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Children and Explicit Movie Violence
ElJeffe
Moderator, ClubPA mod
Moderator, ClubPA mod
This thread is not about children watching violence, but rather about children portraying violence.
So today I saw Kick-Ass. It was pretty excellent. But afterward, I got to thinking about the actress who played Hit-Girl, who was 12 years old during filming. Spoilers:
I'm not sure if I would let me 12 year old child watch a film like that, but probably not. A lot, if not most, parents probably wouldn't. Yet in this film, a fairly young girl submerses herself in some pretty disturbing make-believe. We wonder about the psychological effects of simulated violence via videogames, but what about something like this?
And this, of course, isn't the only example. Natalie Portman in The Professional plays a young girl who trains to become an assassin. A four year old girl (maybe she's older, but not much) in Kill Bill
So where do the ethical boundaries fall in these kinds of situations? Should we consider the effects that lots of money might have on the decisions made by the parents? ("We want your kid to be in a Quentin Tarantino movie, here's lots of money" isn't the best way to ensure the parents make responsible decisions.) I'm not in favor of getting the government involved too much, beyond obvious cases like banning child pornography, but I think it's an interesting topic that a lot of people might not give too much thought.
Oh, and use spoiler tags where reasonable, folks.
So today I saw Kick-Ass. It was pretty excellent. But afterward, I got to thinking about the actress who played Hit-Girl, who was 12 years old during filming. Spoilers:
Basically, we have an adolescent spending dozens of hours pretending to murder people in extremely graphic ways - shooting them in the face, cutting of limbs, slitting their throats, and so on.
I'm not sure if I would let me 12 year old child watch a film like that, but probably not. A lot, if not most, parents probably wouldn't. Yet in this film, a fairly young girl submerses herself in some pretty disturbing make-believe. We wonder about the psychological effects of simulated violence via videogames, but what about something like this?
And this, of course, isn't the only example. Natalie Portman in The Professional plays a young girl who trains to become an assassin. A four year old girl (maybe she's older, but not much) in Kill Bill
witnesses the brutal murder of her mother.
(For the sake of discussion, I'm not talking about films in which the child could plausibly be kept in the dark about what her character is doing.)So where do the ethical boundaries fall in these kinds of situations? Should we consider the effects that lots of money might have on the decisions made by the parents? ("We want your kid to be in a Quentin Tarantino movie, here's lots of money" isn't the best way to ensure the parents make responsible decisions.) I'm not in favor of getting the government involved too much, beyond obvious cases like banning child pornography, but I think it's an interesting topic that a lot of people might not give too much thought.
Oh, and use spoiler tags where reasonable, folks.
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ElJeffe on
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I can't stress enough h weird sets are to film on. Very unnatural.
edit: okay, not Lolita at all She was also probably 12 when this filmed
Edit: Also, kids roleplay violence in far-less-controlled environments all the time without any (apparent) ill effects. Didn't you ever play Cops and Robbers?
Am I saying that this is fine for all kids? No, absolutely not. But I didn't have a problem with it, and I'm sure there are lots of kids who are mature enough to handle it, even at the youngest ages. Given the infrequency with which this actually happens, I don't really see a reason to get one's panties in a knot over it.
(I've heard from a person familiar with Hollywood that when two people are "having sex" in a film, they actually are having sex as often as not. Like, during filming. Dunno if it's true or not, but I suppose it wouldn't surprise me.)
Anyway, I admit that I know dick-all about what filming is like. I sort of assumed that it required some degree of mimickry by the actors, to the point it would be kinda creepy with kids doing it. Maybe I'm wrong? If so, we can talk about children portraying sexuality instead, or something.
I haven't seen any of the films out mentioned, but I can tell you as a fact that movies are shot so out of sequence it would make your mind melt. Hell, there is a scene in The Informant where every time it cuts from Matt Damon the shooting was in one country, and every time it cut to (I think) Liz Taylor it was in another. The next time you watch a movie or TV show and there is a shot over the shoulder of a lead actor, odds are its a stand in. Yea, they're not even doing the scene with their scene partner sometimes.
I think there was some other show on CC where that was basically the whole angle (Sesame Street-esque production with child actors but very dark themes).
