We first instituted Friday Night Movie Night in our home when Ian was deployed the second time. I found it easier to keep the kids (and myself) distracted from his absence if we always had short term goals to look forward to. Having Movie Night never be more than a week away helped more than you can imagine.
The challenge has always been finding movies for all of us to enjoy; nothing too scary or complicated for the youngest and nothing that will annoy or bore the adults to death. So far we've done pretty well (and I will list suggestions for family movies at the end of this post if anyone's interested).
In the past year or so, we've decided to focus on what Ian and I term "Source Material." Our kids are old enough that they've been exposed to a ton of media, and they constantly take in references to older movies and shows without realizing it. We find ourselves regularly trying to explain certain jokes that go right over their heads during programs like Futurama, the Simpsons, and Phineas and Ferb. (Thank goodness for YouTube. I have paused episodes of Phineas and Ferb just to show the kids the opening themes to The Love Boat and Gilligan's Island--among other things--so they would appreciate the spoofs.)
But explaining things only goes so far. Why not go right to the source and let them see for themselves?
My own space apart from the babble of the internet
Showing posts with label Friday Night Movie Night. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friday Night Movie Night. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Friday Night Movie Night 2 (with moral dilemma bonus feature) (Babble)
Ah, Movie Night. Both times Ian was deployed in Iraq I found it very
helpful to set frequent small events to look forward to. There were
too many days (weeks, months….) to try counting down to when “daddy was coming home”
without it getting depressing, so I always tried to have something
imminent to draw the kids’ focus toward something good.
The most successful of these was the implementation of Friday Night Movie Night.
Friday Night Movie Night is now an entrenched ritual, and one that it has been nice to add Ian to now that he’s back. We got a special popcorn popper just for movie night, and Aden is queen of the popcorn (although she doesn’t feel comfortable doing the last step of flipping the popper over to release the bowl it comes with). We pull the convertible love seat out into bed-mode and pile on among pillows and blankets. Five of us don’t really fit all that comfortably, but we make do. (A new arrangement will have to be figured out when Quinn is no longer a pint-sized little sweetie who can sit directly in front of me without blocking my view.) Sometimes it’s inconvenient and a bit of a hassle, but I love Friday Night Movie Night.
The biggest blow to this weekly event was the closing of our local video store. Many a Friday afternoon was spent at Bucky’s Supervideo wandering the aisles and trying to come to a family consensus on what to rent. But sadly, Bucky’s closed it’s doors a few months ago, and the DVD selection at our local library is… let’s say ‘unpredictable.’ The library is also closed on Fridays, so we actually have to plan ahead. Or choose from whatever odd things are available on Netflix Instant View or already on our own shelves.
In any case, I thought I’d throw out some of our lessons learned thus far, offer ideas and suggestions for movies to those with small kids, and hope for more recommendations from anyone out there who are in the mood to just name good movies.
It’s hard finding things that all five of us want to watch, and if we get started late sometimes we need to keep movie night short. To customize the length of movie night we often turn to things with lots of small episodes. Our favorites are Shaun the Sheep, Spongebob Squarepants, and Pingu. Shaun the Sheep is a spin off of the Wallace and Gromit claymation movies. They are fun for adults and they keep Quinn laughing too. Pingu is odd and sweet, and Spongebob is just funny.
By comparison, we recently watched a collection of old Felix the Cat cartoons, and man they were weird. They contained some uncomfortable portrayals of race that we had to explain, and even though the kids enjoyed them simply because they were cartoons, Ian and I found them to be really pitiful in every respect. Which is funny, because I remember liking them as a kid myself, but they don’t hold up well. They were amusing but only because they were kind of unintentionally surreal. Anyway, it’s nice to have lots of little episodes in a row because you can find a good stopping point instead of interrupting a larger story if people are too tired to stay up.
Silent movies are fun. My kids really enjoyed Modern Times and still talk about it. I like that my kids know who Charlie Chaplain is, and that they are not put off by things in black and white or without speech. They are fans of Harold Lloyd, too. Since nearly everything had to be expressed without words, the gestures, etc., are exaggerated enough for even little kids to follow. My kids also like the Marx Brothers, but only Aden is old enough to get the fast verbal jokes. Everyone loves Harpo. It’s fun to point out to the kids how many of the gags they enjoy in the Animaniacs and other shows were lifted straight from old movies and now they are in on the references.
