I’m not much of a go-getter and I’m more than a little
narcissistic. With these shortcomings I could rarely find the news when I was a
reporter years ago, and I frequently end up on the margins as a gallerist now.
But even a broken clock is accurate twice a day, and last Friday morning the
hands aligned perfectly for the Offbrand.
The time was inching toward 10 a.m., and I should have
been on my way to the gallery. Instead I continued watching ESPN on the
exercycle at my gym in Mission Bay with the late-morning crowd of oldsters,
muscle boys and pregnant ladies. The glare that pours in from the north-facing
windows, which look out on a wide stone pathway, normally forces me to keep my
head down. But an unlikely procession had toddled into view, so I squinted into
the light, finding before me the charges of a local day care, accompanied by
their smiling chaperones, trudging double file, and toting mini-placards with
portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Slack-jawed, I gaped at this pre-school political
pageant. Most everyone around me was smiling through the exertion of their
workout. Who could blame them? You’d have to be heartless not to swoon at the
overwhelming cuteness of the treacly tableau—tiny mincing steps, bewildered
pink faces and ridiculous toddler outfits, offset by the adult troop alignment
and the hilarious sign-carrying. It’s hard not to chuckle at kids playing dress
up and acting like adults. But this kind of amusement curdles quickly. Try
watching Bugsy Malone. Almost
immediately I found myself cringing in nauseated fascination at the spectacle
of toddlers conscripted by their daytime handlers to march unwittingly for the
dead civil rights leader.
Already I can hear you muttering: Sarcastic bully
beats up on well-meaning parents and teachers to further his own twisted need
to criticize. I’ve heard that voice before; my mother peppered my childhood
with the phrase, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
I didn’t listen then and I’m not listening now. Because while the suborning of
toddlers to march in a demonstration for MLK is nowhere near as stupid as
decorating them with Che Guevara t-shirts, it still smacks of pre-teen beauty
pageants, the premature transformation of kids into consumers and the smug
treatment of babies as articles of fashion.
If kids
are going to march it should be for things they care about: Sponge Bob and soccer and cupcakes and
ice cream. I’m no Victorian who thinks childhood should take place in a snow
globe of innocence and protection. When my wife goes out of town, junior and I
camp out in front of HULU and catch up on Family Guy. He is only six, and we seem to get very different
things out of the show, but we can always agree that the best episodes focus on
Stewie. But I don’t make him pimp things he is not passionate about. I would
have preferred, for instance, that he dress for Halloween as the young
Frederick Nietzsche, but in the end I did the right thing and popped $45 for
his G.I. Joe Snake Eyes Ninja costume. He wore to a Halloween parade peopled
with boys wearing costumes just like it. That’s healthy, in spite of the
superhero military facist thingeee going on.
Even more dispiriting than watching parents billboard
their children is witnessing their satisfaction in creating a defanged protest
march. Literally. Some of those kids didn’t even have their baby teeth. I have
a little experience in this area. I participated in a protest march last summer
at the Marin Headlands organized by the Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren. Instead
of protest signs the marchers were given placards with reproductions of
modernist paintings on them and led on a three-hour hike. It wasn’t the first
time a protest march seemed more like a grandiose spectacle than a heartfelt
political outcry, but it forced me to consider how political action has drifted
away from authenticity and towards performance and representation. MLK’s
protest marches had the power to destabilize the status quo. J. Edgar Hoover
violated every statute in the constitution trying to disrupt them. The police
and the National Guard used tear gas and attack dogs to control the crowds.
These days all we need to keep our demonstrators in line is a dozen juice boxes
and some cheddar cheese goldfish. Our protests now exist only to give us the
illusion that we possess the agency to fundamentally change our system. And the
system is thankful, for we might panic and revolt if we knew there was really
no exit.
