Its 10 pm. Do you know where your children are?

~Diego Benegas

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I have heard that it was used in the seventies, thought I cannot rely on the source. What I know is that it was used during the last dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). I also know that it is used every night in the opening of Fox News, at 10 PM. In actuality, to link Fox News with fascism is not my idea. I tooka poster, whose source is unknown to me. How does a phrase or a particular question-- "Do you know where your children are?" --work as a social practice? If performativity is the installment of ontological effects by means of discourse (Butler 1996, 112), how does this phrase perform and what is it that it realizes? And can we can call this practice fascist.?

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First: Asking where your children are, the TV addresses its audience as family members. We are all family. With this movement, it performs a reduction. Like a synecdoche, it takes a part for the whole. The audience of the TV news is addressed as parents. Interpellation works by addressing the subject in a certain role (Althusser 1994). The question positions the addressee as the one who is able to answer it. In order to participate in the interchange, there is no other way than occupying that role. Then the audience of the news is positioned as a participant in the system of representation: they can be either parents or children. Television educates people, in this case by telling them who they are.

The audience is composed of competent viewers. The text requires competence; that is, in order to interact with that question, the viewer has to understand and accept certain conditions; otherwise, the message does not make sense. Then the question is, what is it that we are supposed to know, and share, in order to understand the message? We have to share the idea that society is comprised of nothing else but families. If this statement is obvious it is because we have already learned that message very well. To share this perspective means that watching the news, I am not a citizen in front of the State, or a member of society in front of the media that serves me, or even a consumer in relation to my news provider. Watching the news, I am either a parent or a child. Do I know where my children are? Do my parents know where I am? Me (a family member), watching the news. As political as the news can be, as controversial as it can be, I watch it as a family member. Would this affect my view of political issues under discussion? i.e. gay marriage, cuts of welfare, state money for church managed pro-marriage programs?

The second step is control. Parents should know where their children are; children should not go without surveillance by their parents. Putting together the time, 10 PM, with the question, the announcement assumes that the audience understands that it is too late to be out of the house. Which house? The house of the family, of course. Then, there is a model of family implied in the question. If we do not adhere to that model of family and to that model of relationships of control from parent to children in vertical hierarchical structure of surveillance, then we do not understand the question. Therefore, the parents are (should be) at home, watching the news, and worrying about their children. They should know where they are. Third: good controlling parents vs. bad children out of control. The question assumes a public of bad parents and bad children. It is very different of that message that says: It's 10 PM, children to bed. This last one assumes that children are at home. Different, our example targets bad parents - parents who do not know where their children are. In actuality, the question constitutes them into bad parents. If they know what the question means is because they already know that part of their role is to control the behavior of their children. However, if they are the targeted audience, their children are not home.

http://www.notmygovernment.com/shoottokill.html , Not my government.. Viewed on 4/4/04.

At the same time that the question constitutes the audience into "bad parents," it constitute the children (any child, of any age), into "bad children." For this, we should look at what the announcement does not say. Why is it so important to know where they are? Are they in danger? Are they doing something wrong?

http://www.biopoint.com/csd99/war/dirtywar.htm. Viewed on 4/26/04.

Perhaps the Argentine case could help illuminate these questions. The Argentine military's use of the question did in the 1970s, suggested that children could be involved in politics (Palomo 1987). The message polarized society into good and evil. The good children were home at 10, the others, were bad children, involved in evil activities. What kind of acitivities? We can mention politics, communism, terrorism, consumer-rights campaigns, feminism, drugs, homosexuality, or evangelical soup kitchens. Why this varied list? All of these activities require autonomy and involvement with the external society, outside the family. The message does not name them, but it collapses all these meanings into the same; everything gets to be evil in the same way. The US case of the 2000s is different. The message does not come from the State, and it does not imply so direct a connection with terrorism in the same way. The 2000s US discourse on terrorism, being diffuse and pervasive, has a racial component that the 1970s Argentine.

Last: family is the only legitimate concern of the citizens. The context of the announcement, as opening of the news program opens a different kind of questions. Why does the news channel want its audience to worry about their children right before hearing the news? Could it be a disclaimer? We could read that family should be the only true source of concerns in which the audience should be invested instead of all the news that they are about to hear. Perhaps they should not worry about what the news is saying. In fact, the message reads, "they should be worrying for more important things, like their own children." i.e., can you blame the heads of the police for not controlling torture in prisons if you cannot control your own children?

Even though the Fox News announcement has some fascist elements, it could be better characterized as conservative. By asking its question, Fox News is attempting a reconstruction of society based on family values. The model for reconstructing families consists in hierarchical structures of surveillance where the parents control the activities of their children. At the same time, the parents are blamed for not doing their controlling job well enough. The project of society that this action has as a goal has some elements of fascism: reconstruction of society, family values, and role of control of the family members. However, the project better follows the trope of conservative interventions. Different from German Nazism or Italian Fascism, the Fox ad demonizes youth instead of posing it as the place of hope and revolution. At the same time, it does not envision a new, better, and radically different society. On the contrary, it appeals to traditional values and a "coming back" to traditional family structures. For these reasons even though it appeals to fear, and to the rhetoric of the "internal enemy," it does not totally fit the paradigm of fascism. However, demonizing youth could be used as the first step for proposing a new use for this "generation that has lost its values," but the announcement is not going there. At least not yet. Ultra conservatism is not fascism, but it shares the view of a society in decadence and in danger. The solution they propose though is not the same, but I wonder up to what point their efforts conflict or collaborate.

To avoid the image of good and evil, it is important to make some comments about well intentioned people. Society reproduces itself through the reproduction of its members. It is important to notice that the imposition of structures of surveillance at the interior of the family is not intrinsically mean. The people who argue that it is important that parents know where their children are have their reasons and their good intentions. The parents that think that controlling their children is a way of making a better life for them are mainly acting in good faith.

Put in this way the things, what is the problem then? The issue is less what the intentions are than all the assumptions that we already have learnt. We already know what is a good citizen. The ad only relies on that and reinforces it. Probably the responsible person deciding to put the add thinks it is a good way of showing concern for the family, or trying to educate people to be more responsible, who knows? The question is that it relies on assumptions already established about what the source of the problems of society are and it gives the audience a plan of action: the source of the problems lies in the private sphere of the family, not in the public sphere of the political. The solutions will follow that path. I think it is important not so much to think about good and evil, but to see the process of production of the interpretations of social reality we are taken for granted.

SOURCES

Althusser, Louis. 1994. 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation), in Mapping Ideology, edited by Slavoj ?i?ek, 100-140. London; New York: Verso.

Butler, Judith. 1996. Performativitys Social Magic, in The Social and Political Body, edited by Theodore R. Schatzki and Wolfgag Natter, 29-47. New York: Guilford Press.

Palomo, Vilma. 1987. Usted sabe que esta haciendo su hijo en este momento In Terrorismo de Estado: Efectos Psicolos en los Ni,edited by Victoria Martz, 127-132. Buenos Aires: Paid