The
Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 266 No 7131 p66 Back to the fold
Contrived chaos
Strange curriculum
It seems to me that much of the lack of discipline, lack of consideration
for others, and tendency to violence and lawlessness we see in children, teenagers
and adults today may be attributable to the decline of family mores in some
sections of modern society.
The ancient institution of the family arose from a need to guard one’s spouse
and children from threats of the outside world and train them to deal with hazardous
situations. Humans are not alone in this, for much the same applies to other
animal species in their struggle to keep alive. An excessive family fixation
might, of course, be a source of trouble in fermenting vendettas and guarding
against imagined usurpation of functions of the elders by the young. The old
Roman concept of the gens resulted in nepotism and sometimes murder.
As a rule, however, there was an orderly arrangement within the domus
of the familia under the control of a wise paterfamilias. Later
on, a more or less disciplined family was accepted in all countries, but sometimes
became unduly authoritarian and repressive.
The situation today has been distorted by economic and social changes, so that
often a lone parent is obliged to look after a child and also earn a living,
or else the two parents feel it necessary to undertake independent paid employment.
Such is the urge to acquire more and more possessions and resources in our consumer-led
society that children may take second place in their parents’ attentions, and
it appears that the teaching of good social habits and neighbourly obligations
is suffering as a consequence. Moreover, the bonds between family members are
weaker. Too often families split up and live long distances apart, and the highly
important influence of grandparents, particularly a grandmother, fails to be
felt by children. Such, many students of the scene believe, is the milieu in
which criminal and antisocial tendencies thrive.
Somehow, people must be persuaded that there are many goods and services which
they really do not need, and that a contented life can be enjoyed in the home
and in the company of their children. Not a politically popular view, I imagine,
but one which should, I think, be seriously advanced.
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With January comes the peak of the ever-popular pantomime season, when we
can indulge our passion for folklore and sheer buffoonery in combination. Pantomime
is an entertainment, almost confined to our own United Kingdom, primarily for
children and dramatising fairy tales or nursery stories, and characterised by
jokes, japes, slapstick comedy, comics in animal disguises, and transvestite
dames and boys.
The word pantomime derives from the Greek panta and mimos, meaning
“imitating everything”. In classical times it was just mime performed by actors
who illustrated fables. Later it took shape from the Italian commedia dell’arte,
where the principal characters were Harlequin and Columbine, who remained silent,
accompanied by a clown who did not. By the 19th century it had progressed to
song, dance and crude humour in which good always triumphs over evil. The hero
is always a woman and the comic dame a man.
The popular folk tales include the stories of Cinderella, Aladdin, Puss-in-Boots,
Dick Whittington, Jack and the Beanstalk, Mother Goose and Robinson Crusoe.
Today, almost any children’s story can be adapted to construct a pantomime,
although there remains a tendency to stick to the traditional themes, however
much they may be modernised by topical allusions. One important feature is that
children in the pantomime audience should be drawn into the action and shepherded
on to the stage to join a chorus.
Cinderella has always been a firm favourite, since it has its romantic as well
as its comic aspects. Perrault’s Cendrillon, Cinders, is offset by her two elderly
and ugly sisters, who treat her as the household drudge and arouse the sympathy
of the audience for her plight. Perrault’s introduction of her pantouffles
de vair, signifying slippers made from fur, and not from glass, introduced
a strange element into the story. Apparently Perrault himself, when he popularised
the story in 1697, used the word verre and so started the confusion.
Jack, climbing his beanstalk and confronting the ogre, has been just as popular,
perhaps because of the distress of his mother, whose cow was sold to buy beans,
and because of the frightful ogre and his golden hoard.
Mother Goose, devised as a tale by Perrault in 1687, featured in an early pantomime
in 1806, showed a kindly old witch associated with a stupid boy called Jack.
In quite a different category comes the popular Aladdin, based on tales from
the celebrated Arabian Nights Entertainments, whose hero, a poor boy, obtains
a ring and a magic lamp which can be used to compel a genie to build Aladdin
a palace, whereupon he marries the daughter of a sultan of China. Pantomime
tradition makes Aladdin’s mother, Widow Twankey, the owner of a laundry, which
can be used for all manner of comic entertainment.
Other establishments which feature in pantomime have included schoolrooms and
grocers’ shops, which make possible crazy antics such as bags of “self-raising
flour” rising into the air when approached, and disappearing into the theatre
flies. I have to admit I have never yet seen a pharmacy feature in the transformation
scene of a pantomime, but I suspect it offers possibilities for a good laugh
when the comics get loose.
Furthermore, pantomime offers grand scope for impressive effects, aided by lighting
and firework devices. Belonging to a pantomime cast has in my experience led
to demands on a pharmacist to engineer some prodigies of lighting, explosions
and smoke effects, not to mention sound effects. At a humbler level it involves
the pharmacist in the manufacture of cosmetic products, from blood to tattoos.
The scientific and technical background of pharmacy can never be overlooked
when the New Year’s pantomime is in the making. May it be ever so. Special effects
can never be more safe than in experienced pharmaceutical hands.
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It is often suggested that there should be lessons in “citizenship” at
school, that is, I suppose, lessons in public morality. I deeply doubt the utility
of such lessons. Instead, I believe we must start at the beginning, and help
children to discover that there is such a thing as private morality, the ethics
of conscience and of possible ideals, a system within which they can personally
and individually set goals for themselves, and which will help to give significance
to their lives. --
Mary Warnock: ‘An intelligent person’s guide to ethics’ (Duckworth, 1998).
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