“Go to any Walmart in the middle of the night, and you will see us, the middle class of Denver, struggling just to get by.”
This whole thing reads like one of those romanticized “oh gosh darn, it sure is fun to be poor!” shticks that some people attend to like pesky tourists.
They should feel absolutely free to go slumming to their heart’s content. But there should be somebody who is looking out for the interest of the child. It’s like these people have no relatives, no friends, nobody normal to tell them that this is just wrong.
Weird controlling vibe going on there. How is the constant company of parents alone going to affect the poor kid? A bunch of random strangers met in public who pass out of one’s life almost as soon as they enter it is not the basis for any kind of healthy socialization.
My mother travelled for about three months or so out of the year each summer doing pr work (a 2000 mile trudge to get to the beginning of the circuit and then moving between 50 and 200 or so miles every few days and then the 2000 mile trudge back home).
When we were old enough starting at around 12 she brought me and/or my brother along. It was a incredibly valuable experience and I’m very glad I had it but even for a couple of months it was hard (and we stayed in motels insteading of camping in a freaking van in parking lots).
I can’t fathom how these people think it’s appropriate for a small child all year round. I just can’t fathom how these people can think it would be anything but psychologically damaging to have no steady contact with age peers.
The kid is 5. This is the time when all other kids go to school and start the process of getting socialized in a group, learning to exist in a community, learning to adapt to a hierarchy, learning to live within a schedule, keep organized, etc. THis is all taken away from this poor kid. She doesn’t even have access to a normal bathroom! This is insane.
While here, I recently saw the 2009 Greek movie Kynodontas (eng title Dogtooth, span title Canino) with a very similar story to the Mexican movie Castillo de Pureza (which I haven’t gotten around to seeing yet).
It’s an examination of the logical endgame of extreme patriarchy where the parents prevent their young adult children from any interaction with the outside world at all (with one creepy exception).
The children spend all day engaged in idiotic contests competing for parental approval expressed as stickers they place on the headboards of their beds and having their heads filled with nonsense (the parents teach them for example that the word ‘sea’ means a kind of armchair and the ‘highway’ is a strong wind and that the planes flying overhead are toys that sometimes fall into the yard).
The father is brought to violent rage by any challenge to this creepy order.
It strikes me that this (and probably the mexican movie) and the Argentine movie La Nona (about an old woman whose family wrecks their lives trying to feed her rapacious appetite) are good introductions to explain extreme patriarchical dysfunction to those who don’t get it (more visceral than the Unamuno story).
From what you’ve written, it has the potential to be very traumatic for you (I experienced nothing remotely like this and it was traumatic, scarier than 9 out of 10 horror movies I’ve seen).
“From what you’ve written, it has the potential to be very traumatic for you”
Yes, even just reading the description was not easy. But I believe this will be good, productive trauma. Just in case, though, I’ll leave it for after we finish celebrating N’s birthday.
It’s scary how much I love youtube (if I didn’t have to work I’d probably spend 15 hours a day watching tv and movies from around the world (even without subtitles in any language I understand).
This is a realy crazy story. Who are these people? Do they belong to some sort of weird libertarianish doomsday abandon-society-or-it-will-eat-your-children cult?
I have no idea. Neither do I know how they got into my blogroll. The linked weirdo refers to me as “blogger girl”, which, given my age, tells us a lot about his view of women.
Clarissa's Blog 
“Go to any Walmart in the middle of the night, and you will see us, the middle class of Denver, struggling just to get by.”
This whole thing reads like one of those romanticized “oh gosh darn, it sure is fun to be poor!” shticks that some people attend to like pesky tourists.
LikeLike
They should feel absolutely free to go slumming to their heart’s content. But there should be somebody who is looking out for the interest of the child. It’s like these people have no relatives, no friends, nobody normal to tell them that this is just wrong.
LikeLike
Weird controlling vibe going on there. How is the constant company of parents alone going to affect the poor kid? A bunch of random strangers met in public who pass out of one’s life almost as soon as they enter it is not the basis for any kind of healthy socialization.
My mother travelled for about three months or so out of the year each summer doing pr work (a 2000 mile trudge to get to the beginning of the circuit and then moving between 50 and 200 or so miles every few days and then the 2000 mile trudge back home).
When we were old enough starting at around 12 she brought me and/or my brother along. It was a incredibly valuable experience and I’m very glad I had it but even for a couple of months it was hard (and we stayed in motels insteading of camping in a freaking van in parking lots).
I can’t fathom how these people think it’s appropriate for a small child all year round. I just can’t fathom how these people can think it would be anything but psychologically damaging to have no steady contact with age peers.
LikeLike
The kid is 5. This is the time when all other kids go to school and start the process of getting socialized in a group, learning to exist in a community, learning to adapt to a hierarchy, learning to live within a schedule, keep organized, etc. THis is all taken away from this poor kid. She doesn’t even have access to a normal bathroom! This is insane.
LikeLike
While here, I recently saw the 2009 Greek movie Kynodontas (eng title Dogtooth, span title Canino) with a very similar story to the Mexican movie Castillo de Pureza (which I haven’t gotten around to seeing yet).
It’s an examination of the logical endgame of extreme patriarchy where the parents prevent their young adult children from any interaction with the outside world at all (with one creepy exception).
The children spend all day engaged in idiotic contests competing for parental approval expressed as stickers they place on the headboards of their beds and having their heads filled with nonsense (the parents teach them for example that the word ‘sea’ means a kind of armchair and the ‘highway’ is a strong wind and that the planes flying overhead are toys that sometimes fall into the yard).
The father is brought to violent rage by any challenge to this creepy order.
It strikes me that this (and probably the mexican movie) and the Argentine movie La Nona (about an old woman whose family wrecks their lives trying to feed her rapacious appetite) are good introductions to explain extreme patriarchical dysfunction to those who don’t get it (more visceral than the Unamuno story).
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Here’s the movie with Spanish subtitles…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIS0WaBkFm8
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I totally need to see this!!! Thank you!
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From what you’ve written, it has the potential to be very traumatic for you (I experienced nothing remotely like this and it was traumatic, scarier than 9 out of 10 horror movies I’ve seen).
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“From what you’ve written, it has the potential to be very traumatic for you”
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I haven’t seen La Nona either.
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Voila
and El Castillo de Pureza
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ4_vu7KUDg
It’s scary how much I love youtube (if I didn’t have to work I’d probably spend 15 hours a day watching tv and movies from around the world (even without subtitles in any language I understand).
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Maybe I should start exploring it as well. I had no idea one could find good movies om YouTube.
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The video quality is often crap if you care about that (I don’t especially).
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This is a realy crazy story. Who are these people? Do they belong to some sort of weird libertarianish doomsday abandon-society-or-it-will-eat-your-children cult?
LikeLike
I have no idea. Neither do I know how they got into my blogroll. The linked weirdo refers to me as “blogger girl”, which, given my age, tells us a lot about his view of women.
LikeLike