Moving pictures

"I like that Bob Vila," Isaac remarked tonight.

How did a boy who has never watched any television find out about Bob Vila? From watching a three-minute segment on how to store your snowblower on YouTube.

Our household does have a television, but it isn't hooked up to receive any broadcasts, and Craig and I don't watch TV shows or movies ourselves. Isaac has seen TV in passing at other people's houses, but only for a few minutes at a time, and I can probably count the occasions on one hand. (For example, he saw a scene or two of "Dog Whisperer" at my in-laws' house last year, although it worried him because it showed a woman being bitten by a dog.)

I know that television and movies are in Isaac's future, and that's fine. As I've said before, I'm not a complete media-rejecting radical. Television and movies are fun, they are an important part of our culture, and they can even be art. I'm really not opposed to mindful media consumption, or even mindless consumption as long as it is critically done. Isaac can start watching kids' TV as soon as he asks for it. But so far he hasn't shown any interest.

Furthermore, if I want my kids to learn how to resist the messages and see through the hype, I'm going to have to educate them about the media, and the only way to do this is by actually letting them watch -- and by watching with them.

However, I do feel slightly hypocritical for boasting about Isaac's lack of exposure to the media when he asks nearly every day to watch videos on the Internet.

We started out with YouTube last May when I looked for videos of the giant loader with a snowblower attachment we'd seen while visiting Yosemite. For about three months Isaac was content watching short videos of tractor-mounted snowblowers in action. Then I made the mistake of revealing that there were videos about other topics -- shop vacuums, specifically. For many more months we watched a series of one-minute videos about shop vacs, each addressing one ridiculously narrow aspect of their use, each stiffly narrated by a guy named John. Then recently we discovered that John also narrates a series of one-minute videos about snowblower maintenance!

I can tell that Isaac is maturing as a media consumer because he has finally lost patience with John. Isaac happened to see Bob Vila's three-minute video on storing your snowblower for the summer, and he loved it. He can't articulate why, but I imagine he was impressed by its television-quality production and professional narration. I agree, actually -- it is a relief to watch something that wasn't made by amateurs.

But I'm grateful to good old John. He was a good place for Isaac to start -- sure, he was an amateur, but he was sincere, and his low-quality production values meant Isaac wasn't subjected to a lot of quick edits, fancy camerawork, or loud music.

To let you know how naïve Isaac is about these newfangled moving pictures, up until fairly recently he believed that John could see him. He wanted to hold a picture up to show John, and he even asked if John liked him. That vulnerability is why I don't yet want to leave him to the mercies of commercial television.

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YouTube is actually a good parenting tool. In addition to teaching my son how to clean the air filter in a snowblower, we've used it to see footage of a siamang's call, the "Anvil Chorus" from La Traviata, and the Statue of Liberty. And lots and lots of monster trucks.

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About a month ago Isaac watched his very first movie on DVD: it was Kevin Kline in "The Pirates of Penzance." I'll have to write about Isaac's relationship with Gilbert and Sullivan another day.