[HN Gopher] The original "Bambi"
___________________________________________________________________
The original "Bambi"
Author : Thevet
Score : 166 points
Date : 2022-05-04 04:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| bradlys wrote:
| A lot of weird people in here basically arguing for goatse to be
| shown to children.
|
| There's no good reason to show children traumatic events. A lot
| of them _do_ internalize it. Just because you didn't doesn't mean
| others won't. This has little to do with bad parenting or other
| such things. Some children are just able to take what is in a
| film and vividly imagine it towards their own life or have too
| much sympathy.
|
| HN obviously isn't a great place to get advice about how to raise
| children from people who are known to be chronic over workers and
| absentee parents...
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| If we're talking about bleaker topics in older Disney works, I'll
| ask you to take a moment and consider the entire premise of
| _Dumbo_ (1939). Why are the other elephants scandalized by the
| baby elephant with the big ears, asking what Mr. Jumbo would
| think? Why did they mean, just a few moments earlier when they
| said elephants are "a proud _race_ "? Why would they shun him,
| declaring that he is not one of their kind? ... What kind of
| elephant has big ears?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| With all of the elements in Dumbo directly from Minstrel Shows
| (black face, white face/Irish stereotypes) I think it's
| incredible that Dumbo isn't already in the same "Never to
| Reopen" Vault with Song of the South.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Oh, and Song of the Roustabouts is something too.
|
| "We work all day, we work all night / we never learn to read
| or write / we're happy hearted roustabouts!!"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75mur1xF7U
|
| But the whole premise of "the mixed race kid gets all the
| bullying" is a reflection of a pretty bleak society, beyond
| any of these specific depictions.
| ginko wrote:
| >What kind of elephant has big ears?
|
| African elephants? But the original Jumbo[1] was also an
| African elephant.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo
| chasd00 wrote:
| The tear jerking properties of the treatment of Dumbo's mother
| doesn't get enough attention. There really is no greater love
| than that of a mother for her child.
|
| / notice I said "greater" leaving space for an equal ie a
| father's love
| nemo44x wrote:
| > There really is no greater love than that of a mother for
| her child.
|
| You don't really know the intensity and unconditionality of
| the love your own mother has/had for you until you have kids
| yourself and see how your wife loves your child. I always
| appreciated my mother, but I was only able to fully
| appreciate her after I had kids myself.
| mberning wrote:
| Totally agree. I go pretty far out of my way to make sure
| my mom gets plenty of time with her grandson, which she
| loves.
|
| It also burns my ass to hear my wife say "I couldn't have
| imagined how much I would like being a mom". Society and
| culture is so screwed up around children and raising a
| family.
| ehejdud wrote:
| burns my ass is quite an image
| wara23arish wrote:
| One folklore story we grew up with as kids was as simple as,
|
| you misbehave -> some stranger called "Bag man" will come take
| you in a big bag
|
| I don't remember ever being actually scared of it but remember it
| since ever my memory had formed.
| brewdad wrote:
| Did you grow up in the Mob?
| sandGorgon wrote:
| has anyone ever seen Saturday Night Live's take on Bambi ? With
| "The Rock" ?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFJz2IMUeDE
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| yawn. too long and no pictures. it's no wonder no one here
| actually read it.
| greggman3 wrote:
| It actually upsets me there aren't more harsh stories for kids.
|
| I'm a huge One Piece fan (on of Japan's most popular manga and
| anime for the last 22 years). In the first season, one of the
| main characters has her adopted mother murdered right in front of
| her when she's like 7 years old.
|
| And, if that's not bad enough, her town is taken over by thugs,
| she spends the next 10 years working on a plan to get rid of the
| thugs while basically being a slave to them. Only to have them
| discover and ruin her plan making all the sacrifies she made
| those 10 years in vain.
|
| The show at a basic level is kind of silly and definitely for
| kids at some level but these heart wrenching moments are what
| made the show.
|
| Unfortunately, 2-3 seasons later they started pulling their
| punches. Characters would sacrifice themselves (so heart strings
| tugged) and then a few episodes later they'd show up with a few
| bandages recovering.
|
| Fortunately there's still been a few major un-pulled gut punches
| later in the series.
| westcort wrote:
| My key takeaways:
|
| 1. This year, "Bambi: A Life in the Woods" has entered the public
| domain, and the Chambers version has been joined by a new one:
| "The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest"
| (Princeton), translated by Jack Zipes, with wonderful black-and-
| white illustrations by Alenka Sottler
|
| 2. Stephen King called "Bambi" the first horror movie he ever
| saw, and Pauline Kael, the longtime film critic for this
| magazine, claimed that she had ever known children to be as
| frightened by supposedly scary grownup movies as they were by
| "Bambi."
