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By JEFFERSON WEAVER
I read part of yet another study the other day descrying the decline of morals in teenagers.
Now, I trust most polls and studies about as far as I would a hungry possum in my chicken yard, although I will admit I don’t shoot pollsters. At least not as often as I shoot raiding possums, but that’s neither here nor there.
This particular study (which was naturally contradicted by another one, which was in itself contradicted) claimed premarital sex, drug and alcohol use, date rape, cheating, lying, and generally bad behavior are on the rise. It didn’t place the blame on the shoulders of the parents who refuse to turn off the TV and video games, or on any of the other easy targets. It said teens didn’t have enough positive reinforcement of good examples, or some such psychobabble.
I would tender this solution to the problem: make them watch horror movies.
Hear me out: yes, horror movies are full of the very things to which no parent wants their child exposed. Those semi-classic teenage sexploitation flicks of the 1980s and 1990s were full of sex, drugs, alcohol, blood, and violence.
And guess what? The people who enjoyed such immoral activities died. Mean people died. Rude people died. People who lied to their parents about going to a party died.
While they are gruesome, those movies might serve a purpose after all, a higher social purpose. The possibility of being hacked by a lunatic who haunts dark side roads and magically keeps cars from starting should be enough to take the libido out of the randiest young’un. Being chased through an old house by a fire-scarred ghoul should take most of the incentive out of smoking pot.
The plot of mischievous teens being turned into cadavers is so common that a parody of horror movies even mentioned the rules of surviving serial killers: people who don’t have illicit sex, don’t use drugs or alcohol, and have sense enough to take the initiative generally survive.
While I am not a big fan of slasher flicks, my beloved Miss Rhonda is something of a connoisseur of the chainsaw-wielding, hockey-masked psychotic antiheroes of Hollywood. More times than I like to admit, I have been re-subjected to a movie that I am ashamed to admit I paid good money to see when I was a teenager (without, I might add, my parents’ knowledge or permission).
So maybe, just maybe, we should add horror movies to health and sex education classes.
Separate the classes by gender (why this is such an issue is beyond me), and make sure they have the book work, and watch the dreadfully-produced, hyper-hyperbolic, euphemism-laden, “educational films” that left teenagers of my generation even more confused (and curious) about sex and reproduction.
Then take the classes into a dark auditorium and show them a marathon of Friday the 13th and Halloween movies.
Point out that the people who survive encounters with ax-wielding lunatics are oftentimes the ones who would never have to rely on a videotape to remind them what happened on spring break, while those who would willingly be on a “Girls Gone Wild” segment meet rather disgusting ends.
Naturally, I am kidding. The solution to the whole “young people are going straight to Hell” crisis – one which I’m sure has been around for centuries – is much simpler. All we need is for parents to be parents – not buddies, not friends, not companions – when kids want to be kids.
Take the lawyers and the social scientists and the so-called experts out of the equation and replace them with good examples, common sense, and manners.
Simplistic? Sure. But I can assure you – I was far more frightened of my father’s disapproval or my mother’s anger than anything ever done by the most evil big screen ax-murderer.
Had some of the movie murderers been raised by folks like mine, who knew the difference and the requirements for a hug or a wallop, I think we’d have far fewer young’uns for movie murderers to chase screaming through the woods.
All it takes is love, real discipline, faith, good examples and accountability.
Well, and the knowledge that if you blow enough holes in a chainsaw-wielding maniac, he will eventually leave you alone.
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