Cookie Crisp, crimefighting, and other kiddie capers

By Matt Wiegle

If we don't act quickly, the Tamagotchi generation is going to murder all of us. The uneasy cease-fire between adults and children has held for several decades now, thanks in part to the promises that American consumer society offers. Unfortunately, we are slowly turning those very promises against ourselves, and the same messages we use to keep the juvenile proletariat in check may soon incite it to bloody revolution.

The unspoken agreement between society's older and younger strata runs something like this: children keep their id-fueled whines in check and grudgingly accept whatever "pearls of wisdom" we offer that might prepare them for eventual positions of authority. In return, we grant them limited access to the American Dream through the regular dispensation of allowances, track pants, and KoRn CDs, with the implicit understanding that they will eventually have full agency. However, revolutionary subtexts that promise young people too much too soon have subverted the media we use to convey this message.

Look at the commercials for Cookie Crisp cereal. Before 1997, the Cookie Cop was presented as a hero, safeguarding the product from the evil designs of the Cookie Crook and his canine sidekick. Recently, though, the ads' dynamic shifted. Cookie Crook's dog is now presented as an ally of children, convincing cruel authority figures like the cop that, yes, you can have cookies for breakfast, and it's part of this balanced meal. In later versions, the dog actually forces morsels of Cookie Crisp into the mouth of an umpire on behalf of his little pals.

Up and down the television dial, packs of revolutionary youngsters seize power. In a video by the New Radicals, disenfranchised youths drive adults out of a mall in a pro-child coup, capturing rent-a-cops in nets. They don't show the atrocities that the new regime must perpetrate in order to stay in power, but I have no doubt that the rent-a-cop, once offscreen, was executed and fed to the pet-store gerbils. "You only get what you give," indeed.

On Planet Lunch, biology class is dismissed forever; the teacher is miniaturized and confined to a jar. In the cartoon series Batman Beyond, some callow teenager gets to take over Batman duty from Bruce Wayne. While this subtext of youthful empowerment is useful for building self-esteem or whatever we think it's good for children to have, it also sets adults up as convenient scapegoats when the product inevitably fails to provide the freedom from societal strictures that it promises. If Game Boy Color doesn't take you to a better land, it's certainly not Nintendo's fault; it's that of the pesky adult authority figure who's keeping you down.

The city of Athens, Greece, may be an example of what lies ahead for us all. According to an Associated Press article (1/22/99), groups of protesting students have erected barricades in the streets, bringing the city to a two-month standstill. Their rage stems from tough new school exams, a crime against which countless U.S. breakfast-cereal ads have railed. If it happened in Greece, it can happen in America and elsewhere; we're clearly in danger of a worldwide rash of revolutions similar to those of the mid-19th century.

And Lord protect us when those revolutions come. Roadblocks will bar our path to work. Shrieking hordes will pull us from our sport-utility vehicles and force-feed us Cookie Crisp until our stomachs pass capacity and burst, splattering our internal organs with chocolate chip. Appeals to "unconditional love," worn out from years of cynical abuse, will go unheard as we are slain and our bodies devoured, the children finally fulfilling Freud's darkest visions.

In order to satisfy their now-insatiable demand for empowerment, we need to enfranchise youths into our systems of power. Therefore, I propose that we create a national holiday devoted to granting our children the authority to police our communities, designated National Children Beat Up Criminals Day. Like the teenager in Batman Beyond, our nation's youth would be properly trained in basic enforcement and apprehension techniques and allowed to patrol streets in search of crime. Any crooks encountered could be subdued, arrested, and tried with the same gravity accorded an adult perpetrator. Those too young to walk the beat could undergo training with consenting criminals in controlled environments. Surely Timothy McVeigh would welcome a commutation of his death sentence; in return, he would then be released into a large caged arena, where squads of righteous youngsters armed with brass knuckles and grappling hooks would hunt him down like an animal.

There can be no greater way to show our belief in our children than by allowing them to protect, serve, and die for our country. In the process, they will learn right from wrong and come to understand positions of responsibility more fully than they ever have before. Institute Beat Up Criminals Day, and our offspring will discover that freedom stems from service, not cereal.

Matt Wiegle is a junior in Morse.

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