There are so many wonderful things that come from living in a multi-family system. People keep pulling me aside and whispering "How is it REALLY?" and I just can't stop raving about it. Maybe tomorrow I can make a bullet point listing of all the plusses from our arrangement with my husband's brother Chachoo and Chachoo's wife living downstairs in our basement. But it's not without its hiccups either, though they may be minor in comparison. One of those hiccups is our television. We can't just watch whatever we want anymore. And I think it's only half because of the Pakisani part of my life. The other half of the problem comes from my own upbringing.
The Pakistani part is that there's this "levels of respect" thing where Chachoo - being younger than my husband Mian - has to act in a certain way. He has to be spotless. And Mian, my husband, also has to behave in a certain way - he has to act the part of respected elder. So if there's some lewd joke or nudity on screen, both have to act their prescribed roles - my Mian has to act like it's terrible and Chachoo has to act like he doesn't understand the joke, would be my guess.
The part that comes from my own upbringing is that while I don't think I grew up with very strict parents, I remember not being allowed to watch a lot of movies. I think I was in 3rd grade when Dirty Dancing came out and all my classmates raved about it but I wasn't allowed to watch it. I don't think I was allowed to watch it until high school actually, and only then because it was on TV and they'd cut out the controversial parts. I didn't know that though. I thought the controversial part was the dancing. Surprise surprise for me when I became an adult, bought a copy in the clearance bin at Best Buy and saw for the first time in my life the substantial portion of the plot that gets cut out of the TV version where a main character seeks and procures a back alley abortion! Besides that one example, my mother also had a profanity limit to any movies we watched as kids. If there were more than (I think it was three?) curse words in a movie it got turned off. And there was a lot of fast forwarding too, sometimes it was kids-leave-the-room-and-then-fast-forward, like in Top Gun. I didn't see the love scene in Top Gun until I was 22, and only then I was watching it to help with M's Ph.D. dissertation (which has something to do with movies and computers.)
So that's where my awkwardness stems from - it has roots in both branches of my half American, half Pakistani life. If something untoward comes on screen, I can't just cringe and bear it. It's too awkward. It's not just around my Pakistani inlaws either, I would feel the same way around my own parents. In fact, my parents used to tease us growing up about how awkward it was to see loves scenes with them in the room by telling us "I see romance!" in a sing-song voice. It still gets to me today.
Ever since Chachoo came to live with us almost a year ago, there's been a lot of fast forwarding. When his wife, Dulhan arrived a few months later, it was worse. Maybe because Chachoo and Mian - even though they had that age gap Pakistani respect awkwardness, were able to just cringe and bear it and I was the only one really uncomfortable. But when Dulhan arrived, she felt it at least as bad as I did, I guess. She's the lowest on the totem pole in our house in terms of Pakistani respect, so she has to be the chaste-est and she is the most embarrassed by these kind of not family friendly scenes in movies. Or, she would be if it wasn't for my own weirdness, because it turns out that I usually am the most uncomfortable all the time.
And lest you think we are watching some really terrible movies, let me tell you that this all started with The Big Bang Theory. Do you know that sitcom? It is an entirely nudity-free, perfectly normal prime time comedy show. Thirty minutes of pure hilariousness. We all loved that show, especially living with these current and former graduate student science nerds. Only it was also thirty minutes of agony unless Chachoo and his wife were not home that evening. I tried to find a clip of what I was talking about and I couldn't figure out which one was more cringeworthy: one, two, three, four, or five. We joked for some time about putting up a curtain across the room so that we could all enjoy the show and try to forget about the others in the room. Eventually we just stopped watching it entirely - yes, that's how far this insanity runs, we actually changed our behavior because of it. Even though all four of us are adults, and even though we all individually like the show!
There's nothing I can do to bring back The Big Bang Theory in our house, I'll just have to watch them in my room alone I guess. But movies were still a big problem, especially for movies I hadn't seen yet. Some of the movies we watch are old classics I like to foist upon the rest of the group, but we watch new movies sometimes too. I really didn't want to get caught offguard by one of these uncomfortable situations so I began to google the movie titles in advance to see if there were any scenes I should anticipate. It was then that I found a great resource - movie reviews directed at parents! Now I look up movie titles on http://www.kids-in-mind.com/ or http://www.parentpreviews.com/ or http://www.commonsensemedia.org/ all three of which are really great resources if you find yourself in a situation like me where you want to be able to fast forward through every difficult scene, or, in the case of some movies, avoid them all together. I only wish I'd known about this before our family screening of The Red Violin!
