Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Ben Kingsley on Adolescence

"I think youth has become very tangled up with consumerism. And I think the very extraordinary years that we call adolescence, moving from childhood to adulthood, they're very fleeting. And, I don't recall my adolescence being so consumer driven, so constantly invaded by peer pressure, fashion, gossip, uhhh very transient musical fashions and tastes, clothes, uh umm role models. It seems to be very cluttered, and adolescence is hard enough without a whole multibillion dollar consumer industry jumping on the backs of adolescence and making them, and squeezing them, squeezing dollars out of them. Well in fact, the reverse should be happening, that we should as an adult society, be squeezing encouragement into them and decent values into them and beautiful thoughts and ideas into them. No, we just want their money. It's pathetic, and I think somewhere in this story and in the dynamic, in the essentials of adolescence being a necessary time for experiment...But at the heart of it is, in order to grow, you have to make mistakes, you must be reckless, you cannot follow the herd, you have to follow your heart, you have to, to quote my crazy character, end up face down in the gutter, get your heart broken, make a mess of things because that is what adolescence is. And it's self healing. We make a mess as adolescents and it's self healing. Unless of course we stray into narcotics which will kill us or into alcohol which will kill us or into any kind of very compulsive destructive behavior but we are constantly, adolescents are constantly invited to be constant consumers. So it's a little unfair to expect adolescents to be free of certain substances, eating disorders, drug disorders, alcohol disorders and at the same time say but you do have to consume. It's very unfair of them, you know."

Watch the video of Ben Kingsley on the June 17, 2008 taping of the Tavis Smiley Show here.

Watch the trailer for Ben Kingsley's new movie The Wackness here.

Watch an example of rampant childhood consumerism here.

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