The Video Netherworld
I am third-generation Chinese American and have often found many similar experiences and feelings described in books by Asian American authors (such as Maxine Hong Kingston). But I have never felt such familiarity—identified so much with experiences and feelings—as when I have been reading books about autism, and, perhaps most of all, books by parents of autistic children.
One such account that made me laugh, and sigh, and do both deeply and simultaneously is Michael Blastland’s description of his son Joe’s video obsession in The Only Boy in the World: A Father Explores the Mysteries of Autism (New York: Marlowe & Company, 2006)—-and of Joe’s parents’ attempts to control what amounts to an addiction to “a flickering landscape inhabited by Disney, Postman Pat, Fireman Sam, and the Teletubbies” (pg. 50). They try to limit Joe’s video watching, to use the videos as motivators, to ration them, only to find themselves again letting him watch more to “appease” him in the face of “tears and ferocious tantrums” (pg. 48). But the more videos Joe could watch, the more he had to have, and one day they “[pluck] up courage to ban videos” and throw them away. Joe rages at first—it is “the drug abuser’s cold turkey”—and then he begins to calm down and, indeed to become “happier” (p. 50).
About three years ago we did the same, consigning the videos of Barney and the Teletubbies to the garbage, and convinced that we were performing the ultimate act of parent cruelty. How Charlie laughed at certain scenes, how that sunshiney smile came to his face; how he acted out scenes with Barney and the Backyard Gang with all kinds of toys; how he sang “Oh We Are Flying in an Airplane” with brio. I am not devastated because Charlie has autism but I can tell you that I never felt so devastated as when I would turn on one of Charlie’s absolute favorite Barney videos and see him walk close up to the television set, and bang his head on the floor so that it vibrated.
I did not understand why this happened. I was starting to understand that there might be some sort of sensory-over-stimulation going on for Charlie when viewing videos he had seen over, over, and over again. I knew that a tantrum and fierce crying were sure to come after the head-bang that followed the turning-on of the video, and soon they were all gone. For some years we entered stores like Target, Toys ‘R’ Us, and Blockbuster with extreme caution, as Charlie was sure to run (or rather race) straight to the shelf where his old favorites resided, and some strained interaction was more than likely to result when we told him to “put Barney back.”
Writes Blastland,
We aspire to as much normality in Joe’s life as his disability permits, but sometimes, when I wonder whether normality provides much nourishment to Joe, the video netherworld seems not so unreasonable. I don’t know the right course even now, and simply offer this: the more he watches, the more aggressive he becomes, the less tolerant, the more obsessive about all things, the less interested in the world outside, the more remote from other people and the less civilized (or do I mean human?). (pg. 50-51)
This is Charlie, with videos, and Charlie, without videos, exactly. Just as Joe did, Charlie got over his video obsession, or rather possession. Charlie had a brief flurry of fascination with The Wiggles and their DVDs but—perhaps we were reading the warning signs faster—these never became the total obsession of the videos. Blastland notes that the school Joe attends was chosen in part because it does not show videos, does not offer that “delusive peace” like that of the Lotos Eaters in Book IX of Homer’s Odyssey or in Tennyson’s poem. Videos, writes Blastland, “sap every desire for any kind existence away from the screen, and so the more he watches, the more he craves”—the more Joe descends into a “world of videos everlasting” (pg. 33).
Joe might be “the only boy in the world,” but there are more than a few boys in this world—in other worlds?—just like him and one is named Charlie.
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POSTED IN: Autism Lit, Books, Family, Parenting
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