Fiction, Trauma, and Children

Cafe Society
1

You may have seen in the news that Disney is remaking Bambi into a live action movie. Even if you’ve never seen the original, I think just about everyone knows that Bambi’s mother is killed by a hunter. My apologies if I just spoiled an 83 year old movie for you. As with any remake, this one is generating some controversy as the filmmakers (allegedly) plan to downplay the death of Bambi’s mother. Now the usual suspects are complaining this is part of some “woke” agenda, but I think that’s baloney, and it’s more of an issue of making sure the movie appeals to a modern audience. What was acceptable to audiences in 1942 might not be acceptable in the 2020s.

But it brings to mind something I think of now and then; It’s good for children to be exposed to traumatic events in fiction. It’s good for them to experience fear and sadness through fiction as it allows them to learn how to process these emotions in what is ultimately a safe environment. Keep in mind I’m not arguing that a six-year-old should watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scanners, or The Thing (I have no idea why anyone things the demographics on this board skew older), but there were some movies I remember watching as a wee lad that were scary or sad. There was the death of Atreyu’s horse Artax in The Neverending Story, I had to seriously fight back tears when Mr. Spock died in The Wrath of Khan, and then there was the death of Lunk and Roy Fokker in the Robotech cartoon.

I saw an interview with Larry Hama where he referred to the original GI Joe cartoon as “morally bankrupt.” Hama was a writer at Marvel comics who was tagged to write the GI Joe comic book and he was also the one who came up with the backstories for most of the Joes. Hasbro would show Hama the design for the toy and he’s write the biography. The comic was targetted towards a slight older demographic and there were people who died. It’s been more than 40 years and I still remember the death of Kwinn the Eskimo at the hands of Dr. Venom. Hama thought the cartoon was morally bankrupt because it featured characters going to war without anyone ever getting hurt. And I agree with him.

I don’t want to imply that kids today are weak as I don’t believe that kind of nonsense. But I don’t know if we do them any good by eliminating the negative from fiction aimed at them. Am I off base here?

2

I think that the age the original Bambi was aimed at was around kindergarten, give or take a year. That’s about a year or two or three too early to be introducing having your mother shot dead by a hunter, IME. It truly was traumatic in the movie theater.

3

It’s not like Disney ever stopped killing off parents and other loved one’s in their films. My wife and I were watching Elemental and were surprised after the flash forward that both of the protagonist’s parents were still alive. But soon we learn her co-hero has a dead father. That’s when it started to feel like a real Disney movie.

4

I watched Labyrinth a few years back…uh, over 20 years ago, with my niece and I hadn’t seen it since I was a kid. I was a little surprised how suspensful the beginning of the movie was when Jennifer Connelly knew someone else was in the house but couldn’t find them. It was a little intense for my niece and I had to stop to make sure she was okay with continuing to watch it.

5

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

― G.K. Chesterton

6

At least they weren’t shot dead in real-time.

7

Disney has more evil stepmoms than a modern suburb. That gave me nightmares for years. All you need is one bad one and you sleep forever til some creepy forest weirdos come drag you out of it. Oh wait that’s Snow white. Sleeping Beauty had a good nap. Excuse me. I’ll shut up now.

8

Finding Nemo, a more recent example, starts off with the death of Nemo’s mother (altho he’s still a fish egg, his father displays grief). In The Lion King, Simba’s father is killed. While I agree kids should be exposed to a wide variety of age-appropriate stories and plot lines to get them thinking, I feel there should be adults available to help them sort thru any feeling they may be unprepared to manage, as @Odesio mentions.

And maybe I am old-fashioned, but gratuitous visual violence should be gradually introduced as they become older and more aware.

9

Yeah, I kinda wish my first encounter with the murder of a parent hadn’t happened on the big screen in all its glory at the age of 5.

10

When my older daughter was little, she used to ask to watch Bambi over and over. I was reminiscong with her when she was in high school, and I mentioned how much she loved that movie. She told me, “No, I just thought that maybe if we played it again, the next time his mom wouldn’t die.” So that movie traumatized her as a child and me as an adult!

I could see where they might want to downplay the shooting death of a doe if it’s going to be live action. Not everyone takes their kids hunting.

