Summercamp!, the Movie--a Review

Youthful summer memories fill my mental space. There are memories of camp (Camp-A-Day for Boys in Stamford CT; Camp Hazen in Middletown CT) in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Then there are the baseball games at Yankee Stadium and, after about 1964, Shea Stadium in NYC. By 1963 the hours at the "swimming hole" were replace by the hours at the Middlesex Swim Club (now called the Middlesex Club; it was the poor person's Wee Burn Country Club) which my parents helped organize in those days in Darien CT. My dad was the first treasurer of the club. Mine was a youth with its share of bumps and bruises, to be sure, but summertime, summercamp and the generous ability of memory to rose-color some of those experiences now lends a gracious tint to those times. I don't think, as a result, that I have ever lost my "zest" for summer and for the delights it can provide.

Summercamp!, the Movie

Thus, I was delighted to see that one of the movies showing during "Docuweek" at the Salem (OR) Cinema was this recent release directed by Helmers Beesley and Sarah Price. It depicts life at a summer nature camp at Minong, WI, which is tucked into the NW corner of that state not far from Duluth, MN and Lake Superior. About 90 kids, mostly with distinctive Illinois and Wisconsin (that is, wi SKON sin) accents, are there for a (to me) very long period (three weeks) to explore nature and, in fact, learn about relating to others and growing up. Rather than trying to give us an "overview" of camp, Beesley and Price present the experience through the eyes of about four or five select campers, with generous comments from others. While there is nothing spectacular or revelatory in the film, it gives us a window into the lives of kids that are more like National Spelling Bee kids than student "athletes," who are often presented on film.

What emerges, however, is not a sort of society depicted in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, where a stranded band of preadolescent/adolescent boys develops their own societal rules of inclusion, exclusion and punishment. That is forestalled here, as always in summer camps, by a cadre of kid-loving counselors, who are both fun-loving guides, a sort of older siblings and serious disciplinarians all in one. The film-makers take pains to portray the life of one camper who has problems adjusting to life at the camp (14 year-old Cameron), and one young pensive girl (Holly), who comes out with the film's blockbuster line in one of the evening "cabin talk sessions," which are familiar fare to those who have ever been to overnight camps.

Kids and Legal Drugs

While nothing was particularly disquieting or engaging about the movie (indeed, it made me wonder why I enjoyed so much the seeming privations and inconveniences which are part of the camp experience as a child), the one thing that showed most clearly that this rather "timeless" film really was a film from our day was the brief mention of kids and their medications. The assumption seemed to be that kids are on medication as they come to camp. Indeed, one of the counselors said early in the film that camp is the perfect antidote for an ADHD kid--'we keep them going from 7 a.m. until 10:00 p.m., they don't have time to be ADHD.' Then the camera panned to a scene of campers lying exhausted on the grass during the day.

But I do want to reflect on kids and medication for a second, for that is the reality of life in our culture today. My kids were born in 1982 and 1987; thus I think they came of age just before the medication "crunch" hit and so, as far as I know, they didn't become medication-dependent. Yet, from the tone of the film, many students (and many of the 'brainy' students) seem to include medication as a part of their daily existence.

Why? Well, I am no medical doctor nor son of a doctor, but I think that a significant issue in American culture in the past two decades has been safety and security of our children. Parents in the 1980s were taught, differently from parents in the 1950s, about the kinds of demonic forces or people stalking the streets and how their kids needed to be "protected" against these forces. Fair enough, but when this kind of attitude becomes institutionalized in society's life, it means that we have to develop schemes not just to "protect" our kids but eventually, to "control" them. Well, kids always need control of sorts, but we now are in such a time of standardization and control that the natural exuberance, unrestraint and even bad judgment of kids is something that needs to be repressed--for the good of the overall security of our institutions.

I think that the drug culture (i.e., "licit" drugs) is an outflow of the sad reality of our fears in 21st century America. We need to assure safety/security; we need to control those things that may lead to an unsafe situation; we give people drugs to control the behaviors that are "aberrant" or, better said, "disruptive." I, for one, am not one who thinks that all expressions of "natural" behavior are "cute" or "endearing." But I also think that our drug infatuation is a sign of our collective failure as a culture to balance the demands of our high-speed democracy and the crazy realities of growing up. Maybe we can get out of our drug dependency in the future; though the biggest opponents of that will, no doubt, be Pfizer, Merck, Bristol Myers and others.

Conclusion

I "got into" Summercamp! by noting the similarities between my camping experiences of 45 years ago and the realities of camping today. But, I actually "left" Summercamp! with the sense glad that I didn't grow up in the current generation. So, maybe that is how it should be. Those who are 55 (like me) are glad they are 55, while the cute, whining, inadept, struggling 12 year-olds are glad they are prepubescent. And the world keeps turning...

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