Footnote From the Peanut Gallery

Posted on July 9, 2007 by Timothy Burke

Regarding violence, media and childhood.

My daughter’s comment about the first day of art camp, in which it was revealed that the theme for this summer’s creative work would be “peace”:

“Peace is boring”.

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2 Responses to Footnote From the Peanut Gallery

  1. daddy democrat says:
    July 9, 2007 at 8:42 pm

    Indeed. My training was in the theater, where we assume that the essence of drama is conflict. Although conflict is not a perfect antonym for peace, it seems loopy to presume that “peace” is an interesting subject of art by itself.

  2. SamChevre says:
    July 10, 2007 at 2:01 pm

    Saki seems to have agreed with her (or, at least, some of his characters did.)

    Harvey retreated to the library and spent some thirty or forty minutes in wondering whether it would be possible to compile a history, for use in elementary schools, in which there should be no prominent mention of battles, massacres, murderous intrigues, and violent deaths. The York and Lancaster period and the Napoleonic era would, he admitted to himself, present considerable difficulties, and the Thirty Years’ War would entail something of a gap if you left it out altogether. Still, it would be something gained if, at a highly impressionable age, children could be got to fix their attention on the invention of calico printing instead of the Spanish Armada or the Battle of Waterloo.

    Read the whole thing!

    The Toys of Peace

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