|
| 3. The film in question is, of course, the 1942 Walt Disney
| classic "Bambi." Perhaps more than any other movie made for
| children, it is remembered chiefly for its moments of terror: not
| only the killing of the hero's mother but the forest fire that
| threatens all the main characters with annihilation
|
| 4. With the old Prince's prompting, Bambi concludes from this
| experience not that we humans are a danger even unto one another
| but, rather, that other animals are foolish for imagining that we
| are gods merely because we are powerful
|
| 5. It was adapted from "Bambi: A Life in the Woods," a 1922 novel
| by the Austro-Hungarian writer and critic Felix Salten
|
| 6. What makes it such a startling source for a beloved children's
| classic is ultimately not its violence or its sadness but its
| bleakness
|
| 7. The implicit moral is not so much that killing animals is
| wicked as that people are wicked and wild animals are innocent
|
| 8. Salten insisted that he wrote "Bambi" to educate naive readers
| about nature as it really is: a place where life is always
| contingent on death, where starvation, competition, and predation
| are the norm
|
| 9. What purpose are scenes like that one serving in this book?
| Salten maintained that, despite his own affinity for hunting, he
| was trying to dissuade others from killing animals except when it
| was necessary for the health of a species or an ecosystem
|
| 10. What are we to make of this muddy, many-minded story? Zipes,
| in his introduction, blames some of the confusion on Chambers,
| contending that he mistranslated Salten, flattening both the
| political and the metaphysical dimensions of the work and paving
| the way for Disney to turn it into a children's story
|
| Other works of Felix Salten:
| https://www.locserendipity.com/TitleSearch.html?q=Salten
| tunesmith wrote:
| I grew up with this book. I absolutely loved it, and spent
| several years not thinking about it, until I remembered the
| chapter of the two leaves, which was my favorite chapter. I dug
| it up again and read it aloud to my wife. Just a wonderful book.
| I didn't really come away with half the interpretations that the
| author of this piece had, but that's okay. I didn't see it as an
| allegory for anything. I just loved how unromantic and poetic it
| was at the same time. I could analyze the book any which way, but
| the overall feeling it left me with is cohesive, strong, and
| original.
|
| As for this piece, I wish he had gone more into the difference
| between the translations. That's how the piece started, and it
| ended with him simply saying the Chambers translation (the pre-
| existing one) is better. Didn't even include a comparison
| example.
| chasd00 wrote:
| To me Bambi's mom being killed is much milder than the death of
| Mufasa in The Lion King. In The Lion King you see the violence
| first hand and then the betrayal of a family member leading to a
| child's self inflicted exile.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I resonated with the fear and pain of those moments of not
| knowing after the shot and subsequent feeling of loss in Bambi
| much more acutely than the dramatized witnessing of the fall in
| TLK.
|
| The conflict between Scar and Mufasa had a song and jaunty lead
| up, so the betrayal wasn't much of a surprise. The death of
| Bambi's mother felt senseless and shocking. What gain could her
| death have served her killer? Why did she have to die? Who
| would care for the innocent and vulnerable Bambi?
| mrwh wrote:
| Exactly! Why did she die? So someone could have a moment of
| pleasure, someone who then never gave her another thought.
| sbate1987 wrote:
| Johnny555 wrote:
| As jarring as Bambi was as a child, as an adult, the opening to
| Pixar's "Up" is far more heart wrenching.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| A large fraction of Pixar's output includes scenes that prompt
| a small child to ask "Why are you crying mommy/daddy?"
| boredumb wrote:
| This is the most insufferable thing I've ever read in my entire
| life. This reads like chocolate cake with chocolate icing
| drizzled in chocolate syrup for smug individuals to read from the
| backseat of a private car service. The amount of faux insights
| and pop politic buzzwords while ending this with questions of
| whether bambi is a parable for jewish existence is astonishing
| and I found myself wondering if this was a parody paper submitted
| to the New Yorker to trick an editor into publishing it.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Did you even read it or finish it? It explicitly makes the case
| it is NOT a parable for Jews, as it is often interpreted, but
| rather the human condition in general. From the article:
|
| ""Bambi" is not a parable about the plight of the Jews, but
| Salten sometimes regards the plight of the Jews as a parable
| about the human condition. The omnipresence and inevitability
| of danger, the need to act for oneself and seize control of
| one's fate, the threat posed by intimates and strangers alike:
| this is Salten's assessment of our existence."
|
| That was the case the author was building up to the entire
| time. To each their own, but I thought it was an incredibly
| well written article.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| welcome to the newyorker.
| gumby wrote:
| The same gruesome scene begins the Babar odyssey, though unlike
| Bambi, it's all on the page.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| There's a Barbar cartoon (by Nelvana, which is Canadian, so now
| it's on YouTube because Canadian media companies haven't all
| been gobbled up yet), so your kids can have the horror of
| watching young Babar see the hunters attack his family. My 3YO
| loved it.
| Ralfp wrote:
| I've grown watching ,,The Animals of Farthing Wood" (1993
| cartoon).
|
| It has episode showing family of mice struggling to survive and
| worried about future for their babies. In following episode we
| get shot of same mice family impaled on needles by birds going to
| eat them.
|
| https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c3201142/comment_EkpfJKfyX8WRKQnr7H...
|
| Entire story is told around forest dying out and animals
| struggling to survive in it. It was once called ,,that animals
| cartoon that traumatised generations".
