Movie Night & Democratic Process

by Daniel Griffin

Four years ago our family didn’t have a TV. We were all books, games, toys and music. Today we not only have a TV, but cable and a VCR/DVD player. The works. In truth we don’t watch much TV, but every Friday night for the past few months, we’ve all sat down together to watch a movie. There’s a lot of pleasure in the ritual: the kids’ manic anticipation, snuggling under a blanket, the snacks. Occasionally we even watch a good movie.

That last issue is the struggle: How to find a decent movie we all want to watch. With three kids and two adults, unanimity is pretty difficult. Even with a free vote, at least one family member often ends up in some form of distress—from grumpiness to tears. Unfortunately, in this house, I’m the one left out by voter demographics. I’m the only male and my wife and I are outnumbered by the kids.

We recently voted between The Wizard of Oz and High School Musical 3. Needless to say, we ended up spending the night with Troy, Gabriella and the kids from East High. In fact, we’ve spent a lot of Friday nights with the kids from East High. It’s gotten to the point that Vivian, who is only three, insists on being called Gabriella. When I say, “Vivian, it’s time to clean up,” she says, “I’m not Vivian.” I have to say, “Gabriella, it’s time to clean up” before she’ll lift a finger.

The only good thing about watching High School Musical again was the fact that Vivian got up and danced along with every song. Rather than watch the movie, my wife and I watched her shuffling about, spinning and swaying in the darkened living room.

The voting system has given us a few good movies, but it’s also delivered some duds. I fell asleep during Alvin and the Chipmunks, gave up half way through Camp Rock and turned my back on the TV to surf the net during Jump In. Still, there’s enough fun in Family Movie Night that I decided I should try and rescue it from unbridled democracy. With a few constitutional changes we might get a better selection of movies.

Vivian tends to vote for every movie—she just likes to put her hand up when someone else does, so the next movie night I made a rule: double voting is the equivalent of a spoiled ballot. Neither vote counts. Of course, when voting time came, Evelyn, who is our eldest, held Viv’s hand down at the appropriate time so she wouldn’t double vote.

Next, I tried to introduce a secret ballot. Eyes closed, heads down. Tessa peeked, but that didn’t matter—with me as the vote counter and no chads hanging around as evidence, I figured I could take charge. Of course, the moment the vote was done, the kids all started discussing who’d voted for what. They wanted to make sure the numbers added up.

And then one week Are We There Yet won the vote. I’m no prude, but I was a bit uncomfortable sitting with my preschool-aged children watching Ice T ogling Nia Long’s cleavage and talking to his baseball action figure about how to get her into bed. The two children in the movie weren’t exactly role models either—frankly, they were little turds.

A week later, in a big step towards becoming the parent I swore I’d never be, I started looking up movies on parental-approval websites. Since then I’ve nixed several movies for a variety of reasons: too scary, too violent, too crass. It’s not that I’ve given up hoping for better movies on Friday nights. It’s just that for now I’m settling for weeding out the worst.

Daniel Griffin is a writer and a father of three. He lives in Victoria.