I had a rare “night out” on Friday, so there had to be a blip in our usual Georgia tuck-in routine.

“Will you give me one hundred kisses when you get home?” Georgia asked.

“I’ll give you twenty kisses when I get home, and then eighty more in the morning when you wake up!”

“Is the movie just for adults? Will there be any other children there?” she asked, making sure she wasn’t missing anything.

“It will be very boring for children, it’s about the ways people try to sell stuff to kids and the people who make sure kids buy their kind of toys. It’s not going to be a very fun movie.” As I said it I felt a little sorry for myself. Yeah! Why can’t I just go see something fun? Why not some brainless blockbuster? Oh yeah, I hate blockbuster movies! I hate preview ads and product placement. I am doomed to be the Momster, watching movies about product placement in movies! I talked about Consuming Kids [0] in a previous Momster article, and I have been very interested to see it, though I knew it would be no laugh riot!

So my pal Jenny and I walked over to the screening. We were there with about 25 others, and even some kids. The movie started with ominous music and dark images. Then, pow, pow, pow, one screaming, jumping, joyous kid commercial blast after another, and we were off! I know a lot about how people market to kids, but I was truly aghast at a lot of what I saw. Images of people strapping a cute little hat on a sweet little baby – a hat that had sensors in it so when the baby’s brain fired at a certain image, the researchers could note it for the benefit of marketing. Ad laden radio stations for school buses that target kids as a captive audience, with no way to turn off the noise. The fascinatingly sweet-evil voice of one marketer who claims that kids are there to be exploited: if by the end of the day she has their $$ in her pocket, she’s done her job.

I was shocked to learn that efforts in the 70s to curtail marketing to kids actually led to the destruction of the few policies that were in place, and deregulation created a market frenzy that to this day has no rule. Any efforts to stop the madness are shut down by companies claiming (and winning) that marketing to kids is protected free speech. Marketers, and anti-regulation pundits, decry regulation and blame parents for letting the kids be exposed to all the crassness, bling, violence and classist cruelty (aimed at shaming kids to buy the “right’ thing). But as Enola Aird of the Motherhood Project [1] said brilliantly, “Responsible adults would say that, of course, parents are responsible, but if children are not with their parents 24 hours a day – if they’re in school and the school is full of advertising and marketing… I think it’s asking an awful lot of parents to take all the responsibility. It’s akin to a owner of a large fleet of trucks announcing that ‘our fleet of trucks from now on is going to be barreling down the road, especially where children are, at 150 miles an hour. Parents watch out. It’s your job to take care that your children don’t get hurt.’ No one would argue, in that case, that the owner of the fleet of trucks doesn’t bear any responsibility at all.”

It’s a good documentary, and made me feel like I’ve been on the right track keeping Georgia out of commercial culture as much as I can. I don’t want her to be in a bubble, but I want us to be the ones influencing her ideals and buying habits, at least until she has a firm base to operate from. I will fight the marketers who want my child’s brain and money, and who think “an antisocial behavior in pursuit of a product is a good thing.” If you find that statement chilling, check out the film [2]. Find a screening near you [3], or watch it online [4] (it says “preview” throughout but it’s still powerful!). Then check out ways you can get active [5]. Susan Linn put it well, “Parents can’t cope with this alone. They need help. We have a 15 billion dollar industry that is working day and night to undermine parental authority.”

The Momster says: let’s take it back.