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I loved a cartoon growing up as a child, called Alfred J. Kwak
| [0], a Dutch / Japanese series about a duck and his adventures;
| I believe a lot of it is on youtube if you want.
|
| The first two episodes are about two anthropomorphised ducks
| that meet, fall in love, move into a clog and have a spawn of
| babies, happily ever after until the whole family but Alfred
| get killed by a car. That was err. a pretty brutal thing for a
| four year old to see.
|
| The show goes on to depict things like nazis, racism (waterfowl
| aren't real birds like us!), apartheid, classism, alcoholism,
| even transgenderism / gender fluidity (the stork Ollie), etc.
| In hindsight, it was A Lot, and most of it probably escaped me.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_J._Kwak
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > etc.
|
| This "etc." includes the aids epidemic, North/South Korea-
| like country, and environmental topics like whaling and the
| seas being overfished, acid rain, the destruction of the
| Amazon rainforest.
|
| Yeah the show was A Lot and I love it for that.
| micheljansen wrote:
| Alfred J Kwak was surprisingly adult about a lot of these
| topics. It didn't beat around the bush at all!
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Never thought I'd say this, but I really need to rewatch
| Alfred J. Kwak. I remember it as "that weird duck show from
| my childhood"...
|
| It doesn't seem to be available on any streaming platforms,
| though.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| I've watched pretty much every episode at least 50 times,
| my wife also watched it as a kid and got our oldest
| addicted to it.
|
| Fantastic cartoon, impressive how they handled facisme.
| Guess certain Dutch politicians either didn't see it or did
| and got inspired by Dolf.
|
| In related news, I've also seen every episode of True and
| Nijnje (90s, 00s and specials) a similar number of times
| for kid #2 and kid #3 :)
|
| I grew up in the UK so as a kid I was traumatised by Yellow
| Submarine, Tottie (dollhouse burns down killing everyone),
| Watership Down and the aforementioned Animals of Farthing
| Wood.
| bytehowl wrote:
| There's a bunch of playlists on YT as mentioned in one of
| the other posts. Here's the first one that came up for me
| (AI upscaled, apparently):
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqSaUrah-
| p_nqNYjF3iM7...
| munificent wrote:
| Gotta love the idea of a dude named "Kwak" making a show
| about ducks. Talk about nominative determinism.
| cristoperb wrote:
| Kwak is the name of the duck, not of the creator of the
| show.
| munificent wrote:
| :(
| 0des wrote:
| According to Redwall: Raven > Crow > Rook > Magpie, in that
| order.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| That's wild, and really heavy. I'm so glad I didn't see that
| when I was a kid.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| I've been split on this. On the one hand it is a bit unpleasant
| and can be traumatizing, and we tend to shy away from
| unpleasant things, but on the other hand lots of generations
| grew up on Grimm's Fairy Tales and Hans Christian Andersen
| fairy tales and learned a bit about how difficult life can be
| and the consequences of moral failings or lack of hard work. It
| is important to prepare children for the fact that life is not
| all rainbows and unicorns, but still important to protect them
| from the depravity of the world so that childhood is pleasant
| and magical with healthy emotional development. I guess there
| is a right way to do it, and a wrong way to do it, and that's
| part of the complexity of life/the universe/everything.
| watwut wrote:
| I don't mind scary stories for children, especially when told
| by people who know those kids and can easily judge the
| effect. But, the generations growing up on that and them
| taking deep moral lessons from it point is overstated.
|
| They were collected or written and then popular collections
| of folklore in some part of last century. They are not
| exactly bible, many of those stories don't even have some
| kind of moral lesson in them.
| bashmelek wrote:
| This is something I wish was brought up more. It is almost
| a meme that "the originals were darker," but really the
| famous tales of the Grimms and Perrault et al are just
| local snapshots of a living tradition of the common people
| telling stories. I suppose the focus on the older recorded
| versions is a reaction against Disney and modified versions
| of stories marketed to children (e.g. Lang perhaps). And to
| be clear, I think all these, including Disney, are
| important culturally and present fine variants of the
| stories. Still, I don't want us to forget the others.
