Dads Are the Dreamkiller
Gran Turismo, video games, and whether being a wet blanket is the wrong move
Last week, I mentioned that we took the kids to the drive-in movie theatre on Cape Cod, where we saw Barbie and Gran Turismo. 18 bajillion dollars later, I’m pretty sure you know what Barbie is, and judging by the way 95% of the cars at the drive-in left when Barbie ended, before the second half of the double-feature, you probably don’t know much about Gran Turismo.
Gran Turismo is a “based on a true story” sports flick about a teenager who is so good at the classic PlayStation racing game “Gran Turismo” that, thanks to a marketing scheme, he qualifies for a real-life Formula One boot camp designed to see if video game driving skills can translate to real-life driving skills. And what do you know, his do! (It more or less really happened, somehow.)
My 12yo fell asleep only a few minutes into the movie, and thank God he did! For a few years now, I’ve been trying to diversify my son’s interests to include anything outside of video games, because he needs to have some actual skills to fall back on (I’m such a dad!), for the sake of his personal development and also his eventual need to be a functional, financially independent adult.
What this movie presupposes is… what if he doesn’t?
That’s the fear of letting him watch Gran Turismo: that it might make him think he doesn’t need to diversify shit.
The movie is a wish-fulfillment fantasy in which a boy who loves video games uses them to become rich and successful. It follows the standard sports movie template of an underdog being told over and over that he can’t do something until he eventually proves everyone wrong and triumphs. It’s a wonderful dream, but - despite the “based on a true story” conceit, there’s a reason it’s a movie, and it’s my job to teach my kids the different between dreams and reality.
We could all quit our jobs and pursue our passions and most of us would end up living in cardboard boxes because most passions don’t pay. As we get older, most of us eventually come to realize that sad truth. So we compromise and try to do something that pays well (enough) and that we like (enough) so that going to work every day isn’t a soul-crushing nightmare. That’s just the way it is, more often than not.
I want my 12yo to have dreams but I also want him to know that the real world isn’t always receptive to them. It sucks, but sometimes being a wet blanket is a parent’s job. Right?
Maybe not. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s that hedging of bets, the constant “you need a backup plan!” that most parents feel compelled to suggest that holds dreamers back? To my son, it undoubtedly comes off as a lack of faith in his abilities, or at the very least as annoying nagging from an out-of-touch fuddy-duddy dad who just doesn’t get it.
And I don’t get it. Not only am I not a gamer, I’m also not one of those people who’s always known what I wanted to do with my life, whether it was be a lawyer (fine with my parents) doctor or a (that’s not a realistic career path) rock singer. I spent a long time searching for a viable career that allows me to feed myself and my loved ones and doesn’t make me want to walk into traffic on the way to the office. It took a while, but I’ve managed to strike that tenuous balance, while finding other outlets to satisfy my creative side (you’re reading one right now).
I imagine that’s the situation most of us are in. Dreams are all good but there’s a time to put away childish things, right?
Except maybe my son does know what he wants to do, and as technology becomes more and more central to our lives - and playing actual video games continues to become less child focused hobby and more adult-based industry - maybe he can have it all. Maybe I need to encourage his gaming, help him lean further in to the thing he loves most and hope he’s able to find, or even carve out, a niche there that lets him live the life of his dreams. After all, I have a cousin who’s made a mint as a Minecraft YouTuber. It is possible!
Plenty of parents before me have scoffed at their kids’ abilities to actually make the pros, or get a record deal, or land a part in a Hollywood movie, and plenty of kids - a much smaller percentage than the naysaying parents, but still, a lot - have made their dreams come true. And maybe it’s that tunnel vision, that singular focus, that allows for it.
Or maybe I need to give away all his shit and force him to study more. That’s an awful lot of maybes, but that’s parenting. I don’t know what I’m doing. There is no blueprint, there are no instructions, there is no right way. It’s all one big gamble.
Check back in 30 years and let’s see how it goes.
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Pop Culture Stuff
One of my favorite things to do as a parent is introduce my kids to movies I love, and now that Detective Munch is about to turn 13 - and, more importantly, is increasingly able to sit through movies that don’t always involve capes and lightsabers - I’ve been leveling him up a bit. Which is why I showed him his first Spike Lee movie over the weekend.
It wasn’t Do the Right Thing, though that is definitely on the list - honestly, I’m hoping they’ll show that in his Brooklyn school! I showed him Inside Man, which is a little less Spike Lee-ish (not his own script, for one) than most of his flicks, but is a very entertaining - and NYC-centric - tale about a bank robbery. He was locked in the whole time, which bodes well for our next movie: Heat! (I’m kidding. Or am I?)
Mom and Buried and I watched How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which is a very tense, very timely, and not-at-all heavy-handed look at some young activists trying to fight back against climate change and the capitalist system that ignores it. Maybe I’ll show my kids that one soon too! It’s on Hulu.
Tonight The Morning Show comes back on AppleTV+. The Morning Show is an absolute trainwreck of a TV program - it’s absurd and stupid and consistently about things it shouldn’t be about - and I hate it and will be watching every week.