Re-reading the article, it SOUNDS like they were going to have the kid act the role - but that when mom walked away he actually got upset instead of acting upset:
So I THINK that they told the kid that mom would walk away, and that he should cry like he missed her. They then shot the scene, and kid was really crying and not acting and they kept filming.
As for the effectiveness of the commercial - it got to me. I do not smoke, but I have other health issues. That bit is enough to get me to try to change a few things. I have two kids, so the images are pretty strong.
It’s cool, apology accepted. I am comfortable with what we had done, so I didn’t take your comment badly.
I half agree with you on the subject of needing to experience parenting to have a worthwhile opinion on it. I think some parts of parenting you do need to have experienced it before you really have any idea what you’re talking about, but on the other hand, we’ve all been children and many of us have been around children to some extent, so I don’t think it’s right to automatically dismiss an opinion, just because the person is not a parent.
This thread is not about parenting per se (ie, how to raise a kid), it’s just about whether doing one particular thing to a kid is ok or not.
Dio, in every thread you post in from now on, you’d be well-advised to first consider whether you have any personal experience on the subject matter. Otherwise, you’re likely to get this thread rubbed in your face.
Nope. That criterion doesn’t apply to every experience, and I never said it did. It applies to a few unique experiences and being a parent is one of them.
If the commercial’s director manipulated the boy into crying by letting him believe he’d truly been abandoned by his mother, he should be horsewhipped because that’s simply not necessary. My youngest niece started acting and modelling as a toddler and when she was around five years old I chaperoned her during a three-episode arc of a TV show where she played a main character’s daughter. She had a scene where “Dad” had to tell her he was leaving her and her mother. She had no lines and was simply told to “look sad” by the director. The actor, however, spent some time with her explaining the emotion behind the scene.
She rocked it; as the actor did his monologue her eyes filled with tears. The actor’s voice broke with sadness and her tears started flowing. When the director called “cut and print!” she knew she’d nailed it in one take and was beaming with pride. Kids (well, some kids) can act without being traumatized.
Obviously the only way to understand anything “directly” is to live it. And obviously that is in most cases – including parenting – the best, most authoritative basis for opinion. The idiocy is in saying that is the only way to reach a valid opinion, such that no non-parent could possibly know what they are talking about.
There is a vast gulf between “best” and “only.” In the case of parenting, “best” is inarguable; “only” is indefensible.
Yes, but consider that the lack of kids may not have been why.
I understand what you’re saying here, Dio, but I have a hard time viewing it in the same black-and-white way that you do. My aunt died a lingering death (cancer) while she was a widowed mother. I can guarantee you that her oldest daughter knew a lot about children just from having to take care of her little siblings while their mother couldn’t. Hell, I’ve seen parents who know less than a lot of the babysitters I’ve used.
I will cheerfully admit that after having children, I found out just how ignorant I was about kids when I was single. I’m watching my daughter learn now that she has a child. But I won’t automatically dismiss the opinions of non-parents as you do.
No sweat, Mika. I admit to owning a monthly alternative newspaper, so I just may have a bit of prejudice of my own
We do have this problem a lot. There have been threads where I’ve felt backed into a corner defending a position I didn’t even believe in just because people were drawing lines in the sand and labeling the extremes.
I am, obviously, not Dio, as he is smarter but I am prettier.* But I didn’t take what he wrote upthread as talking about biological parenthood, but rather taking responsibility for a child in a direct and primary way. (Doesn’t DtC have adopted as well as biological children?) Doing so causes enormous shifts in POV that the childless (and by that I mean “people who haven’t raised children,” not “people who have never reproduced biologically”) cannot conceive of.
*Admittedly I have little evidence for the latter clause, but I still believe it as I am also egotistical.
Yes, by “parenting,” I mean being a primary caretaker, not necessarily biologically reproducing them. Obviously, you can do one without doing the other.
All my kids are biologically mine, Skald, but I know there are others on the board who have adopted children (I believe tomndebb and Shodan both do, for instance), so maybe you mixed them up with someone else. I don’t consider adoptive parents or other primary caretakers to be less of a parent than I am.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that you don’t recognise if something requires direct experience for adequate understanding until you’ve experienced it.
I suspect that before you were a parent you might not have included parenting as something needs to be experienced to be understood, but you probably acknowledged that this type of subject existed.
ALl of you who have no problem with it I just have to ask, “Were you ever four years old?” Because I was and unless you have been four years old, you cannot know what you are talking about.
Oh, it’s much worse than that commerical with the girl picking flower petals, and the bomb going off. :rolleyes: That’s what you’d call “emotional terrorism”.