|
| Digging a little deeper, you find tons of variants of
| stories, and discover all sorts of new ones, hybrids,
| seemingly incomplete ones, different levels of
| embellishment, darker and lighter. And some do have morals,
| but a lot of them are just things happening. Some motifs
| just seem to stick. And folk tales were not primarily meant
| for children either--we tell kids campfire ghost stories
| all the time, and don't think so much on what they teach.
| We just like them.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I feel like part of the problem is the medium. I read a lot
| of books as a kid. And there were many stories that I had no
| problem reading, but I really struggled watching on screen,
| even if I already knew what happened. Lord of the Rings being
| an example that comes to mind.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| IIRC, many of the most popular fairy tales give happy endings
| by pure luck and happenstance. Catch a fish with a magic
| ring, etc.... The ones with moral lessons are too on-the-nose
| to be enjoyable.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The most popular fairy tales also have been modified to be
| more kid friendly. Nobody saved Little Red Riding Hood.
| Sleeping Beauty wasn't kissed, she was raped in her sleep
| and gave birth; it was her child sucking the needle out of
| her finger that woke her up.
|
| These used to be more than just stories for kids, but
| modern fairy tales are rarely ever told to an adult
| audience anymore. For many fairy tales, the happy ending
| was added centuries after they spread.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Try looking on youtube for a version of "The Boy Who
| Cried Wolf" that ends with the boy being properly eaten.
| They've all been changed to have narrow-escape happy
| endings, wholly destroying the point of the narrative.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| One could argue that Abraham and his son was the original
| narrow escape happy ending
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| One could argue that in the original, he didn't escape
| either. "The text bears no specific mark of being a
| polemic against child sacrifice."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac#Possible_c
| hil...
| watwut wrote:
| I think the popular mistake is to assume that every story
| in folklore collection must be for children and we must
| be able to derive some moral message out of it. This was
| time before TV and youtube. Adults told each other
| stories meant for adults and kids might or might not
| listen.
| sentrysapper wrote:
| Life will give those hard lessons out for free - why build a
| curriculum for it?
| pjc50 wrote:
| The problem with the university of life is it gives the
| test first and the curriculum afterwards.
| easytiger wrote:
| > Life will give those hard lessons out for free
|
| Does it?
| simonh wrote:
| In the world as it was when these stories were first
| told, yes.
| easytiger wrote:
| I don't follow. Human history until recently was
| sustained largely by oral tradition and story telling;
| superseded by written story telling. What's the problem
| with telling stories that confer some wisdom or some
| sense of history or for fun?
|
| Many of these stories are embedded idiomatically in many
| languages? Let each parent decide at what age they should
| read Rapunzel, when they are ready.
| simonh wrote:
| I think I misunderstood the comment. You're quite right,
| these stories served a valuable function.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Life will give those hard lessons out for free_
|
| Free of cost for the teacher, not for the student
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Eventually. Other commenters have made note that you can
| coast for decades without encountering any though, so
| best be somewhat prepared by reading and listening to
| others.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Quite on the contrary, life may make you pay a very
| horrific cost for learning that lesson on your own instead
| of from the mistakes of others.
| christophilus wrote:
| That seems to be a key reason for fairy tales and such
| things-- gentle preparation for life. It's better to be
| equipped before battle rather than being tossed into the
| fray wholly unawares.
| watwut wrote:
| Imo, key reason for fairy tales is that both adults and
| children want to have fun. I watch movies and read books
| to have fun. Some of what my kids watch is written with
| proper moral lessons in it, but plenty of it is pure fun
| or with anti-lessons.
|
| The people in the past had no youtube and no tv. They
| still wanted to have some fun.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Because you can go decades without any kind of serious
| events in your life, living in a perfect bubble until shit
| hits the fan. That's when you learn nothing prepared you
| for that and no one cares or knows how to behave.
|
| That's kind of the main reason we started to write stuff
| down, to learn things from the past through other's
| experiences, so that you don't have to feel alone going
| through every traumatising events as if you were the first
| human to do so.
|
| We have empathy, better use it than wait for the hardest
| part of life to "give us a lesson", most of the really hard
| parts only happen once so you won't learn much, but you'll
| suffer a lot.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| The hardest part about being involved in a life altering
| event/catastrophe is that even having the preperation
| you're often blindsided by someone's or some groups
| avarice.
|
| My father who was financially devastated by people close
| to him passed on one insanely strong piece of advice that
| is superior to any fairy tale and saved me.
|
| 1. Always have a legal agreement at the start
| even/especially if it's friends and family.
|
| 2. Always have that legal agreement reviewed by your own
| attorney.
|
| Years later I'm finally getting over the sudden violence
| and the hostility, but the law made sure their plans to
| intimidate, force, steal and defraud came to nothing.
| david38 wrote:
| My father would have done well to follow your father's
| advice
| giantg2 wrote:
| I operate on the assumption that any sort of loan could
| end up as a "gift". If I'm going to loan friends or
| family money I ask myself if I'm OK not getting it back.
| chipsa wrote:
| Don't lend more than you can claw back in small claims
| court. And have a written agreement. The small claims
| court size limits the potential downside, and the written
| agreement is proof of intent enough to stand up in small
| claims, so long as it's SMART (just like goals: specific,
| measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound).
