Hijacking Norman Rockwell

Some weeks ago a friend passed around an e-mail titled: Norman Rockwell. She was organizing a field trip to Fort Lauderdale to see his work. Who would like to join her and her kids?

Although I don't care much for Rockwell's work (surprised by his success, Rockwell used to describe himself as only an "illustrator hack"), I immediately wrote back that yes, we would join them; Simon and I would be there. This is is South Florida; Vermeer and Rembrandt exhibits don't come down here; we are lucky to get Rockwell. Moreover, it occurred to me that it would be a great opportunity to point out the distinction between fine art and illustration, to talk about the great age of newspapers and The Saturday Evening Post, for which Rockwell did the covers for many decades. Furthermore, it seemed to me that his pictures were thoroughly accessible and uncomplicated, full of images that alluded to the Great Depression and the World War II in ways breezy and light--Simon might like them.

A week before the field trip, my friend sent out some links to videos about Rockwell on Youtube, as well this tidbit of information: one of the main pictures featured in the exhibit was the painting he did of Ruby Bridges. We might want to see the movie by the same name, she wrote. It was made by Walt Disney but quite good, great to watch with kids.

From one minute to the next, our visit to the exhibition had very little to do with teaching Simon about illustration and newspapers, or about Norman Rockwell, for that matter. It suddenly was singularly an opportunity to discuss segregation.

It happened that the past two weeks we have been talking about the beginning of systematic segregation in the South. After the Civil War, federal troops were sent to the South to oversee the fair and equal treatment of former slaves. The South hated having Union troops hanging around, checking every move. At the beginning of the administration of Rutherford Hayes, in 1876, twelve years after the end of the Civil War, the troops were removed. Hayes thought the South had been occupied long enough and that the war and reconstruction had altered the South in foundational ways.

Not so. Immediately after the troops started marching north, the South began to strip blacks of their rights. Black elected leaders were voted out of office while schools, restaurants, hospitals, bathrooms, stores, beaches, etc. were segregated. Black citizens found themselves not much better off than they had been before the war.

"All those people died for nothing," said Simon.

"Six hundred thousand," I said. "But Simon, it wasn't for nothing. Slavery did end."

"Yes, but it was a long time until Martin Luther King."

The mail brought the movie about Ruby Bridges in its crisp red Netflix envelope, and we spent one afternoon last week on the couch watching it, or trying to watch it. The scenes in which Ruby, all of six years old, walks toward her white school through a throng of crazed white protesters are hard to watch. Maybe because I had a cold, and maybe because I wasn't ready for so much hate and viciousness, my voice kept faltering when I paused the movie to explain what was going on. To protect me, and maybe to protect himself, Simon took over the remote and pressed the mute button whenever scenes were washed in hate.

"Mom, we know that they are saying--just mean stuff. We don't have to listen."

Wise as Moses, Simon refused to give the remote back and said calmly over the muted image of yelling white folks: "I'll tell you what they are saying, Mom. Just bad stuff: hang, die, kill--words like that."

This son of mine, who loves watching sci-fi movies in which people, building, cities, whole planets and galaxies blow up, couldn't handle those words shouted in New Orleans in 1960.

At the exhibit, Simon found most of the work "boring," however hard I tried to ask him questions, to help him find the soldiers, the cheerful children, the happy families. We spent some time in front of the Ruby Bridges painting, noticing the hurled tomato that missed its target and splattered against the wall behind her. We talked about how tiny she was, how courageous, and why Rockwell painted her in a white dress, white socks, white shoes, with a white ribbon in her hair. However hard I tried, I couldn't get Simon interested in anything else hanging on the walls at the exhibition.

"Can we go home now?"

* * *

I've been persevarating this weekend about whether I had done Simon a disservice. I had hijacked Norman Rockwell to teach Simon about segregation.

If I'm honest, I have to admit that I do this sort of thing all the time, to almost every topic we touch upon--I'm an equal opportunity hijacker. I use stories, novels, biographies, history, art, music to teach Simon all that I know about the world. Who cares about dates and details and that Norman Rockwell was a terrific illustrator who did covers for The Saturday Evening Post during the great age of newspapers? Instead I teach him once more about suffering and injustice, and about dignity, valor, patience, kindness, and respect. I focus on a small area of a large canvas at a spacious exhibition to point out a stinging injustice and the unstinting courage that is its match.

Is this a pedagogical favor, or isn't it? Am I helping Simon shape his responses, or am I preempting them?

So here's my answer, arrived at with some hand-wringing and more than a few late night talks with George: I want Simon to care. I want him to have an opinion about everything. I want him to think critically and then take sides. I want him to learn all the facts and then decide who was right, who was wrong, and what was at stake. I want him to know that is not only his right but his duty. History, like anything else he will encounter, is not just a matter of dates and names and locations and body-counts. It demands a critical response. In the case of history, the body count alone obliges an opinion, not just any opinion, but a well-thought out strong opinion, a resounding response. Responding is a sign of respect. It means you care.

So, am I shaping and preempting Simon's responses to the material we cover? You bet. I'm doing both. But I hope that in the process he's learning that everything that his mind encounters--including everything that comes out of my mouth--gives him not only the opportunity but also the right to sharpen his critical skills. Obviously, he needs to use his judgment as to what opinions he keeps to himself, and which ones he voices out loud. But he must take the time to shape them--out of respect for the world around him, but also out of respect for himself. I've come to realize over the last couple of days that cogito ergo sum is, in part, an ethical statement.