17 ms·

In Germany the film is rated 16+, so this story strikes me as really odd. I wouldn't have thought of showing the film to children any younger than 14, personall

by pluma 12y ago

In Germany the film is rated 16+, so this story strikes me as really odd. I wouldn't have thought of showing the film to children any younger than 14, personally. But I guess this is a cultural thing. We tend to be more prudish when it comes to violence but are a lot more relaxed when it comes to nudity or sexuality. I do remember watching Alien under age (no idea at what age exactly) and thinking it's the scariest thing I had ever seen, though. However I think it's difficult to tell whether that did me any harm or not. We tend to overestimate our own psyche, just as we tend to overestimate how "adult" our children really are.

neckro23 12y ago
In the US it's rated "R" (17+). If it wasn't for all the bad language though, I bet it would only be PG-13 by modern standards. Attitudes vary. My own parents would never have let me see Aliens when I was 11. I think I was 14 or 15 by the time I finally saw it.
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  To clarify for those not from the US: an MPAA "R" rating means that children under 17 are not admitted unless accompanied by an adult. http://www.mpaa.org/film-ratings/ http://www.mpaa.org/film-ratings/ In other words, it's movies we're okay with kids seeing - but they need to see it with an adult, presumably one who knows it's something this specific child will be able to handle.
  - zanny 12y ago
    I read this and thought "I'd be amazed any parent would let their child see any movie by themselves". Then I realized I did it all the time with friends when I was 10-16 and we had a cinema 3 miles into town we would walk to, and I am only 24 this year. Its like the American Family went over-protectionist deep end in just this decade or something, because my brother who lives with his mother can't even walk to the school bus stop down the street by himself without it potentially resulting in a police call.
wvenable 12y ago
As a kid in the 80's, there was a pretty big disconnect between the movie rating and what we would eventually watch on VHS at home. Over time I effectively saw every popular 80's movie, every martial arts movie, and a good chunk of horror movies before the age of 12 on home video.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  Talking about disconnects in movie ratings, the DVD releases of "Little House on the Prairie" were rated 18+ in Finland. This was because the State Motion Picture Inspection Agency got greedy, and wanted to collect a new fee from the distributor who had already paid for the VHS releases. Distributors had to pay to get a rating, but were allowed to release stuff as 18+ without paying. So the distributor of Little House just told the agency to go climb a tree and released this horrible nightmarish series with a 18+ rating, and since everyone now realised how the inspection agency had made itself completely ridiculous, they gave up and changed the rules.
beachstartup 12y ago
the idea that you could somehow prevent your child (edit: teenagers, middle/high school aged) from seeing sex, profanity, violence by restricting their movie watching choices is just completely laughable to me. i can understand why people try, i just think it seems rather futile. since the advent of the internet, the world is now completely uncensored to everyone, and imposing these arbitrary and anachronistic restrictions on your child will only undermine your own credibility for the things that actually matter.
- DanBC 12y ago
  You don't say whether you have children or not. Reducing the graphic sexual content or violent content that children see is normal, rational, position that is widely held by individuals and society. People who think it's okay to expose their children to graphic violent or sexual content are weird.
  - JohnBooty 12y ago
    Anecdotally it's been my observation that the most sheltered kids often grow up to have the most problems - they "run wild" as soon as they move off to college or otherwise get that first taste of freedom. You certainly don't want to give your children free reign to watch all the sex and violence they want (Will I sit down and watch a porn with my kids? Heck no!) but I think that discussing sex and violence with them is probably a lot more valuable than simply shielding them from it. I watched Aliens when I was 12 or 13, along with a bunch of other dumb 1980s action movies. I didn't grow up to be violent, because my parents gave me a strong moral grounding and I understood the line between fantasy and reality - blowing things up and doing martial arts on people was okay in a movie, but not okay in real life. I understood that, so no movie was ever going to be able to change me.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      Indeed. I also watched Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers somewhen around 13 and those movies deeply touched me. Yes, I was pretty much crying and trying not to vomit on the D-Day scene, but it left me with deep impression about horrors of war, something that school never gives you. I didn't become more violent because of that - on the contrary, it reinforced my wish for peace and compassion for people living in places trapped in war.