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > learned a bit about how difficult life can be and the
| consequences of moral failings or lack of hard work
|
| I don't remember anything about consequences of moral
| failings in the old fairy tales, just random violence and
| chaos. In Sleeping Beauty the prince's mother turns out to be
| an ogre who tries to eat Beauty's children, but luckily the
| prince returns in time and kills her. Where's the moral
| lesson there? Don't move in with your mother-in-law?
| kstenerud wrote:
| The same thing most poor kids learn growing up: Just
| because someone looks and speaks nicely or is nice to you
| doesn't tell you anything meaningful about them. And it can
| be a fatal mistake to not be careful.
|
| The old stories were designed to help prepare children for
| the hostile world they lived in.
| klik99 wrote:
| I forget who said it, but one theory I've heard is that
| kids are naturally afraid of their parents and haven't
| built the ability to hold opposing views at the same time,
| so they have trouble reconciling these loving god-like
| figures they depend on 100% for survival and the total fear
| they have when the same figures are angry or disappointed
| in them.
|
| Stories like Sleeping Beauty or ones with monsters allow
| kids to transfer those feelings of all encompassing fear to
| these bad guys, until they outgrow it and they're able to
| handle ambiguity.
|
| That doesn't explain why the stories were originally told,
| but could explain their stickiness.
| dijit wrote:
| > Where's the moral lesson there?
|
| The moral of the story is that monsters live deep inside
| even the people we trust most.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Well, off the top of my head from Grimm:
|
| --Cinderella: mean deceptive people might get their feat
| chopped off & eyes pecked out. (In short, Karma. though
| unfortunately the world doesn't quite work that way, but
| there's still a bit of "the world can be ugly" too)
|
| --Cat & The Mouse: Never forget that the nature of a
| predator is predation
|
| --Hansel & Gretel: Don't take candy from strangers. Also,
| if something looks to good to be true, it probably is. And
| also that maybe little children are delicious? I mean, the
| witch had to have her reasons.
|
| --Rumpelstiltskin: Okay, there's some mixed messages here.
| Lying father, malicious greedy king, deceptive girl...
| Rumpelstiltskin comes out looking like a hero, saving the
| girl's life 3 times but then get's cheated out of his last
| payment & kills himself. But he also wanted her baby. She
| agreed, but still... anyway no one really comes off
| smelling of roses but Rumpelstiltskin is the only one dead.
|
| --The Peasant in Heaven: Truly good rich people are very
| rare
|
| --Snow White: Alright, maybe this one shouldn't on the
| list. Could be there's a lesson about jealousy in there,
| and also that maybe you should try the Heimlich maneuver on
| someone that keels over while eating, but in the end it
| kind of boils down to some fairly creepy borderline
| necrophilia.
| anthk wrote:
| >Hansel & Gretel:
|
| Beware from the child rapists as an analogy. Kinda
| similar to The Little Red Hood.
| [deleted]
| david38 wrote:
| That bird is a shrike. Pretty rough for a cartoon.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _It was once called ,,that animals cartoon that traumatised
| generations"._
|
| Although I can imagine this being quite horrific, I also don't
| recall that this cartoon was all that upsetting me when I
| watched it as a child. Then again I grew up in the countryside
| so maybe it was less shocking to me because I already knew what
| nature was like. When it comes to animal cartoons I think
| _Watership Down_ and _The Plague Dogs_ were much worse
| experiences.
|
| Still, kind of makes me wonder what's up with the UK and
| depressing animal cartoons.
| mariodiana wrote:
| I'm traumatized merely from reading the Wikipedia entry!
| pram wrote:
| The Plague Dogs is so unrelentingly bleak, few films have the
| spine to just be utterly hopeless. It's like a "children's"
| version of something like Threads or The Lighthouse lol
| mrob wrote:
| I recently read an interpretation of the ending that seems
| plausible and makes it slightly less bleak. Rot13 for
| spoilers:
|
| Va gur crahygvzngr fprar, lbh frr gur ohyyrgf fgevxr gur
| jngre, naq gura gur uryvpbcgre snqrf bhg. Guvf pbhyq vzcyl
| gung gurl uvg gurve gnetrgf naq erghearq gb onfr, juvpu
| zrnaf gur svany fprar vf fbzr xvaq bs nsgreyvsr, naq abg
| gur qbtf' qlvat qryhfvbaf nf gurl qebja nf V svefg nffhzrq.
