Child Stars: Unsafe at Any Speed

With a little less snark than usual I submit to you this post. Why do we have child stars? I mean, in the bigger picture, isn't there something creepy about parents who parade prancing and emoting children in front of us for financial gain? Or maybe parading their kids around fulfills some sense of unfulfilled potential on their part. Whatever the case: child stardom from a standpoint of labor and psychological well being is wrong.

Think of all those creepy commercials that feed off of our natural affection for innocent children to part us from our pocketbooks. Think of "Mikey" on the cereal commercials. Think of the Oscar Meyer kid. Effective, no? I'll bet you're humming that tune right now at the keyboard. We certainly do not need children pitching cold cuts on tv.

But what about acting? That is harder, I think, to pull off such a ban in a modern democracy. I think that children on tv or in film should be restricted in some manner. I know what you're thinking: The Corsair has finally let his totalitarian roots show. But taken from the standpoint that 7 year old kids do not work in mines, maybe we can do something about this.

I don't mean ban kids from the movies altogether: I just mean set it up so that a kid under, say, 14 has to justify the labor, perhaps in front of a judge in family court even. If the director or central casting can argue to the judge that the role is a learning experience that will benefit the child even as it benefits the box office, then, fine.

Why is The Corsair bringing this up now? Two words and one name: Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson was a child star who gave up his childhood to enrich his freaky parents. Somewhere along the line his whole mindset got haywired and we are in the mess we are in now.

And it's not just Michael Jackson. Child stars are menaces to society. For every relatively successful person like Danny Bonaduce (who has his issues) there are tragedies like Dana Plato, Todd Bridges and the rest of them. In fact, the only people whom I have ever seen defending child actors are their whacked out parents on, say, Maury Pauvich or Oprah. We all are averse to child stars -- whether the freaky mousekateers who evolve into plastic life forms, or the sitcom cuties who evolve into Scott Baio's.

Don't even mention Halley Joel Osment. After losing his Oscar bid Osment is said to have broken down into uncontrollable tears. So much so that he didn't stop until Harrison Ford offered him a part in his next movie, which ultimately never panned out (hey, it's a tough town). Either Osment was being genuine in his severe dejection at the loss, or he was crazy like a fox and either position is not what we as Americans want for our children.

Let's make it a court issue for people to thrust their children into the entertaionment media.