Pixar movies seem to be a little too intense for my kids for some reason, which is a shame because I wouldn’t mind watching Up again, or Toy Story 2. If there is one scene in a film that gets them too nervous they nix the whole movie. (Maybe when they are older.)
We try to introduce the kids to things we liked growing up. We did some old episodes of The Muppet Show and Rocky and Bullwinkle and those went over well.
We’ve seen every available Miyazaki animated film, (why those aren’t freakier to them than Pixar movies I don’t know) but Ian hasn’t seen most of them, so they are due for a rerun. The kids like My Neighbor Totoro best, probably. Ponyo is maybe the weirdest film I’ve ever seen, but if you give up on the idea that it needs to make any sense it’s enjoyable.
Actually, that reminds me of something I meant to write about a full year ago and never got around to. I had a weird moral dilemma and would be curious about other people’s opinions. One of the movies we watched while Ian was away that the kids liked best was Kiki’s Delivery Service. It’s another Miyazaki film, and therefore it was originally in Japanese and the English version is dubbed. My kids loved that movie, particularly Aden, who adored the music and memorized all the dialogue. We got it in the mail through Netflix and hung onto it for weeks. After a month of endless viewings we happened across a copy of the movie on sale at Target. I thought, “Great! We will own it and I can finally send the other copy back to Netflix!”
Unfortunately, the new copy of Kiki’s Delivery Service had been dubbed differently from the one we were used to. Some of the lines had been changed, and something about the music was different. (I’m not sure of the details because I, personally, don’t care. But Aden can run a list off for you.) The kids hated it. Actually, I think just Aden hated it, and by extension the other kids decided they hated it too.
So I thought about it, and wondered if it would be wrong to mail our new copy back to Netflix and keep the old one. There was a small sticker with a bar code on it around the hole in the center of the DVD on the Netflix copy, and it would be easy enough to pull that off and move it over to the other DVD. I figured how bad could it be? They get a newer cleaner copy, we get to keep the one that makes the kids happy, it was win win. But Aden saw me messing with the little sticker on the DVD and asked me what I was doing. I explained what I’d been thinking, and then she said, “Isn’t that stealing?” So I stopped and said that maybe it was. What lesson was I teaching Aden?
I pondered it for several days. If switching the DVDs was potentially positive all around, was it wrong? I decided to call Netflix. I got a nice woman in customer service whose first reaction was that I try the switch and see if I get away with it. I told her I didn’t want to “get away with it,” that’s why I was calling. If I had permission, it wasn’t wrong. I wanted to be above board. She thought about it a little longer, and said most people when they wanted to keep something just pretend they lost it and paid the small fine. I told her I didn’t want to pretend anything, that my daughter was watching, and I wanted to be honest. She thought about it a little more. She was a fan of the film and knew about the differences between the two versions. She said the only potential problem for Netflix was that all the copies they owned were of the first version, and someone else trying to rent it again might be confused to get a different version in the mail. It was an interesting conversation, and in the end she decided it probably wasn’t right of her as a representative of the company to suggest I do anything other than send back the copy they originally sent me. Which is what I did.
Aden still refuses to watch the newer version, even though I have a hard time believing a year later she remembers every nuance of what is different, but she might. I may insist on it anyway some Friday night and tell her to get over it already.
But what does anyone else think? It’s not a quandary for the ages by any means, but it was an interesting little ethical puzzle to me for a little while. Ethics are important to me. I want my children to be compassionate, critically thinking, ethical people, and those are qualities best led by example. So I’m comfortable with how that got resolved, even though I’m sure many people would have made a different choice and not seen it as a big deal. But to me if the end result is that Aden can say to herself, “Mommy doesn’t steal” then it was worth it.
Okay! It’s almost Friday! Movie suggestions! I need ’em!
The most successful of these was the implementation of Friday Night Movie Night.
Friday Night Movie Night is now an entrenched ritual, and one that it has been nice to add Ian to now that he’s back. We got a special popcorn popper just for movie night, and Aden is queen of the popcorn (although she doesn’t feel comfortable doing the last step of flipping the popper over to release the bowl it comes with). We pull the convertible love seat out into bed-mode and pile on among pillows and blankets. Five of us don’t really fit all that comfortably, but we make do. (A new arrangement will have to be figured out when Quinn is no longer a pint-sized little sweetie who can sit directly in front of me without blocking my view.) Sometimes it’s inconvenient and a bit of a hassle, but I love Friday Night Movie Night.