asdfologist 12y ago
Speaking of movie ratings, is there actual evidence that watching "adult" movies at a young age is really bad for you? Kids watch pretty much whatever they want on the Internet these days, anyway.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  And hey, before Internet they also were watching anything they wanted anyway - it only takes one kid who gets a VHS from somewhere (e.g. from an older brother)...
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    Using a smartphone to watch a horror or porn flick without adults noticing is much easier than what it was to sneak to someone's home with a CRT TV and a VHS recorder and a cassette to watch. Not that kids didn't see bad things in the bad old times - they probably saw more of it in real life - but the ubiquitousness of these devices is not necessarily only a good thing.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      I agree. The point is, kids back then (which includes myself) had their ways. You want some porn or horror/action movie? That's what older brothers are for ;).
- aswanson 12y ago
  I can only speak for myself. Being exposed to pornographic images at 9-10 years old had a negative effect on me. It made me want sex far earlier than I would be ready for the physical and emotional consequences.
  - guard-of-terra 12y ago
    Do you really think keeping people in the dark about things they are supposed to want is a good things? Are we now factory-farmed chicken (with our consent) and not humans?
SixSigma 12y ago
It's an 18 in the US. 15 in the UK (though it was an 18 until 2010). I would be rather annoyed if my 11 y.o. kid came home saying someone's parent had shown them that film.
- bencollier49 12y ago
  Agreed, I'm actually pretty shocked that they reduced it to a 15, there's some pretty strong stuff in there. 11-year-olds are young enough to get terrible nightmares from films like Aliens - if it was my child who wanted to watch something age-appropriate and got shouted down, I'd be pretty furious.
  - brazzy 12y ago
    Meh. I've had nightmares from a movie once in my life. Which one? That lovely children's classic "The Wizard of Oz". That witch was scary!!
    - thret 12y ago
      Really? It was the monkeys with wheels that were too freaky for me.
      - stcredzero 12y ago
        That was The Wiz?
        thret 12y ago
        Oh, you're right in that I was wrong. I was thinking of the movie Return to Oz (1985).
        fennecfoxen 12y ago
        The wheelers? Freakier than the witch with the gallery of heads? If you say so.
MichaelGG 12y ago
Ratings systems aren't really anything to go by, at least in the US. My rule is: it's gotta be good. I'd prefer my own kids to watch something good than to watch something crappy. The children aimed stuff, for the most part, is junk. The only stuff I skip is really when there's a explicit sex act talk only because I don't want to explain jokes regarding specific sex acts and slang. My girls are 6 & 8, so I figure that's reasonable for another 5-6 years. Is that prudish? (I've only got cultural input from North America, which seems to recoil at stuff everyone sees in showers everyday, so all I know is that their scale is off, not where it should be.)
- xgbi 12y ago
  Woud you show them Drive then?
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    If it's as I recall, it was rather boring, but otherwise rather tame. Edit: I just rewatched the trailer, and it looks fine. I just recall not enjoying the movie a whole lot.
    - xgbi 12y ago
      You might be interested in not showing your kids the lift scene where he stomps a guys's head, or when he shoots another point blank with a shotgun. My comment was aimed at highlighting that the rating is not dumb BS, some movies contains really disturbing scenes.
      - Crito 12y ago
        When I was a kid, I would have just fast-forwarded straight to those scenes. The rest of the movie would have bored kid-me to tears.
      - MichaelGG 12y ago
        I'm not saying the ratings are always inaccurate, just that they aren't calibrated to most things I care about. Compared to some folks that go "Oh I would never let my child watch a movie rated R" as if that was some kind of determining factor. People swearing, using drugs, and nudity will get an R rating even if the movie is fantastic. Those three things I'm annoyed that people find objectionable for children, as it only increases the stigma as they get older, for what should be very positive things. Violence, meh, so long it's not deliberately cruel or scary, I don't see why it'd be disturbing. Over-the-top stuff like you say sounds more funny than anything else. (The children's shows, Golden Compass, and RWBY, both contain scenes where the jaw/head of an enemy is blown right off.) As another poster mentioned, Common Sense Media is a far better rating system. They address specific points so you can make a good determination. Even then, I find my kids often enjoy stuff that CSM rates well over their current age.
powertower 12y ago
