A few weeks ago, a friend of mine posted this video on Facebook. You can watch it yourself, but here’s a summary.
A man is speaking to the camera and addressing his daughter, who presumably will watch the video later. He describes how she unfriended him on Facebook, then posted a scathing, obscenity-ridden letter “to” him on her Facebook page. He reads aloud her letter, in which she mostly complains about having to work around the house. Then he turns back to the camera.
Here is your punishment, he says. First of all, you’re grounded forever. Second of all…
He stands and points the camera at her laptop, which is sitting on the lawn. Then he takes out a handgun (minute 7:20) and shoots the laptop several times.
This video was deeply disturbing to me. I sympathized with the man until he pulled out his gun, but at that point, my mind reeled.
The act of shooting the laptop was far too violent. It felt too close to shooting his daughter herself. Shooting a gun in anger—even just at a laptop—offended my sense of good parenting, of using firm but loving discipline. The whole act seemed absent of love.
Even more disturbing was that this video was posted by a friend, a man who I like a lot. And another friend commented on the post: “Yes, more parents like that… Good for this guy.”
These two friends are politically conservative. Their enthusiasm for the video gave me a vivid, stark awareness of the vast differences in our worldviews. For the following week, I turned the video and their comments over in my mind. How could they give only a passing thought to something so profoundly disturbing to me?
I brought the video up with my dad, who considers himself liberal and is vehemently opposed to all things Republican, but who has also owned guns and is much more comfortable with them than I am. I described the video to him and asked him what he thought.
He said he agreed that shooting a daughter’s possession was disturbing. But he said that his strongest reaction, when I described the video, was support for the father’s anger.
He described his own anger at the lack of respect that American youth have for their elders and authority. The daughter’s brash public denunciation of her father on Facebook deserved harsh, immediate reprisal.
“We didn’t get away with stuff like that when I was a kid,” he fumed. “We had to be respectful, at least in public, Goddammit, and it didn’t do us any harm.”
A parent provides everything for a child, he said. And these days, if a parent treats a child publicly with disrespect, the parent stands the risk of retaliation from the government. Children, meanwhile, are immune.
Dad made me see the video differently.
I agree that American children should act more respectfully. In Tanzania with the Peace Corps, I observed children showing a great deal of respect for their elders. There’s a whole different greeting that you use for anyone at least a few years older than you, and in the villages, small children place their hands on the head of an older person to greet them. Elders are referred to as “Grandma” and “Grandpa,” and these are terms of honor.
I realized I had entirely missed the main message of the video: that American children should be taught some manners and deserve a firm hand when they’re out of line. “I don’t think most Americans deserve the country they live in,” Dad said.
The message I had originally gotten out of the video was about guns. It was an unconscious message, sent by the father through the act of shooting his daughter’s laptop: “Guns are an acceptable tool to use in anger or as punishment.” I completely disagree with the implied violence of that message. I believe guns should be used only for hunting and possibly self-defense, never in anger or aggression. For this reason, I still condemn the man’s action.
But I’m grateful for the conversation with my own father. It eased my deep shock over the video and helped me see things from my friends’ perspectives, which I now understand much better. And I’m grateful for these friendships, which expose me to worldviews so different from my own.
You baited me, didn’t you? 🙂 I don’t have much to add to your assessment, as it appears you came around on your own, with a little input from your father. The video is not about the gun, nor violence. The gun is just a tool, could just have easily been a hammer, a boot, or a bucket of water. While he was upset at his daughter, very disappointed is probably more akin to reality (been there), he did not appear to have anger and certainly no violence to be directed at her. Her attitude and disrespect, sure, but I highly doubt this man would ever even think of harming his daughter. The gun makes the point, and decent theater as well, but violence or revenge is not the message that should be learned here. He is raising a daughter, much like many of us, to have respect for family, elders, and herself. If one laptop had to receive the death penalty for her to learn these most basic rules of morality and respect, so be it.