The curse of children’s movies

Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2006

It is time now for a little profanity, a little violence and a little sex.

Yes, it’s time to take our young children to the movies.

Our recent choices have included ‘‘Chicken Little,” wherein alien robots wipe out a town’s animals with lasers; ‘‘Wallace and Gromit,” which features an armed hunter and a lot of bawdy jokes, such as the heroine holding a pair of melons at her chest; and ‘‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” which includes such frightening scenes that many grade schoolers who read the book weren’t allowed to see the movie.

Is it just me, or do children’s movies always hit us with something that make us wonder if they’re fit for children? The Harvard School of Public Health says it’s not just me: In a series of studies, the school found that violence, sex and profanity have increased significantly in movies – including those rated G and PG – from 1992 to 2003.

As I’m preparing to complain about this, my 3-year-old is watching a Bugs Bunny video. I hear growling on the television, and walk into the living room to find that Sylvester the cat has just escaped being eaten by a lion while in pursuit of Tweety.

‘‘Why is the lion trying to eat him?” Jaycie calmly asks.

‘‘Because lions eat animals,” I say.

When a new episode begins with cheerful cartoon banter, I resume my lament of violence in children’s entertainment.

The first thing we have to face is that children’s entertainment always has been full of violence.

Consider that our most popular lullaby is about a baby who gets put on top of a tree for a nap in heavy winds; a branch snaps, and the baby plummets to the ground.

Sufficiently alerted to the dangers of sleeping in trees, our babies are ready to hear nursery rhymes. While these rhymes often sound nonsensical to children, they have fun historical interpretations. For example, some scholars say ‘‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” is about a queen of England who had people killed for practicing Protestantism. Her ‘‘garden” is said to be a graveyard, while the ‘‘silver bells and cockle shells” are torture instruments.

Then there are fairy tales. Years ago, my aunt gave my young son a book of ‘‘Calming Classics,” which, if I shelved our books according to genre, would sit next to the Stephen King novels. At bedtime, I’d search for safe stories from among tales of a wolf eating a grandmother before getting axed; a fox giving a gingerbread boy a ride, then eating him; and a wolf breaking into the house of three pigs, who boil him alive.

If our children can handle these tales, they’re ready for children’s television. Most of us fondly remember spending Saturday mornings witnessing a string of fun assaults: Bugs Bunny shoots Elmer Fudd in the face, a boulder crushes Wile E. Coyote, Ignatz Mouse nails Krazy Kat with a brick and the Three Stooges poke, punch and kick each other.

Some classic children’s stories even got turned into cartoon movies. We saw Snow White get poisoned. We saw Bambi’s mother get shot.

So when parents object to the content of children’s movies and TV shows, the people who make the stuff mount the Bambi Defense. They point to shooting of said doe and the violence in our favorite cartoons, and say what they’re doing is nothing new.

There are, however, major differences between Moe bonking Larry on the head and what happens in many children’s shows today.

First, as Harvard documented, movies aimed at children contain an ever-increasing amount of violence, profanity and sexual references. Movie studio executives say this just reflects societal trends. So the next time I go to one of their movies, I’ll slip in without paying because I hear that theft is up all over.

Really, I don’t mind a little well-placed sex and violence. But as I’m watching movies with my young children, what strikes me is how much of this material is gratuitous. The screenwriters throw a curse word into a conversation for no apparent reason — as if they have to make themselves feel grown up.

And of 51 G-rated movies examined in the Harvard studies, 26 included depictions or use of tobacco, alcohol or drugs. Why?

Second, today’s movies are so technologically advanced that they are not the same product as our old, flat cartoons. When Daffy Duck’s beak gets spun around by an explosion, it’s unreal to kids; they giggle at the slapstick.

Today’s movies look so realistic that even the animated violence and horror are far from funny. The scenes are genuinely frightening.

So when we take Jaycie to G movies, we invariably have to cover her eyes or ears at some point. I’d rather keep her in the living room, laughing as Tweety outwits Sylvester once again.

Patrick Boyle is editor of Youth Today, the national newspaper on youth work. He can be reached at pboyle@youthtoday.org.