For all the "think of the children" commentators here and in the blog - why is it that kids who have parents that hide them from everything "bad", wind up so messed up, narcissistic, and are generally unable to cope with life? The answer is of course right there, by putting them in a "safe place" you've removed every adversary and every challenge - right when the mind needs those things the most so it can form abilities necessary to deal with and move forward in life (a life that will throw all kinds of issues, disasters, and curve balls at you). Its kind of like the peanut allergy study that was posted here a day or two ago... The infants and children that don't get exposed to peanuts at an early age - so their systems can get familiar and use to it, are most likely to end up in the highly allergic group. [this is just an analogy] edit: This isn't about movies (that word is not mentioned in my post). Some of the replies so far are red-herrings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring). I'm not suggesting that children should be constantly exposed (or made to watch) graphic and horror movies to prepare them for life. And I'm sure there are cases of children who just can't handle these things at the age of 10-15... Though most will be fine - and won't need therapy, will not have their lives ruined, nor will their well-beings be negatively impacted. I am also not suggesting that they should have no supervision. What I am suggesting is that there are too many over-protective and helicopter parents who are making "special children" that can only live and function inside bubbles. And if the child get's broken by watching "Aliens" at the age of 11, then the problem is with the parenting - rather than the friend's dad who let them watch it. In which case, please, attach a note to the child with all the rather available things that he/she should not be exposed to or is allergic to (like peanut butter). We live in a society where a child would have to sit on a park bench for 700,000 years before he/she would get kidnapped, but if you leave him/her in a car to pay the gas station clerk, someone can take a picture of that child being untended and send it to the police, which will then charge you with a misdemeanor.
- kyberias 12y ago
  Wow, what a wildly ignorant comment.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
krylon 12y ago
The funny thing, though, is that parents routinely read fairy tales to their children, that are just as grim. Just think of Hansel and Gretel.
- benjohnson 12y ago
  My kids love the really 'German' tales - but I won't let them watch Aliens (just yet). The difference is that the reading gives us the opportunity to discuss the tale, allay fears, and try to find a moral message within the tale. A movie tends to be presented without an ongoing parental filter as the images go directly to the psyche without pause.
  - Retra 12y ago
    I feel like you could fix that by watching 'making of' videos before hand, or by pausing between scenes and discussing them. It's just not a habit people have.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      I don't see how you could do that without ruining the experience of watching the film.
      - mod 12y ago
        A parental filter is going to "ruin the film" too. I think that's the whole point of this smaller conversation.
    - eru 12y ago
      The kids in the article seemed quite reflective.
- gensym 12y ago
  Your logic makes sense, but there's something special about visual imagery - the way the images go directly into our brains without being filtered through our imaginations - that gives it true power. When I was a kid, I read a lot of horror. Mostly Stephen King, and Clive Barker, which were far more than my 8-year-old self should have been reading, but for the most part, I could handle it, just fine. (Stephen King's It was really the only book that scared me beyond the moments I was reading). On the other hand, the violent films I saw (Aliens, Robocop, etc) proved much harder to shake off. Remember the end of Robocop where they guy gets toxic waste dumped all over him, and his flesh starts dripping off? I spent weeks trying to get that image out of my head. Hell, even the end of Raiders, or the Ceti Eels from Wrath of Khan disturbed me far more than anything I read. As an adult, I watched Devils Rejects - a truly great film that I cannot recommend to anyone because of how disturbing I found some of the imagery in that. Or, to take a real life example - plenty of us are fine with reading accounts of terrorist beheadings but purposefully avoid watching the videos of the events.
afterburner 12y ago
"Germany" "We tend to be more prudish when it comes to violence but are a lot more relaxed when it comes to nudity or sexuality." Other way around in North America.
- steveax 12y ago
  Indeed. I saw Sin City (an exceedingly violent movie) in a theater. A woman (presumably the mother) and two young boys (~8 and 11) were seated in the row in front of me. She didn't bat an eye at the violence, but yelped and shielded the boys' eyes when breasts appeared. I still don't really know what to make of that.
  - thret 12y ago
    Wow. That movie is so violent I wish I hadn't seen it. I won't watch Sin City 2. I can't imagine how I would have felt watching it at that age.
