One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed since my kids and I
started doing Friday Night Movie Night is just how much children’s
programming has changed. In a lot of ways for the better. Yes, there
are some great things from the past that I want to share with my kids,
but I think it’s a very recent phenomenon that any real consideration
has been put into what might be not only appropriate, but beneficial for
small children to see in movies or on TV.
The first time I gave this much thought was back in 2006 right after
Ian left for his first deployment. Aden was 4 and Mona was 2, and since
I was pregnant and tired all the time I decided to invest in a bunch of
DVDs we could watch together for when I was too torpid to move. I
picked up a newly released box set of the old Bugs Bunny cartoons I grew
up with, because hey, wouldn’t that be sweet and fun?
Now, I’m not someone who tries to shelter her kids particularly.
Bugs Bunny is just a funny cartoon. But I was really taken aback by all
the guns in the Looney Toons shows. Until I found myself sitting next
to Aden who was asking me about all that shooting I hadn’t realized how
much of it there was. There’s a ton. And you don’t see guns in
children’s shows anymore. Even in programs for slightly older kids,
only bad guys might have guns. Good guys usually know martial arts or
have special powers or are simply clever. I know Bugs Bunny is over the
top and it’s silly and I watched those cartoons endlessly as a kid and I
came out fine, but it was a little alarming after years of nothing more
volatile than Blue’s Clues to see characters getting shot in the face.
And blown up. And behaving in a way that was, well, despicable. I
don’t know if you could make a cartoon like that for kids today. Which
is probably good, because as much as whiney Caillou grates on my ears, I
see my kids emulating the gentle behavior they watch on that show, and
it’s nice. Dropping anvils on people? Not so nice. Admittedly, Bugs
Bunny wasn’t written for kids (much like the Simpsons today), but it got
used that way when I was growing up and no one seemed to mind.
When we do see guns in old programs I make a point to talk to my kids
about it. I explain to them that daddy carries a gun in the Army, but
that the Army takes guns very seriously. Guns are dangerous. Daddy has
never brought a gun home. Guns exist to kill, and if they see one they
are not to touch it. When I felt sure that they understood that the
way the guns were being used in the cartoons was just as unreal as a
talking rabbit or a duck having pronoun trouble, I let them watch Bugs
and the gang to their heart’s content. But I’ll never forget how uneasy
I felt watching those cartoons with my kids the first time when all I
was expecting was to enjoy a little nostalgia.
And it’s not just guns, it’s a comfort with the idea of violence in
general that doesn’t come up very often nowadays in programming for
children. My kids enjoyed Pete’s Dragon when a friend lent it to us,
and I remember seeing it in the theater as a kid, but the whole first
song is a dirty bunch of hillbillies (that was cringe worthy in and of
itself) describing all the things they would like to do to Pete when
they find him. I had to listen to Mona and Aden take turns asking
things like, “What does string him from a tree mean? What is fill him
full of lead? Why are they saying let the pup drown? What is strap
him? Why would somebody hurt a kid?” Youch.
The other big theme that doesn’t come up in modern children’s movies
or TV is characters getting drunk. I never realized what a recurring
presence alcohol was in so many stories until I found myself having to
explain what drunkenness was to my kids anytime I popped in a cartoon
made before 1992. I had to talk to Aden about what a hangover was for
the first time while we were watching Dumbo. The idea of Clifford the
Big Red Dog on a bender or Dora the Explorer getting tipsy is only
imaginable as a Youtube spoof. I can’t think of a single character
created for my kids during their lifetime that was shown drunk on a
show. (Possible exception being Homer Simpson and his friends, but
that show isn’t actually aimed at kids.) That’s fine by me. I don’t
want them seeing alcohol abuse as some funny, harmless thing because
they saw it all the time on TV.
Then there are the obvious problems of racist and sexist content to
deal with. Peter Pan is a disturbing example. I let my kids watch it
at someone else’s house, but I told them the song about the Indians was
mean. I’ve always been bothered that Ariel in The Little Mermaid was
willing to trade her voice for a man she didn’t even know. There’s
some weird stuff in Popeye and Betty Boop I don’t even want to go into.
In today’s cartoons there is a much better balance of both race and
gender on TV. My kids are growing up at a time when they know their
president is black and their principal is hispanic and several of the
soldiers their dad went to Iraq with are women. I think children’s
programming now reflects that because less diversity would look
unrealistic to them today. But it’s complicated having to explain how
people used to think back when other movies we watch were made. And I’m
sad to tell them many people still do think like that.
