Not the case. Not the case at all. It fucking breaks them as human beings. So broken that it’s really hard to fix them, if they get the chance to be fixed. Here’s a good documentary on the subject.
I disagree than any kid older than, say, 6, is this much of a moral blank slate. Are you a parent or otherwise regularly interacting with young kids?
I don’t think it makes that much of a difference - some child soldiers are indoctrinated, others are just slaves, but all are traumatized.
I haven’t seen the documentary myself, yet, but I have to note that the wiki page says it’s not just about children who kill in battle—it’s about children who were kidnapped, tortured, and forced into a slave army, sometimes made to attack and sack their own families.
Not only would that particular situation break anyone, I’d argue that it was probably specifically designed to break them.
Yes, Kick-Ass was totally appalled by Hit Girl, and the audience was supposed to be, too. I know it totally shocked me to pieces when she first shows up. The first thing she does is
skewer a guy with her sword, and proceed to hack the rest of the thugs to bits.
It’s the juxtaposition of her happy-joy attitude with the extreme violence that is the point - she has been totally fucked up by her dad and his brainwashing. That’s the point, how bad it is, not to celebrate how tough she is.
She shoots one man with a paintball. No actual kill or injury, though practice for the real thing. She sets out to go to the police station and kill the man who killed her family, but doesn’t do it. IIRC she can’t bring herself to shoot.
She is seeking justice and retribution. She wants him brought back to Fort Smith to stand trial and then be hanged. But she’s willing to shoot him when he won’t surrender to her, because she knows he’s a violent and deadly man - he killer her pa.
In The Adventures of Captain Marvel , Billy Batson shoots several people with handguns, and, at one point, mans a machine gun.
This was in 1941, when Bad Guys were assumed to deserve it.
Not all the child soldiers are press-ganged, some were just recruited on ideological grounds, or were running away from other things, but they’re all broken.
Agreed. But so is conventional military training, in a milder way. I’d argue that in the real world (which was what this parenthetical is about), no child is going to become a killer without some form of breaking and indoctrination. Like I said, they’re not moral tabulae rasa.
Thanks, I was mis-remembering that. I thought she wounded him with a real bullet.