There's a video that, upon first watching it when I was fourteen, scared the crap out of me: "Adult Education" by (of all people) Hall & Oates. I was never a big fan of this duo, but this song in particular hit home for me because I was at the age when I was first discovering and exploring my sexuality. Yet that's not the only reason why this song still gets to me. It was the video!

First, some back story... The spring of 1984 (the time when this song hit the top ten on the charts and was getting a lot of air play on the radio) was at the hieght of a Satanist hysteria in the Midwest and the South. Not only did we have The Bomb that could bring about the end of the world at any moment to worry about, families were being warned that there were Satanist groups out there preying on children. For some reason Satanic Ritual Abuse was running rampant. People were going through therapy claiming that they were abused as children by Satanists. And, for some reason, anyone could be a Satanist. Dressing all in black could mark you as a possible Satanist. So, the perfect way to rebel in order to get attention (plus get sent home from school), was to dress in black, wear gaudy jewlery, and carry Dungeons-n-Dragons material with you where ever you went. I lived in the buckle of the Bible Belt (Springfield, Missouri, the headquarters of the Assembly of God church) and it was not a friendly place to be for an imaginative, rebellous teenager in the 1980's. I have to admit, however, that some of the scare tactics people used at the time to convince us that there was this Satanist threat, really did a number on me. Until I learned that it was just another bull shit way for adults to get children to behave, I developed anxiety over seeing any kind of symbolism as something seemingly demonic -- basically anything that was unusual, artsey, or culturally different was experienced as forbidden and, therefore, felt forboding. Still being a child, I was prone to follow suit and make up my own fantastic lies about The Satanic Threat. At the time I didn't know shit about Satanism, never met anyone who was a Satanist, and was totally ignorant about real magical ritual.

Well, all that innocence changed after my mother sent me to a cult deprogramming camp for a week in May of 1984. After I was caught sneaking out late at night to play Ninja with my friends (and, of course, we were all dressed in black -- we were pretending to be Ninjas, afterall!) my Mom was convinced I had been seduced by the Devil. I don't want to go into the gory details of my supposed "deprogramming" but what I want to tell you is that it taught me how to lie and pretend to be someone I wasn't just to please my Born Again Christian mother. I had not been in congress with The Beast nor was I out drinking goat urine nor was I performing Satanic rites with the neighbors. I would've never known ANYTHING about Satanism or magick at all if it hadn't been for that fake deprogramming experience. So later in life I became the very thing the community feared; a Witch. But that's a whole 'nother story...

When I hear or see the video for this song, I am reminded of those times, and how I used my first initial negative reaction to the video as a way to scare the beejeezus out of my community! I first thought the video was a recording of a Satanic Wedding! I considered the old fart with the baseball cap to be a Satanic High Priest. The cave that they're in, I was convinced, was an underground temple where bloody sacrifices were made and virgins were deflowered in the name of Lucifer! Weeks later I learned the truth; I saw Hall & Oates talking about the video on MTV, how it was a symbolic experiment on the part of the director, Tim Pope. Everything was, innocently enough, made up as a metaphoric emotional journey of old man passing on his adult wisdom to a young teenage couple about to copulate for the first time. Instead of showing a stereotypical class room scene, the musicians and actors are seen in the womb of Mother Earth -- a place where all things begin and where life is nurtured. In the first sequence, the symbol for Leo is shown on a paper lantern. In another opening sequence, there's a lighted disco floor with six symbols for food, fertility, time, the seasons, and the elements. When the couple is standing before the old fart, he holds a makeshift Statue of Liberty before them and he seems to be blessing them with it. John Oates later said the video resembled the "Survivor" TV show on acid. What I got out of it? A great music video that I could use to add fuel to flames of the Satanic hysteria around me.

I later regretted boldy claiming that I knew it was a portrayal of a Satanic Wedding. It got me into more trouble for watching it, plus I was barred from listening to pop music for a long while and my mother tore apart the posters of Duran Duran in my bedroom (that made me weep like a baby for that). Now, as an adult, I can laugh about those earlier times, and laugh at myself for being such a silly girl! I now know REAL Satanists and they are nothing like what I was taught to believe about them. Satanists don't abuse children or themselves, what they're about is rebelling against conformity out of the common sense of post modern American Atheism practiced with ritual psychodrama (a group working method, in which each person becomes a therapeutic agent for others using strong elements of theater, often conducted on a stage with props and masks). In fact, as I've gotten wiser in my later years, I've grown to realize that the true abusers of children are often people with Christian backgrounds -- people who sacrifice their teenagers to God and forbid them from engaging in their natural instinct to explore their sexual feelings. When you're taught to regard your genitals as ugly or dirty, everytime you have sex later in life, you're going to fulfill the prophecies of your God-fearing, body-hating parents.

I know, I know, this is a lot to swallow, all inspired by me looking back on a memorable music video from the '80's! But it serves to show that, even now, as an adult I can still learn from my past and can appreciate things I didn't know about then as an adult now. Does that make sense?

Here's the video in its full glory. Watch it and tell me what you think about it.  I'd be interested to see what a newer generation has to say about the song and the accompanying video (I still like it and count it as one of my favorite songs from the '80s):

Adult Education