My Gothic Son

[Vaughn]

My school and classrooms were too. But then, around 1968, something went terribly wrong.

Or wonderfully right, depending on one's point of view. The "Leave It to Beaver" times were not as good as nostalgia would love to make it. Much better now. IMO, of course, and always plenty of room for improvement.

 

[Truzi]

My parents had me watch Blackboard Jungle when I was in my early teens. Quite a contrast to Leave it to Beaver.

 

[Tom1956]

Dissolutionment...

Essentially those being beaten at home, drunk fathers and loveless mothers, and seeing it on TV completely different, that spawned the hippies... Trying to find something REAL instead of something they were told was how it should be when it never was that way... For most...


This is a nice perspective to have, instead of complaining about "all the darn tattoos" now, embracing the new raw material as something new to work with instead of the "same old thing" I hope I can keep that and remember it in my own old age.

Stone, the problem with "diversity" is that we use to have a lot of it. But when they made it compulsory, now it's all the same.

 

[lxdude]

Essentially those being beaten at home, drunk fathers and loveless mothers, and seeing it on TV completely different, that spawned the hippies... Trying to find something REAL instead of something they were told was how it should be when it never was that way... For most...

Stone, you are a perceptive young man, and I'm glad to see you calling bullshit on our collective fantasies of the good old days.

I am a year older than Tom. I did not have any TV-style upbringing. My parents were divorced, and my mom beat me with an electrical cord several times a week, hard enough to break the skin. The neighbors heard it all, but they did what people did back in the 60's- they "minded their own business". I was hardly the only one. Some kids had a father who stopped at the bar on the way home and drank in front of the TV after dinner. Or just stayed at the bar, which to some kids was better than him being home. A classmate of mine wrote a book about the constant physical and psychological abuse she and her sisters received from her cruel father including her being raped starting at age 5, and how she overcame the damage as an adult. It was hard to read, especially knowing that she hid all the pain from us classmates so well. But that's what kids do, they hide it out of fear of humiliation. When her book came out, some other classmates starting relating their experiences, and what I was most stunned at was that some of them had what I thought was happy families. Some externally perfect families hid their realities of drunkenness, abuse of tranquilizers and diet pills, spousal abuse, child abuse and molestation.

There were plenty of good and happy families then, as there are now. And a substantial number of families in which the kids suffer, just as now.

The TV portrayal of American life back then, of the Cleavers and the Nelsons and the Bradys, was a portrayal of white suburban life, idealized at that, and had nothing to do with life as it was for millions of minorities and poor whites in this country. There are lots of photographs from those times which depict the reality of life for those millions. Yet so many of my contemporaries seem to forget those, and only remember the TV shows. I like the shows myself- I just don't see them as depicting the whole reality by any stretch.

The young people of today live in a reality we made. They're figuring out who they are, just as we all did. I took a lot of crap in the early 70's for my long hair- called names, refused service in stores, accused as young as 14 of being a "drug user", assaulted by scissors-wielding asses (who did not succeed in giving me a haircut). Several years later, long hair was commonplace and no one cared. I don't like piercings and don't care much for tattoos, (though some are spectacular). But it would be asinine of me to pass judgment on the people who have them, as it would mean I learned nothing from my experiences being judged.
It's easy to say (and I've said it) that the Emo kids don't really have anything to be morose about- that they have had it better than most people, and they don't know what real suffering is. I've heard it said (not that I have any idea) that most of them have had such ordinary lives that being Emo is a way for them to feel something intensely. Maybe they feel lost. I remember being young and feeling lost. They are hardly the first disaffected or disconnected youth. I see them as young people in a phase of their life from which they will emerge, and it is better to converse with them than to harrumph at them. They will respond to friendly, non-judgmental conversation, just like anyone. Kids today aren't so different from kids in the past--they're just young in a different time.

 

[StoneNYC]

Stone, you are a perceptive young man, and I'm glad to see you calling bullshit on our collective fantasies of the good old days.