On the one hand, I think kids are pretty resilient psychologically speaking. I'm sure we all remember telling lots of gory and gruesome stories to each other on the playground in our grade-school days. On the other hand, it's a whole lot different when things are in your imagination and when you're actually confronted with it, even in a staged setting.
And there's no way in hell I'd let my (as yet unborn) kids watch some of the horror they put out today, like Saw or Hostel.
As for what people are saying, I think Hit-Girl is the best example of "is this going too far"? The Kill Bill thing, that girl probably didn't even see the movie, nor was she present during any of the other fighting. As people have already repeated, movies are shot so out of order that most children around violence in movies aren't really around violence.
The actual mimickry part has to be pretty tame, especially with kids. Is it the realism that bugs you? So much of that is editing and camera tricks.
The realism doesn't really bother me, at least not in a bad way. I thought Kick-Ass, for example, was great, and while I thought the deal with Hit-Girl was disturbing, it wasn't meta-disturbing, or anything. My only real concern is (was?) the emotional effects on the kids actually making the films. If the filming is so far removed from the events depicted that there isn't an emotional effect, then I don't have much complaint.
I suppose there are potential issues of exploitation, but I think that would more be an issue with sex than with violence, and I think the laws we have governing child porn probably cover it fairly well in most cases.
Really? Man, the things they can do in post-production are pretty amazing.
Go wild, man. The OP ended up having less relevance than I thought, anyway.
So I guess thats how you film a sex scene with a 12 year old girl?
The whole thing depends on whether or not you teach your children the difference between real life and entertainment. No joke, I was drawing pictures of bloody Mortal Kombat fatalities in 2nd grade, but I have never been in a fight and avoid arguments whenever possible. I distinctly remember my dad asking me, when I was little, if I realized that video games were just make believe and people shouldn't behave that way.
Sometimes I think people underestimate the power of children to understand things as long as they are contextualized correctly. I'm not saying everyone should buy GTA for their 7-year old, but I really do believe that there are 7-year olds who can play GTA without becoming terrifying murderers.
Edit: I know this thread is about movies, so if the video game reference bothers you, just replace GTA with Reservoir Dogs or something. Use your imagination!
Maybe not all digital, but during the more violent parts it definitely is. It's possibly the girl who played Hit-Girl never saw a drop of blood that wasn't makeup.
This. While children probably should be restricted from seeing certain things below a certain age, the effect of proper parenting tends to be underestimated. That goes for whether a kid is watching a violent film or acting in one.
No, that was you, and you strangled a hobo in an alley. Think hard, try to remember!
Now I remember. That hobo thought RoboCop 3 was a great movie - he was a maniac!
There's some neat trickery in movies. Alot of what she did, she didn't actually do, the entire FPS scene wasnt her when it was in the FPS view. Scenes where she did acrobatics and fired a gun into off screen, she probably never saw results in the same frame that she was looking. Also seeing the movie work done live, and knowing how it works, changes your perception of what you are seeing. That's horrible wording, but the scenes where she stabs people in her debut, aren't relatively the same or as real in that moment to her as watching the movie, or playing the game.
This was a concern long before this movie. Ever see the Shining? The scene where the boy is in the hall, and the twin girls say "come play with us" and then it flashes to a horrible gory scene, and it flashes back to the kid in a state of shock and horror? The kid never saw any of this. They were worried for the OP's exact reasoning. I think the story goes that they told him to pretend he was told Santa Claus was not real for the reaction he should have. Kids a pretty good actor to essentially be working blind through the whole film like that during anything with blood and gore. In the end stuff like this is taken into consideration based on the childs age. People still have a conciseness about these things. Is 12 too young to be in that work environment doing what she did? Ill completely drop the cursing, because things never change, and she has the whole dirty word bible down by 12 if she hasn't been sheltered. The interview I saw with the kid made it seem like she had a pretty good head on her shoulders.
Another good example is the child in Aliens, they had trouble keeping her focused on doing her lines right because she was having too much fun playing on the set. I think on set is a very different place and experience. I don't think these experiences would be akin to even just letting them watch the movies in question they are making, I think that would do more damage.