| Gur zlgubybtvpny fprarf va Jngrefuvc Qbja ner n cerprqrag
| gb guvf xvaq bs guvat, fb vg qbrfa'g fbhaq haernfbanoyr.
| youngNed wrote:
| > The Plague Dogs
|
| I think a _LOT_ of UK school kids were truamatised by this, a
| lot of teachers, saw it thought 'oh, same author (Richard
| Adams) and director (Martin Rosen) as Watership Down, lets
| stick the kids in front of this while we do something else.
|
| Man, that film was harrowing.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Watership Down is mostly traumatising as a cartoon. I've read
| the book last year, and it feels a lot more as a deeply
| mythologic piece than a psychedelic horror. It's essentially
| a shorter Lord of the Rings, with bunnies. Highly
| recommended.
|
| (Also, the recent Netflix adaption of the material is a lot
| closer to the source material than the 1980s-era cartoon).
| dimensionc132 wrote:
| In Germany it is not uncommon, or it was not uncommon when i was
| a child, for parents to read horror stories to their children;
| Der Struwelpeter
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter
|
| Scared the living crap out of me, especially the story of Die gar
| traurige Geschichte mit dem Feuerzeug ("The Very Sad Tale with
| the Matches"): A girl plays with matches, accidentally ignites
| herself and burns to death.
| davidkuennen wrote:
| I've watched "Watership Down" as a child. It's one of my more
| vivid memories from back then to put it mildly.
| teh_klev wrote:
| I read the book as a kid in the 70's, the same decade that all
| the fun stuff like Mutually Assured Destruction was an ongoing
| thing. I seem to remember being fairly distressed and mentally
| exhausted by the end of it. However the upside was becoming
| aware of how humans were slowly and inexorably ruining our
| planet.
| davidkuennen wrote:
| Agreed. It was a great lesson and if anything affected my
| development in a positive way.
| lqet wrote:
| I am still at a loss why my parents thought that a movie about
| bloodthirsty killer-rabits was good entertainment for an 8 year
| old.
|
| To renew your trauma:
|
| https://static.kino.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/watership-...
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Or The Plague Dogs. I didn't read the book but saw the movie.
| Just a touch grim.
| kstenerud wrote:
| Watership Down and the Secret of Nimh were my two favorite
| movies as a young child in the early 80s, followed closely by
| the Dark Crystal and maybe Aristocats and the Black Hole.
|
| Other movies of the time like the Rescuers and the Fox and the
| Hound and Labyrinth and such were a disappointment compared to
| these...
| onei wrote:
| I've been curious about the Dark Crystal - was it
| particularly groundbreaking when it came out? I watched it
| after watching the more recent Netflix series and found the
| story pretty dreary.
|
| Similarly, I've heard Tron was almost revolutionary by the
| standards of the day, but the CGI is almost comical to watch
| now.
| kstenerud wrote:
| Both were groundbreaking and revolutionary. They were very
| ambitious projects due to the technology limitations of the
| time, and crossed well into the "labour of love" realm, in
| the same vein as Pinnochio (for example the animated
| bubbles in the crashing waves).
| mbreese wrote:
| (Not the OP)
|
| I can't say it was ground breaking, as I was a kid at the
| time, but it was one of the great movies of my childhood. I
| remember watching it many times over. I do remember the
| characters seeming less real, and I still knew they were
| puppets. But this was also the era of Sesame Street, so a
| movie by Jim Henson that had puppets was kinda normal. I
| think the fact that my parents talked about it so highly
| probably answers your question more -- it was something
| adults appreciated. Ultimately, to me, the Dark Crystal
| wasn't a great movie because I feel the story was there to
| service the technique, even if the technique was
| masterfully used. Maybe I was too young to fully appreciate
| it.
|
| Tron was much the same. At the time, you knew it wasn't
| great, but it was still new. Like the targeting computer
| CGI for the Star Wars trench run, the effects weren't
| great. Even at the time, it was a little spartan. But the
| effects moved the story, and worked well enough to not be a
| distraction (and you had never seen anything like it
| before). Tron was just as much about what it foretold as
| much as the CGI that was available at the time. But in
| contrast to the Dark Crystal, I liked the story behind Tron
| more.
|
| I would say that both were groundbreaking for how they
| pushed techniques of movie making forward. The world
| creation in both were amazing and they both set a new bar
| for future movies to meet.
| tehnub wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| slibhb wrote:
| 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.
| vlunkr wrote:
| 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.
| senko wrote:
| Yes, Bambi is an utterly depressing story.
|
| Most original material Disney adapted was bleakier and more
| grisly than the adaptation.
|
| Most of the tales collected by brothers Grimm would today be
| horror stories. (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters
| had their toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the
| slippers? Or that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or
| that Maleficent ends up in a boiling cauldron full of vipers?)
