Suri Holmes-Cruise will be influenced by Hollywood in ways she will probably never understand. She is only the latest potential victim in a long string of lives destroyed by Hollywood directly or indirectly.
It is time we all leave fantasyland and the dream works. It is time to assess threats and dangers as responsible adults, not by what we feel is right or wrong.
I don't advocate you having a "Mr. Ed" moment, but I do suggest those hours spent in front of flickering screens of any size, can cause humans problems. Be aware and take care.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga., following decades of wandering the world, and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.
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