Personally, I don't think the violence is too much of a concern in a movie. I mean kids can almost see all of that on he nightly news. Plus, I think a 12 year old is quite capable of distinguishing real from fake. I don't know how it is for acting in a movie, but I do know I watched Terminator 2 with my parents approval at the age of 6. Granted, parts genuinely terrified me, but I turned out ok with only an undying affection for any movie Ah-nold is in despite how terrible it may be. Really though, I think it the worst things for children to witness in movies can be the sex and drug use. Most commonly, violence can be easily attributed to something unreal since so much of it is blatantly fake and over the top. Sex and drugs though, are much harder to depict without showing them occurring in a way that is fake. This is probably why I was never allowed to watch any movies with prominent drug use or sex as a kid, and I have to agree with this view.
Even as disconnected as movies are, she still had to strip naked in front of a large number of people while a teenage boy rolled around on her
I wouldn't let my kid do that
Seriously, kids pretend violence all the time. They know the difference between fantasy and reality by a very yound age.
The dakota fanning/hound dog thing sounds completely disturbing. She also had a strange role in Push. I wouldnt doubt it if she ended up screwed up. I also think Miley Cirus is way too sexualized for her age.
Oh yeah, don't even get me started on sexualization of teenage pop stars.
Thanatos could never keep to the script.
I think what Disney is doing with their child stars is probably far more damaging than what most of the Hollywood studios are doing. It's hard for me to put my finger on, but there is just something creepy about how they portray them and then blur the lines of reality by having things like Hannah Montana concerts and appearances. It seems that it's not enough for them to play the characters on screen, they also have to keep the role up in public under strict management that isn't necessarily devoted to the welfare of the child but maintaining the "Disney Illusion."
My sister used to watch disney so often I vicariously picked up on their programming style and projected image. Throughout my teens I had a growing suspicion that Disney was evil. Later I took some media courses in college and found out I was right.
Regular violence has never really bothered me, but I feel mentally/emotionally scarred by some of the sexual content I've seen portrayed in movies. I was exposed to movies with rape and men getting castrated at a young age... I spent a lot of time as a child wondering whether I should sleep on my stomache or on my back. I was worried if I slept on my back I would wake up tied to my bed with some girl getting ready to castrate me, and that if I slept on my stomache I was going to wake up to getting raped.
I can't imagine what it might have done to that girl, to be known as "that girl that cuts that guys testicles off in a movie". For anyone interested I don't know what the movie is called, nor do I want to. I really wish I could forget I ever saw it.
The fact that it's ridiculously controlling, and psychologically unhealthy? That they don’t let their starts drink or engage in pretty much any behaviour outside of driving that the audience can’t. Of course this is less bad then it was. Things changed after a (sorry can’t remember the name off hand) soap actor who was forced in public appearances to act like an eight year old ended up killing herself, and it was held as a major contributing factor.
Perhaps it’s just me, but the fact that the actor calls the film ‘Kick-butt’ doesn’t exactly prove she’s emotionally ready for the role, rather the very opposite.
Given that this seems to have drifted into ‘what is okay to show children’, I find it interesting that the average parent is strictly no violent movies (unless the violence is neutered, so it looks like a right laugh), but okay with a million other insidious influences, that unlike violence are an actual part of their daily lives, not so outside of it as to be in the realms of fantasy. It strikes me that one of these is likely to be more damaging, albeit probably less likely to give kids nightmares.
Sounds like Hard Candy, haven't seen it myself but it actually sounded fairly interesting. Supposedly it's a critique of the pedo hunt mentality, and shows the way that the girl is equally as monstrous, if not more so, then the pedophile.
I never watched it but that Orphan movie looked similar.
I caught it on Starz or Cinemax a while back. Terrible movie, wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's actually pretty disturbing in the sense that in one scene, young girl (looks maybe 10) sneaks into her stepbrother's room (looks maybe 11-13), brandishes a knife or scissors and threatens to cut off his "hairless cock" before he knows what do with it.
It wasn't terrible, persay. It had its problems, but it was better than 99% of movies in that genre that have come out.
I was terrified about aliens abducting me because of the x-files (and all of the alien related tv programming that was presented as "Fact", like discovery channel stuff) until around age 12. I think that's probably the most pathetic "disturbed by tv/movie" thing ever.
I looked under my bed for pods years after I saw the 70's Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake when I was a kid. That movie still makes my skin crawl.