C.K. Sample

If you’re a child, please don’t read this post.

As Kristin and I were watching Santa Claus is Coming to Town tonight, I started thinking about Foucault’s Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, and his discussion of the panopticon and panopticism (here’s a random excerpt from the book that I found via a quick search if you’ve never read it; Wikipedia, of course, also has an entry on the book). If you were to ever study for an advanced degree in literature with a focus in critical theory, or perhaps study for a degree in philosophy, you would probably read this book (if you haven’t and these descriptions fit you, you should) and you’d also be plagued with thought processes for the rest of your life that cause you to think of the book while watching children’s stop-motion animation pieces like Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Listening to Fred Astaire telling the kids (the captive invisible audience for the tale; in other words you while you’re watching it; the show casts all audience members in the role of a child eager to hear the great origin story of Santa Claus) about Santa’s magic snowball that he can peer in to like an all-seeing god to see whether you’re being naughty or nice so be good for the sake of goodness—listening to Fred Astaire telling you about this will suddenly make you start thinking about the panopticon and Big Brother and the ever-watchful eyes on us that keep us disciplined. That is what you’ll think about if you’ve read the book and you’ve studied far too many books in graduate school. I recommend against it.

In any case, that’s what I started thinking about while watching the show, and although I love gifts and I really enjoy Christmas, I really hate the lie of Santa Claus that we tell our children both because it is a lie and because it is a bribe to persuade them to act good, not for the sake of goodness, but so that they will get toys at Christmas time. The whole thing smacks of dishonesty and hypocrisy and I hate it. I always have ever since I first learned that there wasn’t a Santa Claus when I was a child. I hated it more as I grew up and started reading Foucault. And I still hate it when I think of Foucault while watching a Christmas show that, admittedly, I love (because I love stop-motion and I love the one foot in front of the other song, which is a good message). I don’t have any kids, but I plan on having children someday (hopefully sooner rather than later) and I really don’t want to tell them these lies. Kristin says I’m just a grinch and interested in destroying the magic of the holidays, but can’t it be magical and fun and honest? Or am I being too much of a snobbish sort who has read too many books, filled his head with idealist thoughts, over thinks things, and I just need to relax?