The biggest blow to this weekly event was the closing of our local video store. Many a Friday afternoon was spent at Bucky’s Supervideo wandering the aisles and trying to come to a family consensus on what to rent. But sadly, Bucky’s closed it’s doors a few months ago, and the DVD selection at our local library is… let’s say ‘unpredictable.’ The library is also closed on Fridays, so we actually have to plan ahead. Or choose from whatever odd things are available on Netflix Instant View or already on our own shelves.
In any case, I thought I’d throw out some of our lessons learned thus far, offer ideas and suggestions for movies to those with small kids, and hope for more recommendations from anyone out there who are in the mood to just name good movies.
It’s hard finding things that all five of us want to watch, and if we get started late sometimes we need to keep movie night short. To customize the length of movie night we often turn to things with lots of small episodes. Our favorites are Shaun the Sheep, Spongebob Squarepants, and Pingu. Shaun the Sheep is a spin off of the Wallace and Gromit claymation movies. They are fun for adults and they keep Quinn laughing too. Pingu is odd and sweet, and Spongebob is just funny.
By comparison, we recently watched a collection of old Felix the Cat cartoons, and man they were weird. They contained some uncomfortable portrayals of race that we had to explain, and even though the kids enjoyed them simply because they were cartoons, Ian and I found them to be really pitiful in every respect. Which is funny, because I remember liking them as a kid myself, but they don’t hold up well. They were amusing but only because they were kind of unintentionally surreal. Anyway, it’s nice to have lots of little episodes in a row because you can find a good stopping point instead of interrupting a larger story if people are too tired to stay up.
Silent movies are fun. My kids really enjoyed Modern Times and still talk about it. I like that my kids know who Charlie Chaplain is, and that they are not put off by things in black and white or without speech. They are fans of Harold Lloyd, too. Since nearly everything had to be expressed without words, the gestures, etc., are exaggerated enough for even little kids to follow. My kids also like the Marx Brothers, but only Aden is old enough to get the fast verbal jokes. Everyone loves Harpo. It’s fun to point out to the kids how many of the gags they enjoy in the Animaniacs and other shows were lifted straight from old movies and now they are in on the references.
Pixar movies seem to be a little too intense for my kids for some reason, which is a shame because I wouldn’t mind watching Up again, or Toy Story 2. If there is one scene in a film that gets them too nervous they nix the whole movie. (Maybe when they are older.)
We try to introduce the kids to things we liked growing up. We did some old episodes of The Muppet Show and Rocky and Bullwinkle and those went over well.
We’ve seen every available Miyazaki animated film, (why those aren’t freakier to them than Pixar movies I don’t know) but Ian hasn’t seen most of them, so they are due for a rerun. The kids like My Neighbor Totoro best, probably. Ponyo is maybe the weirdest film I’ve ever seen, but if you give up on the idea that it needs to make any sense it’s enjoyable.
Actually, that reminds me of something I meant to write about a full year ago and never got around to. I had a weird moral dilemma and would be curious about other people’s opinions. One of the movies we watched while Ian was away that the kids liked best was Kiki’s Delivery Service. It’s another Miyazaki film, and therefore it was originally in Japanese and the English version is dubbed. My kids loved that movie, particularly Aden, who adored the music and memorized all the dialogue. We got it in the mail through Netflix and hung onto it for weeks. After a month of endless viewings we happened across a copy of the movie on sale at Target. I thought, “Great! We will own it and I can finally send the other copy back to Netflix!”
Unfortunately, the new copy of Kiki’s Delivery Service had been dubbed differently from the one we were used to. Some of the lines had been changed, and something about the music was different. (I’m not sure of the details because I, personally, don’t care. But Aden can run a list off for you.) The kids hated it. Actually, I think just Aden hated it, and by extension the other kids decided they hated it too.
So I thought about it, and wondered if it would be wrong to mail our new copy back to Netflix and keep the old one. There was a small sticker with a bar code on it around the hole in the center of the DVD on the Netflix copy, and it would be easy enough to pull that off and move it over to the other DVD. I figured how bad could it be? They get a newer cleaner copy, we get to keep the one that makes the kids happy, it was win win. But Aden saw me messing with the little sticker on the DVD and asked me what I was doing. I explained what I’d been thinking, and then she said, “Isn’t that stealing?” So I stopped and said that maybe it was. What lesson was I teaching Aden?
