4 ms·

I recall something Stanley Kubrick said about Bambi being traumatizing: I saw Mary Poppins three times, because of my children, and I like Julie Andrews so

by tehnub 4y ago

I recall something Stanley Kubrick said about Bambi being traumatizing: I saw Mary Poppins three times, because of my children, and I like Julie Andrews so much that I enjoyed seeing it three times. I thought it was a charming film. I wouldn’t want to make it, but … Children’s films are an area that should not just be left to the Disney Studios, who I don’t think really make very good children’s films. I’m talking about his cartoon features, which always seemed to me to have shocking and brutal elements in them that really upset children. I could never understand why they were thought to be so suitable. When Bambi’s mother dies this has got to be one of the most traumatic experiences a five-year-old could encounter. I think that there should be censorship for children on films of violence. I mean, if I didn’t know what Psycho was, and my children went to see it when they were six or seven, thinking they were going to see a mystery story, I would have been very angry, and I think they’d have been terribly upset. I don’t see how this would interfere with freedom of artistic expression. If films are overly violent or shocking, children under twelve should not be allowed to see them. I think that would be a very useful form of censorship.

hinkley 4y ago
I think as adults we downplay how difficult first experiences can be, and so I don't think we get that the stories of loss and struggle in kids movies are speaking to them about real problems they either already have or will soon. Miyazaki has for some people become an alternative to Disney, but his work is full of Dumbo and Bambi moments. The difference is that in his work, the girl (and it is almost always a girl protagonist) is often substantially responsible for saving themselves, by reasonable means. They are not rescued by a boy or by deux ex machina. Even in My Neighbor Totoro, which is almost but not quite an exception to this rule, the youngest (who is a main character, but not the main character) is saved by a magic bus. However, the main character initiates this rescue by digging deep and calling on resources she might not have thought to exploit. She asks for help from the most powerful person she knows and she gets it. She has to ask, and the terms of the rescue are very defined. Nobody white-knights her, nobody swoops in and reads her mind. But the main struggle in that story is not a lost child. It is Death. And this resolves itself rather than being resolved by the characters, not through a miracle, but by discovering that the children don't know the situation and have invented a story that is much scarier than reality. In the end most of their fears are unfounded, and while life won't be everything they hoped, it's going to be much better than their internal catastrophizing.
- lioeters 4y ago
  Speaking of Miyazaki, I watched the Grave of the Fireflies when I was a child, and it was a devastating experience. (For those who haven't seen, it's a story of a brother and sister in Japan at the end of WWII.) It was as if I myself had lived through (and perhaps died in) a war. I watched it one more time in my life, but I cannot even write about it without tears coming to my eyes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies Also, one of my childhood books was When the Wind Blows. (For those who haven't read it, it's a story of an old British couple going through the aftermath of a nuclear attack.) Similarly traumatizing. I suppose my parents meant to educate me about the horrors of war, but at such a young age (pre-teen, maybe around ten years old) my reading experience was so powerful that it felt like I lived through it. Scenes from that book still haunt me sometimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Wind_Blows_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Wind_Blows_(comics)
  - tehnub 4y ago
    Not that you explicitly said otherwise, but I just want to point out that Grave of the Fireflies was written and directed by Isao Takahata (RIP), who was a co-founder of Studio Ghibli and frequent collaborator with Miyazaki.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    I told the kids they aren’t allowed to watch that until they’re old enough to drink. Mostly so they can drink immediately afterward. That’s one of hose movies you really only need to see once, like Schindler’s List.
  - m463 4y ago
    As a kid I was traumatized by War of the Gargantuas. I just remember a part where one of the monsters reaches into a building, eats a woman and spits out a dress + bones. Now sort of amusingly, I don't want to watch the movie again for a different reason. It's because my memory of it is entirely sort of a "native memory" going back that many years.
- wodenokoto 4y ago
vlunkr 4y ago
I think conflating violent or frightening scenes with tragic scenes is a mistake here. As a young kid I watched Lion King and Land Before Time, which both feature dramatic depictions of the death of a parental figures, which both lead to kids fending for themselves. I don't remember being traumatized by this at all, and watched them repeatedly. As an adult I see the tragedy and it's kind of shocking, but I think as a kid it was just make-believe and I wasn't relating to the characters in that way. And obviously tons of other kids watched and loved these movies too. On the other hand the more intense scenes from Indiana Jones were terrifying and burned deep into my brain.
slibhb 4y ago
Don't know -- I saw The Shining when I was 11 or 12 and it freaked me out pretty badly but I don't think it left any scars. It's a lot scarier than Psycho at any rate which mostly holds up but seems incredibly tame today. 11-12 is different than 6-7 but besides some nightmares, I don't think seeing scary movies have a negative impact on kids.
CamperBob2 4y ago
Where's that quote from? Was it before or after he let his daughter help out on the set of A Clockwork Orange? [1] Her job was said to be cutting out the letters on the wall. (Which was awesome, I thought, even though she turned out to be about as messed-up as his quote would suggest.) 1: https://old.reddit.com/r/StanleyKubrick/comments/7q86pu/10_year_old_vivian_kubrick_on_the_set_of_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/StanleyKubrick/comments/7q86pu/10_y...
- tehnub 4y ago
  Apparently it's from an "interview by Charlie Kohler in The East Village Eye, 1968, a few days after 2001: A Space Odyssey opened". I saw it here https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/polls-surveys/stanley-kubrick-cinephile https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/po...

