Monday, September 11, 2006

I Don't Want To Know (and you probably don't either)

It is always hard when you see the clay feet of your idols. In scanning for news of Studio Ghibli's Gedo Senki, I found the following quote from Goro Miyazaki - Hayao Miyazaki's son, and director of the new film (against his father's initial wishes):

. . . ever since I can remember, my father was often absent. . . I wanted him to look after me, and to play with me. But those opportunities almost never came. . . In this way, ever since I can remember, at the same time as enjoying them, I have been watching Hayao Miyazaki's works to understand my father. For me, Hayao Miyazaki gets zero marks as a father but full marks as a director of animated films.

This is the man who created My Neighbor Totoro? How is this possible?

But then I think of Christopher Milne, son of A. A. Milne, the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, who wrote in his biography that he felt he was a "part time hobby" of his parents, that his father bought him stuffed animals so that they could provide writing material, and that he resented his father's work.

And then I hear that William Mayne, much celebrated children's author, was convicted in 2004 of sexual assualt of young girls.

This is a very depressing world at times. Is nothing sacred?

2 comments:

noirah said...

This is why we work so hard at mediocrity... to be kick ass parents!!! Woo hoo!

janjan said...

Hmmmm, child-as-excuse-to-stop-doing-homework seems like a good thing to me right now...