    - 72deluxe 12y ago
      I've not seen it at all but you're right that there are some strange attitudes with some people and letting their children watch horrific things at a young age. Even on this very topic, some of the comments are "meh violence isn't a problem, I don't see why it would be disturbing to my child" which is clearly a case of desensitisation influencing the stuff they show to their children. I have same many films that I wish I had never seen as I can't "unremember" things or wipe bits of my brain out. The incessant flow of violence in films only serves to desensitise: something is truly shocking the first time, not so the next time, and repeatedly it isn't shocking anymore. To see that some people use their own level of how shocking a film is to THEM to decide whether to show it to their children is distressing; "I wasn't shocked, so why would my children be??". Very sad.
mineo 12y ago
Some of the movies those kids had already seen are rated 16+ as well.
acdha 12y ago
Making sure that children are ready for something is a valid concern but I did want to quote the first sentence of the third paragraph: “some of them had seen the first one anyway, and nearly all had seen at least one film with a xenomorph in it” I'm sure there are plenty of kids who aren't ready for this but based on that and some of the other comments about recognizing cliches from similar movies, it sounds like these boys weren't pushing the boundaries too far.
aswanson 12y ago
Yeah, that's one thing that bugged me out when I visited Deutschland...nudity on public television. Totally unheard of in the states.
- bjelkeman-again 12y ago
  It is interesting that nudity is considered so bad, as it is part of healthy and normal relationships between adults. Whilst violence isn't. I think I'd rather have young adults be tolerant about nudity than violence.
  - aswanson 12y ago
    I totally agree. American cultural norms are strange in that regard. To be clear, i was not being judgemental, but just relating shock at something i was not used to having been raised in the US.
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    > normal relationships between adults. People don't walk naked in the streets so why do you need to show naked people at peak TV times on public television? It's "normal between adults" in private places.
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      It's normal for humans of all ages. Does no one look in a mirror or take showers? My kids bathe together, sometimes with my wife. It's, uh, not a big deal, nor should it be. And who said there's a "need"? Might as well why do you need TV at all? Nude bodies can look cool, so it seems as valid to show that as someone wearing sunglasses.
    - zeyus 12y ago
      Except they do in other countries, maybe not in yours, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Everyone has the same bits...everyone! (for nipples, for other parts it's more like 50%) I can't believe that people are still afraid of something everyone has
ekianjo 12y ago
It may have been rated 16+ at the time it came out, but it's really something that can be watched by younger kids nowadays.
MBlume 12y ago
> just as we tend to overestimate how "adult" our children really are. ...who does this? Who, anywhere, does this?
- pyre 12y ago
  Sometimes children can mature faster in someways than others, and parents can 'forget' that their child is still only X years old.
- pluma 12y ago
  Well, my parents did, for example. I was pretty "rational" at an early age and my parents misinterpreted that as maturity, which at some points got me into situations I shouldn't have been expected to be able to handle at that age. It's not unheard of for parents to want their children to consider them peers rather than parents. The problem is that you can't really be both. The roles and responsibilities of a parent and a peer in a child's life are very different. Also, if you signal to your child that you would prefer them to act more maturely, that child can become pretty good at faking maturity without the emotional and psychological stability that would come with it if it came naturally. As a parent you have to look past that superficial behaviour. And for a less personal example, just look at child prodigies, child actors, child pop stars, or for a particularly disturbing example, child beauty pageants. That a child shows a particular trait normally associated with maturity or adulthood doesn't mean the child should be treated as an adult. Yet, this is exactly what happens to many such children who happily play along because their make-believe is positively reinforced by the adults around them. There are plenty of people willing to believe an eight year old is "very mature for their age" when they should know better. Heck, the entire premise of NAMBLA is a reflection of this (simply taking the illusion to its disgusting logical extreme).
sebastianconcpt 12y ago
The scariest film I saw when I was ~10 was The Day After http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/
madaxe_again 12y ago
Ah, I watched Aliens for the first time aged about 7, in '90 or so... nightmares, for months, and months, and months. Definitely not one for the under-tens...