by tehnub 4y ago

hinkley 4y ago

I think as adults we downplay how difficult first experiences can be, and so I don't think we get that the stories of loss and struggle in kids movies are speaking to them about real problems they either already have or will soon. Miyazaki has for some people become an alternative to Disney, but his work is full of Dumbo and Bambi moments. The difference is that in his work, the girl (and it is almost always a girl protagonist) is often substantially responsible for saving themselves, by reasonable means. They are not rescued by a boy or by deux ex machina. Even in My Neighbor Totoro, which is almost but not quite an exception to this rule, the youngest (who is a main character, but not the main character) is saved by a magic bus. However, the main character initiates this rescue by digging deep and calling on resources she might not have thought to exploit. She asks for help from the most powerful person she knows and she gets it. She has to ask, and the terms of the rescue are very defined. Nobody white-knights her, nobody swoops in and reads her mind. But the main struggle in that story is not a lost child. It is Death. And this resolves itself rather than being resolved by the characters, not through a miracle, but by discovering that the children don't know the situation and have invented a story that is much scarier than reality. In the end most of their fears are unfounded, and while life won't be everything they hoped, it's going to be much better than their internal catastrophizing.

lioeters 4y ago
Speaking of Miyazaki, I watched the Grave of the Fireflies when I was a child, and it was a devastating experience. (For those who haven't seen, it's a story of a brother and sister in Japan at the end of WWII.) It was as if I myself had lived through (and perhaps died in) a war. I watched it one more time in my life, but I cannot even write about it without tears coming to my eyes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies Also, one of my childhood books was When the Wind Blows. (For those who haven't read it, it's a story of an old British couple going through the aftermath of a nuclear attack.) Similarly traumatizing. I suppose my parents meant to educate me about the horrors of war, but at such a young age (pre-teen, maybe around ten years old) my reading experience was so powerful that it felt like I lived through it. Scenes from that book still haunt me sometimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Wind_Blows_(comics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Wind_Blows_(comics)
- tehnub 4y ago
  Not that you explicitly said otherwise, but I just want to point out that Grave of the Fireflies was written and directed by Isao Takahata (RIP), who was a co-founder of Studio Ghibli and frequent collaborator with Miyazaki.
- hinkley 4y ago
  I told the kids they aren’t allowed to watch that until they’re old enough to drink. Mostly so they can drink immediately afterward. That’s one of hose movies you really only need to see once, like Schindler’s List.
- m463 4y ago
  As a kid I was traumatized by War of the Gargantuas. I just remember a part where one of the monsters reaches into a building, eats a woman and spits out a dress + bones. Now sort of amusingly, I don't want to watch the movie again for a different reason. It's because my memory of it is entirely sort of a "native memory" going back that many years.
wodenokoto 4y ago

vlunkr 4y ago

I think conflating violent or frightening scenes with tragic scenes is a mistake here. As a young kid I watched Lion King and Land Before Time, which both feature dramatic depictions of the death of a parental figures, which both lead to kids fending for themselves. I don't remember being traumatized by this at all, and watched them repeatedly. As an adult I see the tragedy and it's kind of shocking, but I think as a kid it was just make-believe and I wasn't relating to the characters in that way. And obviously tons of other kids watched and loved these movies too. On the other hand the more intense scenes from Indiana Jones were terrifying and burned deep into my brain.

slibhb 4y ago

Don't know -- I saw The Shining when I was 11 or 12 and it freaked me out pretty badly but I don't think it left any scars. It's a lot scarier than Psycho at any rate which mostly holds up but seems incredibly tame today. 11-12 is different than 6-7 but besides some nightmares, I don't think seeing scary movies have a negative impact on kids.

CamperBob2 4y ago

Where's that quote from? Was it before or after he let his daughter help out on the set of A Clockwork Orange? [1] Her job was said to be cutting out the letters on the wall. (Which was awesome, I thought, even though she turned out to be about as messed-up as his quote would suggest.) 1: https://old.reddit.com/r/StanleyKubrick/comments/7q86pu/10_year_old_vivian_kubrick_on_the_set_of_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/StanleyKubrick/comments/7q86pu/10_y...

tehnub 4y ago
Apparently it's from an "interview by Charlie Kohler in The East Village Eye, 1968, a few days after 2001: A Space Odyssey opened". I saw it here https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/polls-surveys/stanley-kubrick-cinephile https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/po...