Anyway, in the beginning of the movie, there are scenes of matches where Rourke’s character is literally shot with a staple gun on multiple occasions for the entertainment of the crowd. This made me think about who they were entertaining and why. I, like many men, watched professional wrestling as a kid; when you look at professional wrestling, one of the largest demographics is children and teenagers, possibly because they more easily buy into the scripted nature of the violence.
I am not trying to make a pariah out of the professional wrestling industry. Wherever one looks there are celebrities competing for our children’s attention: musicians, athletes, models, actors, etc… In many ways, society is even tougher on our daughters than our sons. Seldom is a picture published that is not grossly edited, no matter how thin the subject is. Females seem to be more susceptible to issues of body image and eating disorders and it should come as no surprise when we look at what is shown as normal on television.
One of the many problems involved in this situation is that these celebrities are merely human. Combining human frailty with large amounts of money and intense pressure is asking for failure and these people are bound to fail at some point. When they do eventually fail, we swarm to watch every detail of their failure like sharks smelling blood. There is a reason the popular television show is called “American Idol.” An idol, in the biblical sense of the word, is a false god. We, as a society, raise up these celebrities to be like gods to our children.
We need to consciously think about what we want to see in a role model for our children and then we have to endeavor to be the model that we want our children to follow. Role models start at home. As parents, we are the first and most important role models that our children will see. When they leave the house to interact with the world, they will look first to us to see how to do so. Second, we need to judge the role models that we let into our house. This is one of the reasons that my wife and I decided to cancel the TV in our house. We know that if we have it, we will use it and there is just too much that we do not want to let into our home.