by pluma 12y ago

neckro23 12y ago

In the US it's rated "R" (17+). If it wasn't for all the bad language though, I bet it would only be PG-13 by modern standards. Attitudes vary. My own parents would never have let me see Aliens when I was 11. I think I was 14 or 15 by the time I finally saw it.

JohnBooty 12y ago
To clarify for those not from the US: an MPAA "R" rating means that children under 17 are not admitted unless accompanied by an adult. http://www.mpaa.org/film-ratings/ http://www.mpaa.org/film-ratings/ In other words, it's movies we're okay with kids seeing - but they need to see it with an adult, presumably one who knows it's something this specific child will be able to handle.
- zanny 12y ago
  I read this and thought "I'd be amazed any parent would let their child see any movie by themselves". Then I realized I did it all the time with friends when I was 10-16 and we had a cinema 3 miles into town we would walk to, and I am only 24 this year. Its like the American Family went over-protectionist deep end in just this decade or something, because my brother who lives with his mother can't even walk to the school bus stop down the street by himself without it potentially resulting in a police call.

wvenable 12y ago

As a kid in the 80's, there was a pretty big disconnect between the movie rating and what we would eventually watch on VHS at home. Over time I effectively saw every popular 80's movie, every martial arts movie, and a good chunk of horror movies before the age of 12 on home video.

ptaipale 12y ago
Talking about disconnects in movie ratings, the DVD releases of "Little House on the Prairie" were rated 18+ in Finland. This was because the State Motion Picture Inspection Agency got greedy, and wanted to collect a new fee from the distributor who had already paid for the VHS releases. Distributors had to pay to get a rating, but were allowed to release stuff as 18+ without paying. So the distributor of Little House just told the agency to go climb a tree and released this horrible nightmarish series with a 18+ rating, and since everyone now realised how the inspection agency had made itself completely ridiculous, they gave up and changed the rules.

beachstartup 12y ago

the idea that you could somehow prevent your child (edit: teenagers, middle/high school aged) from seeing sex, profanity, violence by restricting their movie watching choices is just completely laughable to me. i can understand why people try, i just think it seems rather futile. since the advent of the internet, the world is now completely uncensored to everyone, and imposing these arbitrary and anachronistic restrictions on your child will only undermine your own credibility for the things that actually matter.

DanBC 12y ago
You don't say whether you have children or not. Reducing the graphic sexual content or violent content that children see is normal, rational, position that is widely held by individuals and society. People who think it's okay to expose their children to graphic violent or sexual content are weird.
- JohnBooty 12y ago
  Anecdotally it's been my observation that the most sheltered kids often grow up to have the most problems - they "run wild" as soon as they move off to college or otherwise get that first taste of freedom. You certainly don't want to give your children free reign to watch all the sex and violence they want (Will I sit down and watch a porn with my kids? Heck no!) but I think that discussing sex and violence with them is probably a lot more valuable than simply shielding them from it. I watched Aliens when I was 12 or 13, along with a bunch of other dumb 1980s action movies. I didn't grow up to be violent, because my parents gave me a strong moral grounding and I understood the line between fantasy and reality - blowing things up and doing martial arts on people was okay in a movie, but not okay in real life. I understood that, so no movie was ever going to be able to change me.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Indeed. I also watched Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers somewhen around 13 and those movies deeply touched me. Yes, I was pretty much crying and trying not to vomit on the D-Day scene, but it left me with deep impression about horrors of war, something that school never gives you. I didn't become more violent because of that - on the contrary, it reinforced my wish for peace and compassion for people living in places trapped in war.

