Lately, I’ve been wondering about the issue of innocence in entertainment and life in general. This has been brought about by a confluence of things: small kids in the house, self as a writer, the occasional movie I watch (hardly any these days, way too busy to sit for two hours at one go), the occasional TV show I watch on Hulu, the many books I dip into (investigating and sampling), the mix of political conversation on the local and national fronts, clothing trends, the behavior of our so-called stars, etc.
Is innocence gone?
Mostly.
Mostly, mostly, mostly.
The gold of our lives has been scratched away to reveal the dull interior. The antithesis of innocence, a jaded satiation of the senses, bludgeoned into such a dullness that it cannot tell the difference between right and wrong, delicacy and brute force, is not an improvement. Excessive satiation does not improve a single thing. And it certainly does not improve art.
More on this later. I’m just starting to think about it. Feel free to disagree with me. After all, that sort of free doesn’t cost me anything. It might cost you, though.