|
| I bet Disney would be able to adapt even something like "Requiem
| for a Dream" into a happy hero-coming-of-age story.
|
| You lose a lot if the only version of these classics you've seen
| (or read, or heard) is Disney's sweet & shiny simulacra.
| Semaphor wrote:
| The Brothers Grimm already toned the horror down. Sleeping
| Beauty was based on a tale called Sun, Moon, and Talia [0]
| which has the prince having sex and impregnating her while she
| sleeps, and she only wakes up from her newborns sucking the
| splint out of her finger when she can't find the breast.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun,_Moon,_and_Talia
| dimensionc132 wrote:
| Sun, Moon, and Talia (Italian: Sole, Luna, e Talia) is an
| Italian literary fairy tale written by Giambattista Basile in
| his 1634
|
| Guy was high on some drugs when he wrote this sh%t. Talk
| about messed up.
| ropapcpr wrote:
| It goes farther than that.
|
| "Early contributions to the tale include the medieval courtly
| romance Perceforest (published in 1528).[4] In this tale, a
| princess named Zellandine falls in love with a man named
| Troylus. Her father sends him to perform tasks to prove
| himself worthy of her, and while he is gone, Zellandine falls
| into an enchanted sleep. Troylus finds her and rapes her in
| her sleep; when their child is born, the child draws from her
| finger the flax that caused her sleep. She realizes from the
| ring Troylus left her that he was the father, and Troylus
| later returns to marry her.[5]"
| shrikant wrote:
| My mind is blown -- that is quite some story (all of it, not
| just the bits in your comment!), thanks for the link! :-O
| goto11 wrote:
| > Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their
| toes and heels cut off
|
| The Disney version of Cinderella is based on Charles Perraults
| version, which is significantly different. An Perrault is older
| than Grimm, although both are based on older traditions.
| baud147258 wrote:
| For Cinderella, the story also existed in an older version told
| by Perrault, which is way less bleak than Grimm's tale.
| Especially as the Disney adaptation is closer to Perrault's
| tale (cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella#Cendrillon_ou
| _la_pe...)
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| That's why Germans refuse to refer to Disney movies by the
| names of the original Grimm stories.
|
| Disney/Hollywood version is always Cinderella, and German that
| closely adheres to the original is called Aschenputtel. The
| same goes for Snowwhite and Schneewitchen, Sleeping Beauty and
| Dornroschen.
| ginko wrote:
| I wouldn't say this applies as a rule. Both Snow White
| (Schneewittchen und die sieben Zwerge) and Sleeping Beauty
| (Dornroschen) kept their original titles in German.
| Cinderella is really the only exception which makes sense
| since it's more based on the Perrault version.
|
| There's even a counter example. The 2010 film Tangled is
| called Rapunzel like the original fairy tale in German.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| "Snowwhite and the Huntsman" kept its original Hollywood
| name, it was never translated as "Schneewitchen und der
| Jagger". But you're right, it's "based on" a Grimm story,
| not a literal story adaptation.
| ginko wrote:
| I had to look that film up[1]. It's not a Disney movie so
| I don't see how that would apply here.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Huntsman
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > (Did you know that Cinderella's evil stepsisters had their
| toes and heels cut off so they could fit in the slippers? Or
| that the ravens pecked their eyes as punishment? Or that
| Maleficent ends up in a boiling cauldron full of vipers?)
|
| That's the variant I got told in my childhood (1980s West
| Germany). It always amuses me that these simple facts seem to
| be cruel and horrific to Americans.
|
| Also, "Hansel and Gretel" is a tale about parental abandonment,
| stranger danger, cannibalism, and burning old women alive, then
| forgiving said parental abandonment (but only after the kids
| bring back treasure).
|
| And "Red Riding Hood" is essentially about sexual child abuse.
| mattl wrote:
| I prefer the sequel, "Bambi Goes Crazy Ape Bonkers With His
| Drill and Sex"
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Don't forget about Pinocchio, who in the original Italian
| children's book is tortured and hanged for being such a "bad
| boy" [0][1].
|
| 0:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio#Fictional_character_...
|
| 1: https://slate.com/culture/2011/10/carlo-collodi-s-
| pinocchio-...
|
| The part of the movie where all of the boys on Pleasure Island
| begin to turn into donkeys always freaked me out as a kid.
| buro9 wrote:
| Ah, this reminds me of a review of the book I stumbled upon
| recently that is eye opening... eye opening as it shows how
| the context of the reader is imprinted on their experience of
| the reading.
|
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-
| reviews/R1JOT49B5OUAL0/...