I am a year older than Tom. I did not have any TV-style upbringing. My parents were divorced, and my mom beat me with an electrical cord several times a week, hard enough to break the skin. The neighbors heard it all, but they did what people did back in the 60's- they "minded their own business". I was hardly the only one. Some kids had a father who stopped at the bar on the way home and drank in front of the TV after dinner. Or just stayed at the bar, which to some kids was better than him being home. A classmate of mine wrote a book about the constant physical and psychological abuse she and her sisters received from her cruel father including her being raped starting at age 5, and how she overcame the damage as an adult. It was hard to read, especially knowing that she hid all the pain from us classmates so well. But that's what kids do, they hide it out of fear of humiliation. When her book came out, some other classmates starting relating their experiences, and what I was most stunned at was that some of them had what I thought was happy families. Some externally perfect families hid their realities of drunkenness, abuse of tranquilizers and diet pills, spousal abuse, child abuse and molestation.

There were plenty of good and happy families then, as there are now. And a substantial number of families in which the kids suffer, just as now.

The TV portrayal of American life back then, of the Cleavers and the Nelsons and the Bradys, was a portrayal of white suburban life, idealized at that, and had nothing to do with life as it was for millions of minorities and poor whites in this country. There are lots of photographs from those times which depict the reality of life for those millions. Yet so many of my contemporaries seem to forget those, and only remember the TV shows. I like the shows myself- I just don't see them as depicting the whole reality by any stretch.

The young people of today live in a reality we made. They're figuring out who they are, just as we all did. I took a lot of crap in the early 70's for my long hair- called names, refused service in stores, accused at as young as 14 of being a "drug user", assaulted by scissors-wielding asses (who did not succeed in giving me a haircut). Several years later, long hair was commonplace and no one cared. I don't like piercings and don't care much for tattoos, (though some are spectacular). But it would be asinine of me to pass judgment on the people who have them, as it would mean I learned nothing from my experiences being judged.
It's easy to say (and I've said it) that the Emo kids don't really have anything to be morose about- that they have had it better than most people, and they don't know what real suffering is. I've heard it said (not that I have any idea) that most of them have had such ordinary lives that being Emo is a way for them to feel something intensely. Maybe they feel lost. I remember being young and feeling lost. They are hardly the first disaffected or disconnected youth. I see them as young people in a phase of their life from which they will emerge, and it is better to converse with them than to harrumph at them. They will respond to friendly, non-judgmental conversation, just like anyone. Kids today aren't so different from kids in the past--they're just young in a different time.

+1

 

[ntenny]

I think there's an "outside" demographic in every generation. The emo kids and ravers and metalheads and punks and mods and hippies and beatniks and flappers all seem to me to represent the same basic kind of alienation---a demographic for whom on paper life is supposed to be pretty good, but who consider that definition of "good" to be fake and exclusionary, and who are more or less trying to build something that they believe in. Scratch any of 'em and you find similar creatures under the different-looking surfaces, and they've all had cultural totems with the same basic message; watch _Suburbia_, _River's Edge_, _Rebel Without A Cause_, and _Easy Rider_ all in a block if you doubt it.

Personally, I wouldn't want to live in the _Leave It To Beaver_ world; to my point of view from a generation or so later, it looks like a cultural deathtrap. But these things are by definition personal.

-NT

 

[StoneNYC]

I think there's an "outside" demographic in every generation. The emo kids and ravers and metalheads and punks and mods and hippies and beatniks and flappers all seem to me to represent the same basic kind of alienation---a demographic for whom on paper life is supposed to be pretty good, but who consider that definition of "good" to be fake and exclusionary, and who are more or less trying to build something that they believe in. Scratch any of 'em and you find similar creatures under the different-looking surfaces, and they've all had cultural totems with the same basic message; watch _Suburbia_, _River's Edge_, _Rebel Without A Cause_, and _Easy Rider_ all in a block if you doubt it.

Totally agree with this...

Personally, I wouldn't want to live in the _Leave It To Beaver_ world; to my point of view from a generation or so later, it looks like a cultural deathtrap. But these things are by definition personal.

-NT

Plus, the sex would be so boring...

 

[Tom1956]

Thought I'd come back on this one to give another 2¢ worth. Yeah, I guess I am fortunate. I grew up in the kind of family a smart man thanks God for. We weren't rich, but when I talk to my Dad about it now, he says "we lived within our means".
I mention this now, because I just found out a couple hours ago that the woman found up the road in town at 3 in the morning slumped over the steering wheel with one in the head the other night--my next door neighbor over through the woods on the next piece of land, is in the klink right now. 37 year old boy going to prison for the rest of his life for getting too angry and too drunk with a gun in his hand; at his ex-wife. Makes you think how fortunate you are.
I'd whole lot rather be shooting people with cameras and film.

