If you're a parent, you need to understand a new threat to your children's health: the possibility of infection with the DVD virus. Your children can now be exposed to DVDs at the homes of their friends, in supermarkets and shopping centres -- even public libraries are no longer safe.
My son is only two years old, and first became exposed to DVD during a single encounter with Monsters, Inc. at a party. After seeing this DVD once, for ten minutes, at the house of a friend, his mood changed. His face became red. He then asked to watch 'Scary Bear', as he called it, at ten-minute intervals every day for the next two weeks. This produced irritation, mood swings and increasing anger until we finally gave in and bought a copy. He has now seen Monsters, Inc. 374 times. Be warned. This could happen to you.
It's now common to see children as young as 18 months deftly remove a DVD from its package, turn on a television set, power up a DVD player, choose the correct AV input and hit play with the calm authority of a professional broadcast technician. Once DVD has taken hold, family life has to change to support it.
A vicious irony of the DVD menace is that in theory it offers instant gratification: the child should be able to press play and be instantly be transported to a world of animated plasticine dogs, noble clownfish and gruff-but-loveable mammoths. In practice, DVD load times and other assorted flim-flam make loading a DVD Chinese water torture for everyone involved.
This is a huge problem, because a two year old has the easy patience and genial tolerance of a crack-addled street screamer on meth amphetamine, and he or she JUST CAN'T WAIT. With toddlers it's all about focus, yet DVDs force them to wade through an interminable series of trailers. Even if it's possible to fast-forward these ghastly, not-available-in-stores trailers for substandard, never-heard-of-it merchandise (films about rabbits with no ears, Ninja kittens or budgies with leukaemia) the child always manages to see at least one frame of each, and cries "Want that one!" in a voice of agonised longing.
There's then a violent, sinister anti-piracy warning with a thrash-metal soundtrack that puts your own hair on end and makes small people wail in terror. When the DVD menu finally appears and you press play, there's a trailer for Dolby THX or some other audio standard. The audience may be listening, but you're still not watching the bloody film. Finally the producer credits roll -- and it's a co-production, so you get three different animated producer credits, from Disney, Pixar and Acme Films -- before the friendly dinosaur or lovable penguin actually appears, fifteen minutes after the whole sorry process began. By this time, your child is a red-faced ball of frustration beating his forehead against your LCD screen, your entire body is bathed in sweat, and you still have to watch Monsters, Inc. for the 375th time. My favourite line is, "We scare, because we care." Believe me, I've had time to think about it.
I would gladly pay more money for a child-proof, industrial-strength DVD that featured no illustrations on the packaging, thus giving the child no easy cues about which film to refuse (they always want the one that's gone missing), and which played three seconds after being inserted into the drive.
We can't cure these children. It's too late for them, and DVD is simply too well established, but with the help of the technology industry, we may be able to bring a little peace, a little comfort, to the families dealing with this terrible condition.
A final advisory: there is one DVD problem that requires drastic action. If anyone tries to bring a DVD of The Wiggles into your home, bolt the door and then move. Leave no forwarding address. Please. Think of the children.
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