Someone wrote a letter to The New York Times Ethicist column about whether or not it was ethical to tell Koko the gorilla that her friend Robin Williams had died. At first glance this seems like a pretty basic question: Why create unnecessary anguish in an animal over something that she would never find out on her own? But then you have to ask yourself about the nature of the interactions with Koko in the first place. She has shown us that animals are capable of empathy, anger, glee, and sadness. If our purpose is to see how "human" a gorilla can be, then let's treat her like one. We all have to deal with unpleasant things.
I have to remind myself of this when I watch MasterChef Junior. It's a spinoff of MasterChef that features kids 13 and under who are ridiculously talented cooks. They are also prime Disney Channel material, full of personality and quirks. A few of them have some adorable speech impediments, which, like obesity, is something we find cute in small children but absolutely unacceptable by puberty. If you are fat with a lisp at 13 you might as well just be homeschooled. I'm pretty sure that there are stylists backstage who are helping each child hone his or her look; a season one runner-up wore exaggerated Minnie Mouse bow-style headbands of all colors and stripes that just screamed "props department." The show also employs some sort of filter over the camera that makes greens purplish and oranges fire-red. Everything is on broil, man, not simmer.
The problem arises when the wee ones make mistakes, or have some sort of failure and you see the sides of their mouths start to tremble. Their eyes well up. Their chin goes down. I was born with empathy to spare and I'm instantly transported into their little psyches like a medium. I know how it feels to screw up mashed potatoes when you only have 30 seconds left and Madison from Shreveport has taken the last stick of butter. What's even stranger is that as I channel their pain I go even further with it. You can't do anything right, Katy. Why are you even here, Katy? Did you think you could actually pull this off? Then there's this dark curtain of shame that lowers. In short, this show is hella triggering.
I once had a therapist who was working with me on this stuff, all the pain that I didn't know how to deal with as a kid. We were talking about when I would have my own kids, and how I would never want them to see Bambi or read a book where the dog died. I didn't want them to feel that bad. But she pointed out to me that in healthy houses, children get sad and the parents deal with it with them. They let them feel sad and process it. This was a total revelation for me. Whoa, it's okay to feel bad. It's what you do with those feeling that matters.
The kids on MasterChef Junior are blowing my mind with how together they are. They don't take each rejection as a blueprint for an entire life's worth of never succeeding. They cry when they undercook their pork but then they know that they have done better before and will do better again. All of this leads me to wonder how exactly they were vetted. Jackie Cooper told a story in his book Please Don't Shoot My Dog about when he was a child actor in The Champ in 1931. In order to get him to cry, the filmmakers took his dog backstage and fired a pistol. I can't see Gordon Ramsay doing such a thing (Joe Bastianich, maybe), but there had to have been some sort of test to see how the children handled bad feelings. These kids have what it takes.
When all is said and done though, is it ethical to put little kids in high-pressure situations that pit them against one another and open them up for crushing defeats? Is it okay to see a small child shaking and in tears over some stupid cupcake? I'm still uncomfortable with it. I guess at heart I'm that flaky liberal parent who wants all the kids to get "I'm Special!" T-shirts. I want to watch Mork and Mindy with Koko and laugh, and never ever tell her that Robin's not around anymore. I want everyone to win.
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