 

[StoneNYC]

Thought I'd come back on this one to give another 2¢ worth. Yeah, I guess I am fortunate. I grew up in the kind of family a smart man thanks God for. We weren't rich, but when I talk to my Dad about it now, he says "we lived within our means".
I mention this now, because I just found out a couple hours ago that the woman found up the road in town at 3 in the morning slumped over the steering wheel with one in the head the other night--my next door neighbor over through the woods on the next piece of land, is in the klink right now. 37 year old boy going to prison for the rest of his life for getting too angry and too drunk with a gun in his hand; at his ex-wife. Makes you think how fortunate you are.
I'd whole lot rather be shooting people with cameras and film.

Yay Tom! Bravo! Seeing the good side of life, good post (even with all the death in it).

 

[Tom1956]

Yeah Stone, I use to let Reggie come over and cut sweetgum saplings for his Mom. She's only got a 6 or 7 acre piece over there. You can't run a wood stove for long on a little bitty postage-stamp sized plot like that. He just went and made his Mother's life a whole lot harder. Good thing winter's about over, but the next one is just around the corner, and now she's going to have nothing to burn.
When you do dumb things, you foul up a whole lot of other people's lives more than you know.

 

[StoneNYC]

Yeah Stone, I use to let Reggie come over and cut sweetgum saplings for his Mom. She's only got a 6 or 7 acre piece over there. You can't run a wood stove for long on a little bitty postage-stamp sized plot like that. He just went and made his Mother's life a whole lot harder. Good thing winter's about over, but the next one is just around the corner, and now she's going to have nothing to burn.
When you do dumb things, you foul up a whole lot of other people's lives more than you know.

7 acres is small?

Wow... We live in different worlds... Around where I live, each acre = upwards of $1,000,000 so 7 acres plus a house is like $8,000,000 properly...

 

[Tom1956]

I don't know what land is around here since the crash. Maybe 1200 an acre for 20 acres or more maybe. Remember--we're po folk out here in the country. You can go just down the road a couple miles across the state line to SC and probably get it cheaper, if you don't mind living in South Carolina whistling. I'm a printer--living in a 100 million dollar neighborhood in Connecticut is WAY beyond my means. Wouldn't want to go there anyway--I'd freeze.

 

[Chris Lange]

People want the colors of the 1950s and 1960s, the fashion of the 1920s, the nightlife of right now, combined with social ideals that, although they should've been reality decades ago, are still a ways off.

It's all bullshit.

 

[StoneNYC]

I don't know what land is around here since the crash. Maybe 1200 an acre for 20 acres or more maybe. Remember--we're po folk out here in the country. You can go just down the road a couple miles across the state line to SC and probably get it cheaper, if you don't mind living in South Carolina whistling. I'm a printer--living in a 100 million dollar neighborhood in Connecticut is WAY beyond my means. Wouldn't want to go there anyway--I'd freeze.

Mine is my parents, less than half an acre... No millions for me. I once owned a $300,000 house in the poor neighborhood, it's "cheap" there, after the crash the house was worth $125,000 and my mortgage was still $300,000... That was fun...

It's the kind of neighborhood that you look at a guy the wrong way and he shoots you just because he didn't like your eyes... Inner city...

So yea, different world lol

Would prefer Vermont and Colorado...

 

[Tom1956]

