Online Response 1: Son of Rambow

In reaction to the permeation of culture in modern, western society, children and technology has in many ways become the contemporary news scare. Instead of “Learn what random bacteria in your tap water is doing to you!” it has become “Learn what media and technology are doing to your children!”

When I was a kid there wasn’t as much of a scare concerning TVs, computers, movies, and digitized books—rather, they were the fuel for creativity. This is why the relationship between children and media in Son of Rambow is so fascinating. Will and Lee Carter are not impervious to the negative effects of media (violence and blowing off school is an issue), but media plays an overall positive role in their lives. Rambow is less of a destroying force, like Will Proudfoot’s mother fears, but is an enabling idea that allows Will to explore his own abilities and create his own identity, gain a social education, and come to terms with the absence of a father figure in his life, making the assumption that childhood is a time for exploration and fun rather than a time to be a miniature adult.

When Will is first pictured in class, he is sitting in the back of the room drawing. Even when he goes outside while the other children watch a film, Will hides his drawings. He has very little idea of what a world outside his family’s fundamentalist religion might provide. When he first spends the afternoon with Lee Carter, his exploration of his own abilities begins. Initially growing out of the kindness he has been raised to exhibit, Will starts to do things he would never have done before—biking out of his neighborhood, making friends, and even watching a movie. When he leaves that first time his whole world becomes alive and for the first time in the film, Will is controlling the world rather than it controlling him. He defeats the scarecrow and is himself a hero.

Will also gets to create his own identity. Unsatisfied with the person he is at that moment, being Son of Rambow is a transcendent identity for him that bridges the gap between being am outsider to being a smart, fun kind of kid. Unlike Will’s religion, his obsession with a film is something that the other children understand and is ultimately a language that he can finally use to communicate with the other children. Lastly, being Son of Rambow gives the shadowy memory dad a form that he can look to and fills in the gaps he is feeling because of that loss.

Will becomes happier and happier and his family is released from the tyranny of their cult-like religion the more the film’s idea of childhood is embraced. Son of Rambow asserts that childhood is a time for non-reality, for goofing off, for experimenting, and for movies. All of this goofing off and movie watching is what results in the larger lesson of friendship the film explores.