I pondered it for several days. If switching the DVDs was potentially positive all around, was it wrong? I decided to call Netflix. I got a nice woman in customer service whose first reaction was that I try the switch and see if I get away with it. I told her I didn’t want to “get away with it,” that’s why I was calling. If I had permission, it wasn’t wrong. I wanted to be above board. She thought about it a little longer, and said most people when they wanted to keep something just pretend they lost it and paid the small fine. I told her I didn’t want to pretend anything, that my daughter was watching, and I wanted to be honest. She thought about it a little more. She was a fan of the film and knew about the differences between the two versions. She said the only potential problem for Netflix was that all the copies they owned were of the first version, and someone else trying to rent it again might be confused to get a different version in the mail. It was an interesting conversation, and in the end she decided it probably wasn’t right of her as a representative of the company to suggest I do anything other than send back the copy they originally sent me. Which is what I did.
Aden still refuses to watch the newer version, even though I have a hard time believing a year later she remembers every nuance of what is different, but she might. I may insist on it anyway some Friday night and tell her to get over it already.
But what does anyone else think? It’s not a quandary for the ages by any means, but it was an interesting little ethical puzzle to me for a little while. Ethics are important to me. I want my children to be compassionate, critically thinking, ethical people, and those are qualities best led by example. So I’m comfortable with how that got resolved, even though I’m sure many people would have made a different choice and not seen it as a big deal. But to me if the end result is that Aden can say to herself, “Mommy doesn’t steal” then it was worth it.
Okay! It’s almost Friday! Movie suggestions! I need ’em!
Friday, May 21, 2010
A Change of Toon (Babble)
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.)
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.)
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday Night Movie Night (Babble)
When Ian began his latest deployment back in September, I decided we
needed to establish a little more structure into our routine. Kids do
better when things are predictable. Too often that means being
disciplined about responsibilities, like practicing for weekly violin
lessons or choir or being in a habit about when to do homework or
picking up toys. So we added a new thing just for fun: Friday Night
Movie Night. I realize this is not unique or clever of us, but it’s
been one of the best things we’ve added to our lives in a long time. We
love Friday Night Movie Night.
First of all, everyone looks forward to it. It’s good to have something coming up that’s never more than a week away that everyone is excited about. If the kids are down about anything, I can always ask for suggestions about the next movie night and they perk right up.
Second, it gets us all thinking about each other’s needs and tastes. The first rule of movie night is that we all have to agree on the movie. This is not easy, since we have to find something that’s not too scary for the three year old, but will still interest the six and eight year olds, and not bore this forty year old to death. I have vetoed Pokemon movies, they have nixed ‘My Dinner with Andre’ each time I’ve answered honestly what I want to watch, but overall we’ve had great success.
Among the things we’ve enjoyed so far are:
Kiki’s Delivery Service, Bolt, Kung Fu Panda, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Up, Monsters Vs Aliens, and Safety Last. I’ve discovered my kids love silent movies, and I’m hoping to talk them into trying out maybe a Shirley Temple or Lassie film sometime just to expand their cultural references a bit, although it’s harder to convince them that a non-cartoon movie is going to be fun.
Third, there is popcorn. Popcorn is big for a few reasons. Aden gets to make it (which just means pushing the button marked ‘popcorn’ on the microwave, but she is proud of her popcorn making abilities). She takes this responsibility very seriously. Also, we get to eat the popcorn upstairs by the TV, and normally there is a ‘no food upstairs’ rule, so the popcorn upstairs is very exciting. Plus, it’s popcorn. One of the first things I bought for my violin store was a popcorn machine, because the quickest way to make any business better is to add popcorn in my opinion. (I still have a little trouble justifying to people why a violin store offers free popcorn, but hey, it’s my store and I can do whatever I want as long as it doesn’t violate some code.)
And last, there is the group snuggle. We shut off all the lights (that’s Mona’s job), pile together under blankets, and cuddle up for the length of the movie. There is a bit of contention between Mona and Quinn about sharing my lap, but it’s usually worked out by the end of the previews. I love having them all so close. It’s warm and cozy and feels like everything being in a family should be.
When people come to visit, we lay out the rules of Friday Night Movie Night very clearly. No working on your laptop while watching the movie. You are either in, or you’re out. No hogging all the blankets. No blurting out bits of the plot, but Mona is allowed to announce if something coming up is ‘a funny part’ and Quinn will repeat bits of dialogue throughout the movie and we will like it.
I’m still surprised by just how fiercely the kids have all latched onto the Friday Night Movie Night routine. The few times we’ve had to move it by a day because of some conflicting event they’ve been very concerned. It’s not quite the same on a Saturday to them for some reason, so I do the best I can to not let things get in the way of actual Friday nights.