That's the way Charlotte was--I got out. Now I live in a cabin so far back in the woods, no self-respecting goblin would come up on a place like this after dark. Lived the first 35 years of my life in Charlotte. Now I have to ride through there to deliver my jobs and say to myself: "how can these people live like this? They just don't know any better". Then I put the whole berg in the rear-view mirror and head for home. Not everybody can make the change from city to country. A lot of people try it and end up going back. Not me, not ever.
Sorry to have hogged your post, OP. I'm sure your son is a good kid. Though I can't understand the pale skin, black clothes, pierce and tattoo fad myself. I think a couple years with a tiller and an ax will straighten that out for most of them.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I don't think it needs to be "straightened out". Leave the kid alone and let him be what he wants to be. If he doesn't like it five years from now (highly likely) he'll change. And like most people who change between 15 and 21, by the time he's 25 he'll probably regret some of the choices he made vis-a-vis body modification, or even just fashion statements that are now commemorated forevermore in dad's photos. But the surest route to destroying a relationship between a parent and child is to try and force "your" way on them (and that goes both directions, not just parents trying to make kids be what they want them to be instead of what the kid wants to be). I'm not saying never say NO to the kid, but don't drop ultimatums on them. Do that when it doesn't count, and when it does, they'll choose the option you don't want them to.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I don't think it needs to be "straightened out". Leave the kid alone and let him be what he wants to be. If he doesn't like it five years from now (highly likely) he'll change. And like most people who change between 15 and 21, by the time he's 25 he'll probably regret some of the choices he made vis-a-vis body modification, or even just fashion statements that are now commemorated forevermore in dad's photos. But the surest route to destroying a relationship between a parent and child is to try and force "your" way on them (and that goes both directions, not just parents trying to make kids be what they want them to be instead of what the kid wants to be). I'm not saying never say NO to the kid, but don't drop ultimatums on them. Do that when it doesn't count, and when it does, they'll choose the option you don't want them to.

Finally someone who gets it. It amazes me that the childless experts come out of the woodwork to give strong advice about things that they do not know about and truly haven't a clue about so many things in the world.

 

[StoneNYC]

Finally someone who gets it. It amazes me that the childless experts come out of the woodwork to give strong advice about things that they do not know about and truly haven't a clue about so many things in the world.

+1

 

[Tom1956]

Finally someone who gets it. It amazes me that the childless experts come out of the woodwork to give strong advice about things that they do not know about and truly haven't a clue about so many things in the world.

Guess I had that one coming.

 

[Bill Burk]

Yea, emo would at least potentially explain the nirvana shirt... Though of he were emo he might get really defensive about not being emo when you called him emo... (Emo= emotional)

Oh I thought you were talking about fans of Emo Philips. That's MY style.

Welcome norm123, looking forward to more photos and stories.

 

[StoneNYC]

Oh I thought you were talking about fans of Emo Philips. That's MY style.

Welcome norm123, looking forward to more photos and stories.

Heh, ummm... I don't know who that is...

 

[pbromaghin]

I don't think it needs to be "straightened out". Leave the kid alone and let him be what he wants to be. If he doesn't like it five years from now (highly likely) he'll change. And like most people who change between 15 and 21, by the time he's 25 he'll probably regret some of the choices he made vis-a-vis body modification, or even just fashion statements that are now commemorated forevermore in dad's photos. But the surest route to destroying a relationship between a parent and child is to try and force "your" way on them (and that goes both directions, not just parents trying to make kids be what they want them to be instead of what the kid wants to be). I'm not saying never say NO to the kid, but don't drop ultimatums on them. Do that when it doesn't count, and when it does, they'll choose the option you don't want them to.

Ummm. I don't see any posts where anybody said there was anything wrong with the boy. The conversation morphed into complaints about lots of other people and places, but where did anybody complain about him?

 

[StoneNYC]

I'm still really impressed this was HP5+ I love the film and it's now one of my 2 main films but the OP's printing skills sure are great for sure.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Ummm. I don't see any posts where anybody said there was anything wrong with the boy. The conversation morphed into complaints about lots of other people and places, but where did anybody complain about him?

Tom1956 made a comment about sending kids like him to a farm to plow fields and chop wood for a couple years to straighten them out. I don't know the kid at all - his dad certainly didn't have any complaints, and felt proud enough of him to take his portrait and post it online - sounds like the kid doesn't need any straightening out. He just has a different fashion sense.

 

[Tom1956]

Just to be clear for the record, the kid is probably a good kid. In fact I have a theory that most of these young people who go around in these weird get-ups, would rather in their hearts go around looking like the kids on the Donna Reed Show or something, if only they didn't feel like they would appear strange. These kids today are under such pressure by the diversity mongers, they feel like they have to look odd just to fit in.
The last thing I'd ever even think of is wanting insult any of you folks' kids or anything else that is yours. So, to state for the record, if there was any insult coming from me, unintended or not, I apologize. Wasn't mean that way.