asdfologist 12y ago

Speaking of movie ratings, is there actual evidence that watching "adult" movies at a young age is really bad for you? Kids watch pretty much whatever they want on the Internet these days, anyway.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
And hey, before Internet they also were watching anything they wanted anyway - it only takes one kid who gets a VHS from somewhere (e.g. from an older brother)...
- ptaipale 12y ago
  Using a smartphone to watch a horror or porn flick without adults noticing is much easier than what it was to sneak to someone's home with a CRT TV and a VHS recorder and a cassette to watch. Not that kids didn't see bad things in the bad old times - they probably saw more of it in real life - but the ubiquitousness of these devices is not necessarily only a good thing.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    I agree. The point is, kids back then (which includes myself) had their ways. You want some porn or horror/action movie? That's what older brothers are for ;).
aswanson 12y ago
I can only speak for myself. Being exposed to pornographic images at 9-10 years old had a negative effect on me. It made me want sex far earlier than I would be ready for the physical and emotional consequences.
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  Do you really think keeping people in the dark about things they are supposed to want is a good things? Are we now factory-farmed chicken (with our consent) and not humans?

SixSigma 12y ago

It's an 18 in the US. 15 in the UK (though it was an 18 until 2010). I would be rather annoyed if my 11 y.o. kid came home saying someone's parent had shown them that film.

bencollier49 12y ago
Agreed, I'm actually pretty shocked that they reduced it to a 15, there's some pretty strong stuff in there. 11-year-olds are young enough to get terrible nightmares from films like Aliens - if it was my child who wanted to watch something age-appropriate and got shouted down, I'd be pretty furious.
- brazzy 12y ago
  Meh. I've had nightmares from a movie once in my life. Which one? That lovely children's classic "The Wizard of Oz". That witch was scary!!
  - thret 12y ago
    Really? It was the monkeys with wheels that were too freaky for me.
    - stcredzero 12y ago
      That was The Wiz?
      - thret 12y ago
        Oh, you're right in that I was wrong. I was thinking of the movie Return to Oz (1985).
        fennecfoxen 12y ago
        The wheelers? Freakier than the witch with the gallery of heads? If you say so.

MichaelGG 12y ago

Ratings systems aren't really anything to go by, at least in the US. My rule is: it's gotta be good. I'd prefer my own kids to watch something good than to watch something crappy. The children aimed stuff, for the most part, is junk. The only stuff I skip is really when there's a explicit sex act talk only because I don't want to explain jokes regarding specific sex acts and slang. My girls are 6 & 8, so I figure that's reasonable for another 5-6 years. Is that prudish? (I've only got cultural input from North America, which seems to recoil at stuff everyone sees in showers everyday, so all I know is that their scale is off, not where it should be.)

xgbi 12y ago
Woud you show them Drive then?
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  If it's as I recall, it was rather boring, but otherwise rather tame. Edit: I just rewatched the trailer, and it looks fine. I just recall not enjoying the movie a whole lot.
  - xgbi 12y ago
    You might be interested in not showing your kids the lift scene where he stomps a guys's head, or when he shoots another point blank with a shotgun. My comment was aimed at highlighting that the rating is not dumb BS, some movies contains really disturbing scenes.
    - Crito 12y ago
      When I was a kid, I would have just fast-forwarded straight to those scenes. The rest of the movie would have bored kid-me to tears.
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      I'm not saying the ratings are always inaccurate, just that they aren't calibrated to most things I care about. Compared to some folks that go "Oh I would never let my child watch a movie rated R" as if that was some kind of determining factor. People swearing, using drugs, and nudity will get an R rating even if the movie is fantastic. Those three things I'm annoyed that people find objectionable for children, as it only increases the stigma as they get older, for what should be very positive things. Violence, meh, so long it's not deliberately cruel or scary, I don't see why it'd be disturbing. Over-the-top stuff like you say sounds more funny than anything else. (The children's shows, Golden Compass, and RWBY, both contain scenes where the jaw/head of an enemy is blown right off.) As another poster mentioned, Common Sense Media is a far better rating system. They address specific points so you can make a good determination. Even then, I find my kids often enjoy stuff that CSM rates well over their current age.