11

While stationed in Germany, my best friend and I took a German couple (same age as we were) we knew to see Watership Down at the base theater. Almost all of the audience was Americans who’d brought along their tykes because it was an animated movie. The audience thinned out quickly once the killin’ began. Looking back on it now, I think those parents thought the kids would be scared more than they really were.

12

Hmmm…no mention of Old Yeller or Where the Red Fern Grows yet?

I do wonder what modern adaptations would do with those. Personally I think they were worth watching, but…I never watched either twice :slight_smile:.

13

I don’t think we need to waste a lot of thought on the viewpoint of the “usual suspects”. Conservatives are mad at Disney and they would kvetch about any choice Disney made as being too “woke”.

Disney is choosing to pull back from the doe-shooting in Bambi, and that’s “too woke” because it’s overprotective, apparently. I guarantee you that if Disney had chosen instead to lean into the doe-shooting and make it a big tragic crisis in the film, that would be excoriated as “too woke” because it’s trying to brainwash kids about the evils of gun violence, or something. Nothing that Disney does can possibly avoid being “too woke” for these critics, in one way or another.

14

I was hoping for an updated version in which the hunters meet a grisly end.

Maybe call it Bambo!

15

Niiiice!!

I’ll point out the Grimm’s fairy tales from a few centuries ago are pretty grim. Traditional Disney products simply follow that well-trodden path.

As always, the real debate is “What is the goal when raising a child?” Some will argue that only a cynic hardened to expect mostly adversity and violence from life can survive and succeed in the dog-eat-dog world out there. While others will argue that the goal is to raise a child aware of the bad in the world, but determined to both emphasize the good they encounter and to work to increase the good by attitude and deed.

Once we can settle which way we’re trying to aim the child, then we can settle which ideas get fed to them at what age with which simplifications to achieve the goal.

16

I think that is very valid as long as it isn’t too graphic or gratuitous in nature.

17

What do you base this on?

Just a nitpick, but this is a paraphrase, rather than a direct quote, of Chesterton.

18

A book or movie theater isn’t a safe environment. It’s not an environment at all in developmental terms.

A child’s ability to process difficult emotions in a healthy way is based on a million interlocking factors. Parents and/or guardians (or their lack) school, friends, economic status, health, social and emotional development, etc etc etc

One kid might be able to process the death of Bambi’s mom just fine. Another might ask their parents about it on the ride home and get a good answer. Another might ask about it later that night but, oops, Dad’s been drinking and now they forever associate their first experience of fictional death with a brutal beating. Another might bring it up at school and get bullied for watching a “kid’s” movie, but really for showing vulnerability in front of the kid who got beat by his dad last night for asking the same question.

So I think your overall premise is deeply, dangerously flawed because when it comes to stuff like this there are no blanket answers about what’s right or proper. There’s nothing that comes even close.

Kids are resilient, but they all have different demands on their resiliency.

19

WHAT?!? My mom told me she was nursed back to health offscreen by a kindly veterinarian, and lived her life out happily on a nice deer farm :sob:

But seriously, I completely agree with the OP here:

However, I respectfully disagree with the OP here:

I won’t just imply it; I’ll say it: kids today are weak!

OK, not weak, exactly, but too sheltered, too living in a virtual bubble. I know, every generation complains about ‘kids these days…’. But I think ‘kids these days’ really are different than we were in negative ways, and it concerns me.

I’ve see it in my friend’s kids, who didn’t bother getting their driver’s licenses until their early 20s, and now in their mid 20s are going nowhere. And I see it my own kids as well to a lesser degree. Kids now communicate with their friends largely online instead of going out into the world and interacting with them in person. All the milestones of youth-- getting your driver’s license, driving to events with a carful of friends, staying out late, dating, etc., seem to be pushed back later and later. My parents used to stress when I stayed out too late at 17. We stress out that our oldest son, at almost 21, is always around. They experience death and trauma through video games, but it’s in a cartoonish manner that has no real emotional impact behind it.

[/rant]

Yeah, I was going to say-- what’s next, a Disney remake in which Old Yeller turns out to just have a mild case of distemper, recovers and lives happily ever after?

I think this scenario is a little extreme. Do you think that if a kid has a drunken, abusive parent, it’s going to make their lives better if they are completely sheltered from any trauma in the fictional entertainments they experience? That kid has much worse problems than experiencing Bambi’s mother get killed.

20

On behalf of native-born New Yorkers everywhere, let me be the first to say….”Welcome to our world!”