Reality Boy

Reality Boy

I don't remember how many years back I did some babysitting for
a neighbor. Her daughter was quite fond of a reality show in which a
nanny would come to the home of a family experiencing discipline
problems and iron them out. I didn't share the popular opinion that
this was a good thing. Help from a professional seemed fine. It was
the airing it for gazillions of viewers in a format that would last
forever that had me concerned. Some of these kids were much too young
to give anything like informed consent. Would the long term effects
on their treatment by others, their family dynamics, and their life
trajectories be anything but benign?
I'd forgotten about those musings until I picked up A. S. King's
Reality Boy, a fast paced novel that addresses those concerns. High
school student Gerald had some anger management problems and unusual
ways of expressing himself going on when he was five. His family, in
desperation, invited reality television into their home and life in
the form of a nanny and a myriad of cameras that made even intimate
moments accessible to a mass audience and existing in perpetuity in
cyberspace. Almost everyone he meets has seen the most outré behavior
of his young life. It doesn't make friendship or dating exactly
easy. In fact it gives bullies more than enough ammunition. He's in
special ed classes even though he has the potential to handle regular
academic work. The long term effects on his family structure seem to
have been more divisive than anything else. And guess what! He's
still angry.
The story of a young man trying to reshape his life against huge
odds is riveting. The questions it poses about the unintended
consequences of American's far more public life styles, especially for
those too young to grasp all the implications, are unfortunately all
too relevant.
On a personal note, I can remember how I felt when my mom showed
certain photographs involving infant nudity to a limited audience of
friends and family. I can't imagine what it would be like to have the
most embarassing moments of my childhood on display for say my school
committee colleagues, my kids, and the folks who will decide if I'm
grad school material.
A great big shout out goes out to all who try to discover and cope
with the ethics of our all too rapidly evolving technologies and
relationships to them.
Julia Emily Hathaway



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