There are unexpected issues that come up with the older shows, too.
We rented the first season of Fat Albert recently because I loved it as a
kid but don’t think I’ve seen it since the 70’s. My kids spent the
first three episodes completely fixated on the fact that Fat Albert was
fat. “Why is he so fat? Does he exercise? Why does he look even
fatter on the disc than on the show? What does he eat that makes him so
fat?” Characters may be more diverse in some ways on TV today, but
only in ways we see as healthy. The only fat characters I can think of
in kids’ movies and on TV today are actual pigs. I can name more
characters in wheelchairs on the shows my kids watch than ones with
weight issues. I’m not sure what to make of that. I just think it’s
intersting that while watching Fat Albert none of my kids were curious
why everyone spent all their free time in a garbage dump.
I’m obviously not one of those parents who bans TV for her kids. In
our case I don’t see the point. I like TV, and my kids like TV. If my
kids weren’t also keeping up with violin practice and going to choir and
biking around the block and using their hula hoops and learning to cook
and putting on magic shows and doing about eight hundred million other
creative endeavors, then I would worry that TV was causing them to miss
out on something. But I watch TV or DVDs in the backgroud while I work
or fold laundry, and no one ever tells me I lack creativity or don’t do
enough in an average day. I have one friend who told me he grew up
without TV because it broke one afternoon and his parents never replaced
it. He felt the result was the development of bad time management
skills, because he had all day to get a few things done, and kids he
knew who squeezed in time for TV were more efficient at more tasks. I
don’t know if I buy that, but it was a take on kids and TV I hadn’t
heard before.
In any case, I appreciate that there are enough decent shows on today
that I don’t have to worry much about what my kids are watching when
they turn on the TV. I love Word Girl, and Cyber Chase isn’t bad, and
even though the new Electric Company doesn’t look anything like the one I
grew up with, my kids get excited by it and always learn something.
The Saturday morning cartoons they watch are junk, but so were the ones I
liked as a kid. There is a value to having that kind of cultural
touchstone in one’s life, even if the result is having a bunch of
dialogue from the Brady Bunch permanently lodged in my head (or for Aden
a lot of Pokemon information).
The biggest challenge with popular media for me is trying to help my
kids avoid things they don’t want to see. They choose not to watch
things that are upsetting, but so many things that aren’t appropriate
for them are marketed in a way that seems to include them. They know to
turn off Family Guy or South Park if they run across them even though
they look like kid shows, but there are so many new things all the time
that look fun to them that I have to screen and it gets tiring.
Someone lent me a copy of Avatar recently and Aden asked if she could
please watch it. I told her I would watch it first since I didn’t know
how she would react to it. Personally, I found the film disappointing,
maybe because I was seeing it following too much hype. It was very
pretty, and if you like one kind of chase scene after another there were
a lot of those, but it felt most of the time like I was watching a
video game. The plot was so thin and the characters so flat (ironic for
a 3-D movie) that if you stripped away the visuals there wasn’t much
there. Not one character did anything unexpected. Anyway, I didn’t
forbid Aden from seeing it, but I told her there were some things I knew
she wouldn’t like. She’s sensitive enough that watching the big tree
come down would have her crying for days and I don’t see the point.
But
my big problem with it was how awful all the military people were.
Every man in uniform was cruel and thoughtless. My children don’t need
to see images of people dressed like their dad killing innocent
creatures and destroying beautiful things with no remorse. Maybe there
are soldiers like that, but I haven’t met any. The first friend I had
who got sent to Iraq works as a naturalist here in the Milwaukee county
parks system. He led a team of army firefighters and in his spare
moments documented the wildlife he saw. I may not agree with our use of
the military in many situations, but individual soldiers are still
people. Avatar would have done better not to paint soldiers with such a
broad and ugly brush. But then, decent character development would
have taken time away from the pretty pretty pictures, and I’m a violin
maker not a professional film critic, so I’ll just let that go.
Regardless of any challenges there are helping my kids navigate a
world full of TV and movies, I’m glad we live during a time of so many
choices. PBSkids does a great job, and I’ve learned as much from the
kids’ Signing Time DVDs as they have. (Now if I can just find them a
Shirley Temple movie where I don’t have to explain about wars or slavery
we’ll be set for a good Movie Night some Friday.)
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