Producing with purpose

As weeks go by in this dreadful “Coronatime”, and we adapt to life in this new world, made of smart working, video calls, breaking news and silence – way more silence than I have ever imagined in a city of 1.5 million people - I find myself, as many others, questioning my role in this new society as a citizen, as a parent, and as a producer.

How can I be helpful? What good can I do to somehow make this situation a bit better?

As I take long circuits of thoughts around some options, I keep finding myself back to one idea. I’m a producer and I create products that have the potential to influence the new generation, the generation now locked at home with no social contact, no proper tools for homeschooling, at least a significant number of them. Isn’t it a superpower? And we all know that with great powers come great responsibility. Shouldn’t it be used to create something that builds value? Especially considering that audio-visuals are a media that reach such a strongly diverse audience. 

Coronavirus has forced its way into our lives, taking up more and more space as it advanced on us and finally pushed us back until we had to retreat behind the safety of our front doors. Doors that must remain closed, to be opened as little as possible and then, only for essential reasons. Well, I now understand that “as little as possible” defines a separation, draws a line in the sand between those who can keep their door closed and those who can’t. It is a distinction that exemplifies privilege.

 My partner and I take turns to work from home, sometimes satisfactorily, other times with more frustration. We have a five-year-old daughter, a constant little earthquake whose epicentre seems to be simultaneously in every room in our apartment. She jumps around us continuously, constantly asking to be entertained. This is what a five-year-old child should be doing: being stimulated, receptive, learning and reorganising information, putting it to good use, and learning again. She is a living sponge whose raison d’être is to learn and grow, non-stop.

Well, in these circumstances we, and so by extension also she, are privileged, because even if we're surely not dedicated Montessori style parents, we have time to try to teach her how to write - without much success - and I can show her how to mix primary colours. I can tell her about temperate and tropical climates. We‘re doing our best to stimulate her, although most of the time we are tired and distracted, so quite often the peak activity of the day is, “Colour in Elsa with the watercolours”. And yet, she watches a lot of cartoons. Way more than I would want to (but still, thank you Disney+ for becoming a new family member!), but all parents know what a relief it is to be able to take a break and let someone else – or something in this case – take care of their children’s entertainment. Therefore, shouldn’t we be taking care of feeding their minds with contents that matter? 

Animation can do that so well, creating characters and worlds that are inaccessible to us, exploring human bodies yet with the chill of mystery to be told, as in Hello Maestro!, letting hormones and genitals talk as in Big Mouth (obviously for older targets!) cracking us up in laughter yet learning about sex education, teach us about the African wildlife while following the adventures of a pink lion, as in Zafari. This IS a superpower. 

As I said above, this pandemic is digging a deep trench between those who are privileged and those who are not. By privileged I don’t just mean the “wealthy” ones, but those who can afford to stay at home and dig in until the curve of this global crisis starts to show improvement without any serious consequences for their lives, and those who can’t. I think of myself as privileged because I have an opportunity to spend a few hours with my daughter every day, I can strive to make sure she does not get “left behind”.

But every evening I chat on Skype (or Zoom, or Hangouts, or Houseparty, or that new Pakistani platform … etc. etc.) with friends who have school-age kids, six and upwards. The vast majority of them are exhausted and frustrated by the fact that following homework online is difficult, that they are not teachers and so they find it hard to understand some of the exercises their children have to complete, or that they cannot work because they have to hand their computers over to their children so that they may attend classes online.  Some may have no printer, so they cannot print out the exercises. And these are among the more fortunate inhabitants of this world: they have access to the internet and smartphones, so they can manage. 

Imagine a household without Wi-Fi: how would I know that the teachers have sent some exercises? How will my son do the exercises? How can I ensure that he will progress along his learning path? Or even worse, imagine that I can’t access any of the subsidies available, so I must keep working to survive, who is going to look after my kids?

Sadly, those who don’t even ask themselves these questions likely do not do so not because they cannot afford it: they have to work to put food on the table, and that is a far more pressing problem than educating their children.

 Right now, there are 8.3 million children in Italy. Out of these, only 6.7 million of them have access to online teaching. This means there are 1.6 children who are isolated, 40% of them in the south of Italy. Children who have no access to learning, for months. Also, among 6.7 million we do not know how many can effectively follow the lessons and do their homework. Do we fully understand what this means? There is an entire generation of children who will go back to school in September (if not January as they’re starting to say!!) with unsurmountable gaps in their learning. No governmental programmes will be able to align them with the others. This is not necessarily due to political incompetence, but because, in these long months that feel like an eternal present, there will be those who will have dropped back and others who, on the other hand, will have progressed because they will have received the necessary support. I think it’s fair to say that this issue is mostly created by social inequalities that are still such a problem in Italy. 

At the end of this horrible period, where the only positive aspect is the decline in air pollution and the fact that nature is so rapidly repossessing its legitimate spaces, we will find ourselves with a generation of children dramatically split into two camps. Clearly, there is no immediate practical solution. Online distance learning is, at the moment, the best support that institutions can supply. It should be up to the local administrations to ensure that everyone has access to online learning. Just as it should be an obligation of the institutions - or a service provided by big OTTs corporations? - to guarantee a functional internet connection for everyone, in all areas of Italy, rather than an obligation left to the individual. This is because, as someone pointed out to me, it is unacceptable that even today in Milan we go at supersonic speeds while in the countryside we cannot watch a film on Netflix. How can the individual ensure access to high-speed internet if the infrastructure provided doesn’t support it? 

None of us were prepared for a pandemic, so we can “accept” the fact that not everything is functioning as smoothly as it should. But should this happen again, let’s hope that things will be different. Next time there can be no excuses. 

What if because of global warming we have to face a crisis that is even worse than this one? It is an unfortunate circumstance that will probably happen in our lifetime. We cannot be caught unprepared again. We would no longer have any excuses. This is why we must start working now to avoid a similar situation in the future, with millions of children left behind.

Everyone must be aware that we bear a great responsibility towards this generation. And kids' content creators should be now even more aware of what it means to produce content that children access, consume, absorb, digest and copy continuously. The quality of this content, together with running our businesses ethically, should be the guiding principles of all our work. We are entertainers who are shaping a generation who will be finding themselves tackling emergencies like this one more often than we have had to. The world has changed, and the sooner we realise this the sooner we will be able to apply ourselves to improve the future that awaits us.

It is highly likely that our kids will have to study from home, at least for some periods. The entertainment structure can no longer be based simply on profit only. The more we contribute to flattening the culture on offer, for every generation, but particularly for our children, the more we risk having a society split down the middle, which won't be able to progress as it could. A society where some can afford to educate their children and some can’t, with the inevitable dramatic problems that will bring in its wake. I’m not saying that “edutainment” should replace “entertainment”. I believe that it is possible to produce entertainment that is both highly fun and full of meaning. A quick scan of the market shows that fortunately, many series are being produced that teach children about the environment (an absolute priority in our times). And toy makers are moving ever more towards sustainable production methods – too slow, but yet, is it enough? 

This industry is made by people who love it (as one of the slowest developing and centralised sector in the entire audio-visual market, you really must LOVE it to be in it). And I believe it's time to put our energies (and use our superpowers!) to shape a kind of entertainment that focuses on generating social and cultural values. It’s time for great entertainment, with purpose.