I’m looking forward to keeping this routine in place well past Ian’s eventual return from Iraq. I like the idea of watching more varied films as the kids get older. Movies and books are such a great way of launching discussions on important topics, especially about things that are embarrassing in the first person. If you can talk about fictional characters you can express opinions and pass judgments without feeling directly exposed or attacked yourself, and that can be useful. When we watched ‘Mulan’ recently I was able to talk to Aden about how lucky we are to live in a time and place where girls can do whatever they want. That she doesn’t have to get married in order to be considered valuable.
Not that Friday Night Movie Night is primarily about teachable moments; there weren’t many deep lessons to be drawn from ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ other than every landscape apparently needs a moon. The real joy of Friday Night Movie Night has less to do with movies than it has to do with love. Sitting under a pile of kids and knowing they are happy and safe and warm is the nicest routine I can think of. (Plus there’s popcorn. Doesn’t get better than that.)
Any movie recommendations?
First of all, everyone looks forward to it. It’s good to have something coming up that’s never more than a week away that everyone is excited about. If the kids are down about anything, I can always ask for suggestions about the next movie night and they perk right up.
Second, it gets us all thinking about each other’s needs and tastes. The first rule of movie night is that we all have to agree on the movie. This is not easy, since we have to find something that’s not too scary for the three year old, but will still interest the six and eight year olds, and not bore this forty year old to death. I have vetoed Pokemon movies, they have nixed ‘My Dinner with Andre’ each time I’ve answered honestly what I want to watch, but overall we’ve had great success.
Among the things we’ve enjoyed so far are:
Kiki’s Delivery Service, Bolt, Kung Fu Panda, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Up, Monsters Vs Aliens, and Safety Last. I’ve discovered my kids love silent movies, and I’m hoping to talk them into trying out maybe a Shirley Temple or Lassie film sometime just to expand their cultural references a bit, although it’s harder to convince them that a non-cartoon movie is going to be fun.
Third, there is popcorn. Popcorn is big for a few reasons. Aden gets to make it (which just means pushing the button marked ‘popcorn’ on the microwave, but she is proud of her popcorn making abilities). She takes this responsibility very seriously. Also, we get to eat the popcorn upstairs by the TV, and normally there is a ‘no food upstairs’ rule, so the popcorn upstairs is very exciting. Plus, it’s popcorn. One of the first things I bought for my violin store was a popcorn machine, because the quickest way to make any business better is to add popcorn in my opinion. (I still have a little trouble justifying to people why a violin store offers free popcorn, but hey, it’s my store and I can do whatever I want as long as it doesn’t violate some code.)
And last, there is the group snuggle. We shut off all the lights (that’s Mona’s job), pile together under blankets, and cuddle up for the length of the movie. There is a bit of contention between Mona and Quinn about sharing my lap, but it’s usually worked out by the end of the previews. I love having them all so close. It’s warm and cozy and feels like everything being in a family should be.
When people come to visit, we lay out the rules of Friday Night Movie Night very clearly. No working on your laptop while watching the movie. You are either in, or you’re out. No hogging all the blankets. No blurting out bits of the plot, but Mona is allowed to announce if something coming up is ‘a funny part’ and Quinn will repeat bits of dialogue throughout the movie and we will like it.
I’m still surprised by just how fiercely the kids have all latched onto the Friday Night Movie Night routine. The few times we’ve had to move it by a day because of some conflicting event they’ve been very concerned. It’s not quite the same on a Saturday to them for some reason, so I do the best I can to not let things get in the way of actual Friday nights.
I’m looking forward to keeping this routine in place well past Ian’s eventual return from Iraq. I like the idea of watching more varied films as the kids get older. Movies and books are such a great way of launching discussions on important topics, especially about things that are embarrassing in the first person. If you can talk about fictional characters you can express opinions and pass judgments without feeling directly exposed or attacked yourself, and that can be useful. When we watched ‘Mulan’ recently I was able to talk to Aden about how lucky we are to live in a time and place where girls can do whatever they want. That she doesn’t have to get married in order to be considered valuable.
Not that Friday Night Movie Night is primarily about teachable moments; there weren’t many deep lessons to be drawn from ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ other than every landscape apparently needs a moon. The real joy of Friday Night Movie Night has less to do with movies than it has to do with love. Sitting under a pile of kids and knowing they are happy and safe and warm is the nicest routine I can think of. (Plus there’s popcorn. Doesn’t get better than that.)
Any movie recommendations?
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