On Taking Kids to the Movies: A Retraction

Those reviews and articles I linked to had me thinking an awful lot. Then it dawned on me as I drove to work, that I was worrying about a question no one was asking.

Some movie reviewers had me convinced that parents are really worried about what movies their kids see, dragging me into a debate on what's appropriate for children and what's not. While that might be somewhat more of the case in Christian circles, it finally dawned on me that very few parents are losing sleep over the matter. (Maybe the debate was just wishful thinking?)

Year after year, I'm continually surprised which movies my 10 and 11 year old students are seeing. Of course, all the girls are seeing the Twilight movies, and in the recent past all the boys have said The Dark Knight is their favorite. Then there were the two boys last year who were giggling about what they saw in Tropic Thunder.

I did a quick poll of my classroom after this realization. Of the 16 kids present, 10 went to the movies. Three saw New Moon, three saw Blind Side, three saw Old Dogs, and one saw Fantastic Mr. Fox. Not all that informative, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

If parents are worried about Where the Wild Things Are or Fantastic Mr. Fox, I would venture to say it's not because of frightening or inappropriate content (because what could be more frightening than the Joker in Dark Knight?!), it's probably because the movies are outside of their typical box, and they're left trying to make sense of it all.

Yes, both movies are probably targeted moreso towards adults, and that's probably what sparked this entire debate anyway, but then we're forgetting that so are most of the allegories and metaphors and rich themes within quality children's literature (like The Phantom Tollbooth, which I'm going to praise here very soon). That's what plumbs the depths of a young person's imagination and keeps them ready to learn, reaching for more.

The real issue here is not over-protective parents (although that's an interesting and pertinent conversation for another time). The issue is our discomfort with the blurry line between what's for kids and what's for adults. It's not as clear as we want it to be, and we haven't gotten used to the fact that something can very easily be for BOTH at the SAME TIME, even without resorting to slapstick comedy or sexual innuendos.

Cue CS Lewis:
"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

And this will be the last word I have to say on the topic. Promise.