Take
a look at the newest and creepiest fad that our culture has devised for holiday
discipline: the elf on the shelf. According to the “The Elf on the Shelf’s”
homepage:
The Elf on the Shelf® is a special scout elf sent from the North Pole to help Santa Claus manage his naughty and nice lists. When a family adopts an elf and gives it a name, the elf receives its Christmas magic and can fly to the North Pole each night to tell Santa Claus about all of the day's adventures. Each morning, the elf returns to its family and perches in a different place to watch the fun. Children love to wake up and race around the house looking for their elf each morning.
There are two simple rules that every child knows when it comes to having an elf. First, an elf cannot be touched; Christmas magic is very fragile and if an elf is touched it may lose that magic and be unable to fly back to the North Pole. Second, an elf cannot speak or move while anyone in the house is awake! An elf's job is to watch and listen.
He just sits there…
Watching… Listening… Never blinking… Taking mental notes of everything you do
and say, and then flying home every night to tell Santa of all the terrible, or
good, things you have done.
This isn’t anything new, really; it’s
simply a reincarnation of an age old mechanism of discipline. In 1975 Michele
Foucault, a French philosopher/historian, published his five year research
project titled Discipline and Punish
wherein he analyzes western culture and its institutions. His conclusion? Our
institutions are essentially modeled after the Panopticon, a 17th
century prison that revolutionized the penal system. This isn’t as crazy as it
sounds.
Take a look at the
picture to the right. This is the physical manifestation of the Panopticon, the
literal building. Theorized by utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the
Panopticon was meant to be a prison that essentially runs itself. The idea is
that the prison would be constructed as a cylindrical building with all of the
cells lining the perimeter. At the center of the building would be a guard
tower where the guards inside would be armed with rifles or other long range
weapons.
The unique characteristic of this guard tower is that it
would be impossible for the inmates to see the guards inside or to even see
light coming out of the tower. Bentham discussed various walls that would be
constructed at various angles in the guard tower, venetian style blinds, etc.. The inmates, then, would never actually know
whether they were being watched, whether the guards were aiming their weapons
at them at that exact moment. Bentham argued that the fear of death would keep
the inmates in line. The prison would run itself because the inmates would
watch themselves, always fearing the possibility that the guards were gazing at
them
The mechanism, the use of fear, the
surveillance, Foucault argues eventually swarmed all of our cultural
institutions. Now it’s easy to draw quick parallels to our Orwellian society
where we are flooded with stories about the NSA and the various surveillance
techniques utilized by the Department of Homeland Security, but is it really
possible that the Panopticon is the basis for some of our most cherished traditions?
Before we return to the Elf on the
Shelf, let’s take a look at his progenitor, Santa Claus. Everyone knows that
Santa Claus started with Saint Nicholas, but he really has nothing to do with
what we know as Santa Claus. St. Nick was an Italian bishop who was known to be
very charitable to the poor, but there are no stories of chimneys,
reindeer, etc.. The Santa Claus that we Americans know today came into being in
1823 with the publication of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” which would later
become commonly known as “The Night Before Christmas,” by Clement Clarke Moore
(technically the authorship is still debatable).
This is the version of St. Nick
that can sneak in your house and deliver presents, but at this point he is
still benevolent. In L. Frank Baum’s The
Life and Adventures of Santa Clause published in 1902, Santa becomes
immortal, but it is interesting to note that Santa Clause at this phase is okay
with naughty children. This version of Santa:
brought toys to the children because they
were little and helpless, and because he loved them. He knew that the best of
children were sometimes naughty, and that the naughty ones were often good. It
is the way with children, the world over, and he would not have changed their
natures had he possessed the power to do so.
And that is how our Claus became Santa Claus. It is possible for
any man, by good deeds, to enshrine himself as a Saint in the hearts of the
people.
The idea of Santa Claus as disciplinarian doesn’t really
become part of the popular legend until the 1930s with the song “Santa Claus is
Coming to Town.” If you’ve never really thought about the lyrics, just start
singing them to yourself and you’ll realize how it is a tool for discipline.
Just read the first line, “You better watch out!” The first rule of Christmas
in this song is to watch out, to beware because Santa is
coming and “He sees you when you’re sleeping/ He knows when you’re awake/ He
knows when you’ve been bad or good/ So be good for goodness sake.” If you
really think about the lyrics, they can be quite terrifying, especially for a
child. 
Foucault might have argued that at this point, the Panopticon
swarmed to Santa. Santa is a symbol of surveillance who is able to see all of
the children of the world anytime he wishes. Not only can he see you, he also
passes judgment and punishes the naughty kids by delivering coal to them, but
this is only the most benign version of the story. In other Germanic stories,
which are gaining popularity in American culture, the naughty are visited by a
St. Nicholas who comes bearing a switch which he uses to hit them, or in an
even more sinister version the naughty are told to fear the wrath St. Nick’s
demon side-kick Krampus who will whip them, bind them with chains, etc.. If
this is how we convince our children to stay in line during the hectic holiday
season, aren’t we just instilling in them a fear? This isn’t necessarily a
mortal fear such as a fear of the gaze of a gunman, but it is a fear of the
gaze of an omniscient, often vengeful Santa Claus.
But it seems that today he sends his minions to do his dirty
work for him, the Elves on your shelves. It seems a natural enough progression;
with the nation’s decreasing attention spans, it can become tedious to
continually remind our children of just how powerful Santa Claus can be.
Instead, it’s easier to create a constant physical, smiling, unblinking
reminder of the all-seeing eye that is the North Pole.
Now I’m sure you’re all thinking that I’m blowing all of this
out of proportion. Who cares that we whip our kids into submission with fun
fanciful characters and dolls, right? Wrong, there are some very real
implications to these trends. First, type “Elf on the Shelf Nightmares” into a
search engine and you can see and read about the palpable fear that American
children exhibit for the “friendly” elf. One friend who has actually used the
elf reported that her child started screaming once the elf became too real; she
had secretly placed the elf in a pile of flour where he was making “snow angles.”
She woke her child and exclaimed, “Look where the elf is today!” The kid’s response? A blood-curdling scream
that subsided into a small whimper once the parents promised to send the elf
back to the North Pole for good.
But fear isn’t the only downside, Foucault argued that the
Panopticon as a model of discipline eventually leads to a degradation of
society’s morality because what is the ultimate effect of a system that keeps
people in line by constantly reminding them that they are being watched? The
evolution of craftier people who get better and better at escaping the vigilant
eye of the powers that be. Look at the trend of people going through red light
cameras, knowing that all they have to do is put their hands in front of their
face to avoid a ticket or dousing their license plates with glitter, or the
increasingly creative ways that teenagers and twenty-somethings learn to hide
their texting while driving. Just the other day I saw a women who looked like
she was scratching her ear, but it was all a ruse; she was hiding her phone
under her hair. Furthermore, a model like this leads to a population that does
not critically analyze or question its laws, it simply accepts them and learns
how to evade them.
I guess this, fear, is what the season is all about though in
the first place, right? I mean, God and his all-seeing eye are of course the
components of the original Panopticon, and Christmas is the celebration of his
human incarnation. Foucault actually suggests that Panopticism came about as a
result of a waning belief in God after the enlightenment. It was the result of an
ethos that basically said, “If you’re not going to be scared of God’s eye, then
you are sure as hell going to be scared of the state’s eye.” So this holiday
season as you give gifts, show compassion, and remember to be kind also
remember, whether you’re an adult or a child, to be scared. Whether it’s
because of the Elf on the Shelf, Santa Claus, or Jesus who will eventually
return to forsake most of humanity during the rapture. YOU BETTER WATCH OUT!