powertower 12y ago

For all the "think of the children" commentators here and in the blog - why is it that kids who have parents that hide them from everything "bad", wind up so messed up, narcissistic, and are generally unable to cope with life? The answer is of course right there, by putting them in a "safe place" you've removed every adversary and every challenge - right when the mind needs those things the most so it can form abilities necessary to deal with and move forward in life (a life that will throw all kinds of issues, disasters, and curve balls at you). Its kind of like the peanut allergy study that was posted here a day or two ago... The infants and children that don't get exposed to peanuts at an early age - so their systems can get familiar and use to it, are most likely to end up in the highly allergic group. [this is just an analogy] edit: This isn't about movies (that word is not mentioned in my post). Some of the replies so far are red-herrings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring). I'm not suggesting that children should be constantly exposed (or made to watch) graphic and horror movies to prepare them for life. And I'm sure there are cases of children who just can't handle these things at the age of 10-15... Though most will be fine - and won't need therapy, will not have their lives ruined, nor will their well-beings be negatively impacted. I am also not suggesting that they should have no supervision. What I am suggesting is that there are too many over-protective and helicopter parents who are making "special children" that can only live and function inside bubbles. And if the child get's broken by watching "Aliens" at the age of 11, then the problem is with the parenting - rather than the friend's dad who let them watch it. In which case, please, attach a note to the child with all the rather available things that he/she should not be exposed to or is allergic to (like peanut butter). We live in a society where a child would have to sit on a park bench for 700,000 years before he/she would get kidnapped, but if you leave him/her in a car to pay the gas station clerk, someone can take a picture of that child being untended and send it to the police, which will then charge you with a misdemeanor.

kyberias 12y ago
Wow, what a wildly ignorant comment.
- sanderjd 12y ago

krylon 12y ago

The funny thing, though, is that parents routinely read fairy tales to their children, that are just as grim. Just think of Hansel and Gretel.

benjohnson 12y ago
My kids love the really 'German' tales - but I won't let them watch Aliens (just yet). The difference is that the reading gives us the opportunity to discuss the tale, allay fears, and try to find a moral message within the tale. A movie tends to be presented without an ongoing parental filter as the images go directly to the psyche without pause.
- Retra 12y ago
  I feel like you could fix that by watching 'making of' videos before hand, or by pausing between scenes and discussing them. It's just not a habit people have.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    I don't see how you could do that without ruining the experience of watching the film.
    - mod 12y ago
      A parental filter is going to "ruin the film" too. I think that's the whole point of this smaller conversation.
  - eru 12y ago
    The kids in the article seemed quite reflective.
gensym 12y ago
Your logic makes sense, but there's something special about visual imagery - the way the images go directly into our brains without being filtered through our imaginations - that gives it true power. When I was a kid, I read a lot of horror. Mostly Stephen King, and Clive Barker, which were far more than my 8-year-old self should have been reading, but for the most part, I could handle it, just fine. (Stephen King's It was really the only book that scared me beyond the moments I was reading). On the other hand, the violent films I saw (Aliens, Robocop, etc) proved much harder to shake off. Remember the end of Robocop where they guy gets toxic waste dumped all over him, and his flesh starts dripping off? I spent weeks trying to get that image out of my head. Hell, even the end of Raiders, or the Ceti Eels from Wrath of Khan disturbed me far more than anything I read. As an adult, I watched Devils Rejects - a truly great film that I cannot recommend to anyone because of how disturbing I found some of the imagery in that. Or, to take a real life example - plenty of us are fine with reading accounts of terrorist beheadings but purposefully avoid watching the videos of the events.

afterburner 12y ago

"Germany" "We tend to be more prudish when it comes to violence but are a lot more relaxed when it comes to nudity or sexuality." Other way around in North America.

