So...Easter has just been, even though it's Easter Monday and the
Christians of the world are still celebrating and awaiting the return of Jesus
Christ while dealing with the fact their children's sore stomachs from all the
chocolate and minted lamb.
...Oh! Animals! Look at that. This is going somewhere I
promise. Namely...here.
The link above (which leads to the article posted by British
newspaper The Mirror) talks about the anger and disgust of parents who allowed
their presumably quite small children to watch a movie about cute little bunny
rabbits because Easter...who go through the rabbit version of a slaughter,
basically. I...can't get my head around this. At all. It's...no, you know what?
No, I can't go there.
It's not the fact kids got scared by the film. It scared the pants
off me when I was a kid and it probably still does now. Kids get scared all the
time by movies, it's just something that happens. Kids don't want to see other
living creatures, real or otherwise, get shot and whatever else. It's
understandable. It's also understandable that parents want to protect their
children. I have a three-year-old, you're right I want to protect him, and as a
parent you're an idiot if you don't think I won't do everything in my power to
keep him safe. Safe. Safe. SAFE. Key
word there. I will protect my son from harm, but I'm not going to pretend that
bad things happen and complain when a choice I make upsets
him, and especially not to a person that has no control over what is
shown...who works for a business that you don't have to take
anything to do with.
Did Watership Down turn into nightmare fuel for your little one?
Yes? Well you know what you should have done when they started showing signs of
being upset? Here are a couple of suggestions:
1) Pick up the television remote (you know, the thing that looks a
little bit like a rectangle and has loads of buttons on it?)
2) Changed the channel or turned off your television
3) Cuddled your child, dried their eyes and...
4) Explain in an age-appropriate manner the material that upset
them.
5) Do not, under any circumstances, take to social media and tell
a television channel that you did not have to watch that they
were showing something you did not have to watch
Unless of course someone had entered your home and a statistically unlikely series of events occurred that results in either watching this movie or atrocities happening to you and yours. With this still in mind however, number 5 is still not a thing. You are not contractually obliged by any television provider and their online counterpart under the sun to watch anything they broadcast.
Do you know what the most...upsetting/annoying thing about this
whole malarkey is? Watership Down was written (yes, it's a book. Marketed as
a children's book at that) in the 1970s, published in 1972,
and the movie parents are complaining about was released in 1978. Now the law
of averages says that most of these parents are what...twenties and thirties?
(Teen parents and older parents do skew this average a little, however) I find
it very unlikely that these parents have never in their lives at the very least
heard of Watership Down. However, this is not the 1970s but the age of Google,
Wikipedia and IMDB [Internet Movie Database], which allows people who may be
unfamiliar to do something that their parents would not have been able to do;
research. I'm not going to say I'm perfect and know what everything my boy will
ever watch is about...but I would like to consider myself perhaps more
knowledgeable than as to let him get scared and then complain to the powers
that be as if my decision is somehow their fault. I, too, become scared.
Regularly. However, unless it can be shown that it is not my doing that I
became scared, it was very likely my own fault and not that of someone else.
Unless my parents or fiancé attempt to bring me up high and make me look
down…that’s definitely their fault.
Even better than this is the assumption that because it was shown
before 9pm, or is labelled as a kids' movie, it's going to be all sunshine and
roses. I must ask, in what universe? I'm not that person that every parent
hates, telling you how to parent while not having a damn clue, I've just told
my three-year-old to stop dragging a plastic spoon across the floor. I'm that
one you don't like because I refuse to protect you from your own mistakes. Kids
films are scary sometimes [Read: a lot. Thank you, Disney]. They have scenes
that are most definitely not suitable for children. Like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnamFerzNvw
That's Pinocchio. Film scares me more than a “family” movie
should, to the point where I have told my son’s father that if he wants to show
this to our son, he’s on his own. This scene in particular scares me. It is one
of two Disney movies I steadfastly refuse to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_MVU7NQkGE
This is Aladdin, where a guy
gets swallowed whole by a freaking sand-cave monster thing. That's
not necessarily kid appropriate viewing, and that's in the first five minutes
of the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKlr_dE7u9U
The first video is a Top Ten Disney Villain Deaths. The second one
is a Top Ten Scariest Disney moments, both originally posted by WatchMojo.com. These
videos scratch the surface. I can promise you that any children's
film you watch will have dark and scary moments in it, purely because you
cannot make a full-length movie of someone pulling sunshine, flowers and
glitter, however I’m sure one day someone studio executive will give it a good
go. But your little one is still going to watch Frozen right? Not-child-friendly
moments of this include the alienation of Anna, the idea that Elsa is
responsible for Anna turning into a block of ice and Hans leaving Anna to die
in a room because if he lies, he can become King of Arendelle.
Wow, Anna really got the short straw in this movie.
What about the Lion King, the Frozen of the 90s where the
protagonist's father is murdered by his own brother and said murderous brother
is then eaten alive (quite literally) by hyenas? All these movies and the many
more examples I can think of from the top of my head almost lead me to this
impression that my fellow parents of young children are okay with allowing them
to watch things like this because it’s Disney, but the moment it becomes any
other movie outlet, it’s terrible and should be put on blast.
I saw someone on Facebook say that Channel Five themselves are at
fault because showing a film on Easter Sunday because bunnies is odd logic. It
is...and it would be if it were accurate. Channel Five were doing a Greatest
Animated Films countdown, it had nothing to do with Easter unless the standard
religious-turned-Hallmark holiday thing that mainstream media has become had
anything to do with the countdown.
I understand that parents want to protect their children. I am,
after all, a parent. However, I cannot, and likely will never fathom the idea
that it’s somehow not my fault that the programme I allowed my child to watch
scared him is anyone’s fault but mine.
Of course, I am not immune. My son is terrified of the incinerator
scene in Toy Story Three and yet it is one of his favourite movies. Kids, huh?
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