And Now for the Feature Presentation: Social Programming
I was in [undisclosed area in Latin America] a beautiful park the other evening with people from all ages; rollerskating, biking, scooters, selling candy, fruit, snacks, running, renting trampolines, it was really a fiesta! The park covered hundreds and hundreds of acres and it still looked packed.
One interesting touch that they did was to show an outdoor movie on a big screen with a lot of families laying on the lawn. Many brought their own blankets and a little picnic to enjoy the film. The gang I was with stopped from our exercise to watch a little bit of this film. Turns out it was a kids movie called Ron’s Gone Wrong–perhaps you’ve seen it–I’m really out of touch with what’s hot with Pixar now.
I am naturally a skeptical person, an old grump to most, but this movie (even though for kids it would be visually engaging) was really disturbing to me. Below is the synopsis: Barney is a socially awkward schoolboy who receives a robot named Ron — a walking, talking, digitally connected device that’s supposed to be his best friend.
I will declare that I didn’t see the entire film, but I’ve seen enough to comment. The whole film is in a world where all the kids in school have their own robot, their own accomplice that follows them everywhere, plays with them, shares the emotion they have, provides & supports and Ron is sad because he does not have a robot. The message is cool to have a robot–uncool to not have a robot. He later finds a quirky robot that he expects to be perfect and his best friend. Upon initial disappointment, their attachment grows throughout the movie.
Points
If you allow me to be an old grump, I found this reprehensible from three points of view. Clearly, the message of the film is aimed at soft developing minds to convince them robot friends are normal and cool–just like Ron and all the kids at school.
The first point of view is a continuation of an already well-adopted problem–> the reliance on technology. We trust it to a point where it forms a symbiosis with our thoughts. Our new shadow has a WiFi connection and a tracking device. How many times have you been mid-sentence and your friend urgently asks, “Where’s my phone!?” Our existence, or being, is the technology. Like Venom is to Spider-Man’s suite (there’s my child movie reference).
Have you ever had low battery on your phone and felt more anxious, uncertain, irritable? It’s almost as if our own batteries are low if we’re disconnected from this social network. Ron’s main problem initially was he wasn’t participating in this network and he was visibly depressed for being left out. Hell of a way to teach kids. “You’re value comes from the quality of your machinery or your possessions; rather than your own character, your own strengths, aims, ideas and uniqueness”
Secondly, these kids were not only reliant on technology, but there was a built in notion that one should and it’s exciting to become friends with your robot. Robotics undoubtedly have a lot of interesting applications, but we’ve also seen the emergence of robots for personal or sexual reasons, especially in Japan. Robots are fulfilling the human need for social contact, connection, emotion, positive and negative feedback, joy and sadness, excitement and sorrow, trust and distrust. I cannot think of a more soulless dystopian message to implement into small minds that ‘it’s not other humans you should learn to cooperate with, it’s emotionless computerized hunks of metal’. Where does this end up? Children will never wish to go through natural and inevitable bad parts about growing into adolescence and adulthood if they are attached to their robot accomplices; they will never personally grow into a well-rounded, effectual being themselves. Similar to the first point, you’re already seeing this take place with youth incapable of making eye-contact, of understanding humour or sarcasm, not shaking hands, able to hold a relationship, being “triggered” or easily sensitive and are immediately distrusting of others.
Lastly, and this is me speculating, I believe the purpose of this movie was to get young 6 year old minds attuned to a world without as many humans. I’ve been writing a great deal regarding the collapsing fertility rates from a social, economic and biological perspective. If the world were to compound this with warfare, food crises, civil conflicts and ongoing medical ailments/sickness, than birth rates are going to really decline sharply. I have now heard from 3 school principles who make a note of smaller and smaller classroom enrolments for their youth. I’ve even read of one case of them canceling the 4th grade for the year.
Humans are social animals, we need social interaction, emotion, conflict, negotiation, friendship at our core. Perhaps the writers/producers of this movie are seeing twenty years out, when this 6 year old turns 26 and are hoping they may be content with a world without fellow man. The effort to de-populate the planet is very real (& almost everywhere); this movie felt like an extension of that dystopian, anti-human world that the Malthusian cult would like to bring upon everyone. Even if I’m wrong about the movie being purposed as a preparation for the population collapse, its still a real issue & that’s why you should CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE!!!
In Closure,
Kids pick up on absolutely everything. Their small neuroplastic minds are a magnet for information, emotion and characters. They want to be just like their popular characters they witness on television or movies. There’s no reason why they wouldn’t beg mom for a pet robot after seeing this movie–and scarily enough–I can see a lot moms putting that on the shopping list before December 25th. The wheel of consumerism & rejecting fellow man, continues to spin.
As I said, I don’t often watch children movies, although when I do, the differences between them when I was growing up are stark. I think there are fundamentally different messages being told to me as a child than what’s being told now and none of these movies are created without a message. Someone is keen on portraying an ideology as there’s a reason why this movie was animated.
Social Programming at it’s finest.
If I’m right, it’s not just Ron that has GoneWrong
#StayOnTheBall