steveax 12y ago
Indeed. I saw Sin City (an exceedingly violent movie) in a theater. A woman (presumably the mother) and two young boys (~8 and 11) were seated in the row in front of me. She didn't bat an eye at the violence, but yelped and shielded the boys' eyes when breasts appeared. I still don't really know what to make of that.
- thret 12y ago
  Wow. That movie is so violent I wish I hadn't seen it. I won't watch Sin City 2. I can't imagine how I would have felt watching it at that age.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    I've not seen it at all but you're right that there are some strange attitudes with some people and letting their children watch horrific things at a young age. Even on this very topic, some of the comments are "meh violence isn't a problem, I don't see why it would be disturbing to my child" which is clearly a case of desensitisation influencing the stuff they show to their children. I have same many films that I wish I had never seen as I can't "unremember" things or wipe bits of my brain out. The incessant flow of violence in films only serves to desensitise: something is truly shocking the first time, not so the next time, and repeatedly it isn't shocking anymore. To see that some people use their own level of how shocking a film is to THEM to decide whether to show it to their children is distressing; "I wasn't shocked, so why would my children be??". Very sad.

mineo 12y ago

Some of the movies those kids had already seen are rated 16+ as well.

acdha 12y ago

Making sure that children are ready for something is a valid concern but I did want to quote the first sentence of the third paragraph: “some of them had seen the first one anyway, and nearly all had seen at least one film with a xenomorph in it” I'm sure there are plenty of kids who aren't ready for this but based on that and some of the other comments about recognizing cliches from similar movies, it sounds like these boys weren't pushing the boundaries too far.

aswanson 12y ago

Yeah, that's one thing that bugged me out when I visited Deutschland...nudity on public television. Totally unheard of in the states.

bjelkeman-again 12y ago
It is interesting that nudity is considered so bad, as it is part of healthy and normal relationships between adults. Whilst violence isn't. I think I'd rather have young adults be tolerant about nudity than violence.
- aswanson 12y ago
  I totally agree. American cultural norms are strange in that regard. To be clear, i was not being judgemental, but just relating shock at something i was not used to having been raised in the US.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > normal relationships between adults. People don't walk naked in the streets so why do you need to show naked people at peak TV times on public television? It's "normal between adults" in private places.
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    It's normal for humans of all ages. Does no one look in a mirror or take showers? My kids bathe together, sometimes with my wife. It's, uh, not a big deal, nor should it be. And who said there's a "need"? Might as well why do you need TV at all? Nude bodies can look cool, so it seems as valid to show that as someone wearing sunglasses.
  - zeyus 12y ago
    Except they do in other countries, maybe not in yours, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Everyone has the same bits...everyone! (for nipples, for other parts it's more like 50%) I can't believe that people are still afraid of something everyone has

ekianjo 12y ago

It may have been rated 16+ at the time it came out, but it's really something that can be watched by younger kids nowadays.

MBlume 12y ago

> just as we tend to overestimate how "adult" our children really are. ...who does this? Who, anywhere, does this?

pyre 12y ago
Sometimes children can mature faster in someways than others, and parents can 'forget' that their child is still only X years old.
pluma 12y ago
Well, my parents did, for example. I was pretty "rational" at an early age and my parents misinterpreted that as maturity, which at some points got me into situations I shouldn't have been expected to be able to handle at that age. It's not unheard of for parents to want their children to consider them peers rather than parents. The problem is that you can't really be both. The roles and responsibilities of a parent and a peer in a child's life are very different. Also, if you signal to your child that you would prefer them to act more maturely, that child can become pretty good at faking maturity without the emotional and psychological stability that would come with it if it came naturally. As a parent you have to look past that superficial behaviour. And for a less personal example, just look at child prodigies, child actors, child pop stars, or for a particularly disturbing example, child beauty pageants. That a child shows a particular trait normally associated with maturity or adulthood doesn't mean the child should be treated as an adult. Yet, this is exactly what happens to many such children who happily play along because their make-believe is positively reinforced by the adults around them. There are plenty of people willing to believe an eight year old is "very mature for their age" when they should know better. Heck, the entire premise of NAMBLA is a reflection of this (simply taking the illusion to its disgusting logical extreme).

sebastianconcpt 12y ago

The scariest film I saw when I was ~10 was The Day After http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/

madaxe_again 12y ago

Ah, I watched Aliens for the first time aged about 7, in '90 or so... nightmares, for months, and months, and months. Definitely not one for the under-tens...