|
| Even the opening of the review is... something:
|
| > To be honest, I struggled with this book. I found the main
| character incredibly frustrating. He almost always did the
| wrong thing. I mean, almost ALWAYS. Well, people sometimes do
| (including me!), but what he does is also almost always
| incredibly stupid. Well, again, people do stupid things
| (including me!), and the main character is, after all, a
| puppet who is only moments old at the beginning of the book,
| so how is he to know better? Fair question, but still, I
| found the book hard work. He just did not seem to learn from
| his mistakes.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Don't forget about Pinocchio, who in the original Italian
| children's book is tortured and hanged for being such a "bad
| boy" [0][1].
|
| >> 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio#Fictional_chara
| cter_...:
|
| > Pinocchio's bad behavior, rather than being charming or
| endearing, is meant to serve as a warning.
|
| That reminds me something I read about "Inuit parenting."
| They live in a dangerous and difficult environment, so they'd
| tell kids all kinds of scary stories designed to get them to
| do the correct thing before they could understood the actual
| danger.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Judging from the plot summary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| The_Adventures_of_Pinocchio#Pl...), the original Pinocchio
| book is pretty messed up as a whole!
| mdp2021 wrote:
| I'm not sure "messed up" is the most appropriate
| expression, if it may refer to a shaky mental status. It's
| all probably very intentional and lucid. Benedetto Croce -
| one of the greatest Italian philosophers - would not had
| taken that book in such high regard otherwise.
|
| It's just about life, explained through metaphors from
| somebody who had lived it a bit to some who may have lived
| it less, and could benefit from a few warnings.
|
| Collodi was a gambler: one night he lost an especially
| large amount of money, then happened to meet a friend, who
| commissioned him a literary work so as to help with the
| payment of his debts. "Le Avventure di Pinocchio" was in a
| way born out of deeds, to warn against deeds.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Wait until you see the Roberto Benigni film co-starring his
| wife.
| ineedasername wrote:
| > _" Requiem for a Dream"_
|
| Well, if we're thinking about the moral messages of some of
| these old tales, I've always thought Requiem could be a good
| movie to show tweens+ as a cautionary against drug abuse. If
| Disney threw in an evil witch selling smack, a few catchy
| songs, a handful of dead parents, and a handsome prince to kiss
| Harry's arm back to life then I bet they'd have... well, maybe
| not a hit. But it would be something, and I'd watch it.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Tween-me would have been wondering what the adult showing me
| the film was thinking right around the time a grinning man
| suggested for the crowd "Ass to ass."
| vt240 wrote:
| The section of the book where he sends Marion off to get
| money from Arnold, is some of the most haunting writing
| I've ever come across. The book is truly amazing. I've
| never come across another novel to so aptly relate the
| feelings of addiction.
| senko wrote:
| This description totally reminds me of Trainspotting!
|
| Those two, along with Kids (1995) could definitely be used as
| cautionary tales for t(w)eenagers.
| drooogs wrote:
| kids is a cool film, but not much of a cautionary tale.
| it's more like a 90s urban euphoria, in that the message is
| really more to adults: "this is what teenagers are actually
| doing right now".
|
| what (imo) would make requiem for a dream really effective
| is that it shows the transition from the "honeymoon phase"
| of drug use to the "consequences phase" really well. I
| think this is the part that teenagers really don't
| understand (or at least I didn't). when you're starting
| out, it can seem like a lot of the anti-drug messaging is
| just fear mongering (and it is, to an extent). but most
| people that age don't yet have the perspective to
| distinguish between harmless fun and a slow motion crisis.
|
| trainspotting is also great, and a bit more realistic than
| requiem for a dream. but if I had to pick one of the two to
| show to teens, I'd probably pick the former.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| I think that Bambi is something of a war movie; look at the
| forest fire scene, there is fire everywhere, it must have been
| inspired by bombing raids during the battle of Britain. I
| wonder if some of the artists had first hand experience of
| these events.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQrqhdU99Ws
|
| Also the father commands his son 'you must get up'; he acts
| like a commander.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Trying to imagine the boiling cauldron full of vipers. Were
| they magical vipers that could live in boiling water? Would
| Maleficent really be able to feel any snake bites as she was
| being boiled alive? Huge plot hole. 17th century writers didn't
| think this through.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Yea, I wasn't sure if this was water or oil with resistant
| high temperature vipers. Or someone smashed up vipers and
| boiled it, to be painful and extra gross?
|
| Or both, where vipers were boiled, and new vipers were
| constantly being added to bite, then turn into boiling viper
| soup themselves.
|
| IDK about plot hole, I assume the both method will get the
| job done. But, I do question the efficiency and practicality.
| derbOac wrote:
| Many of the Grimm tales in their original form were also
| somewhat bizarre or surreal. I agree with you, but sometimes
| think the Disney versions were crafted as they were in part
| just to make sense as much as anything.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| The stories were probably much more coherent to the folks
| living in the cultures they were conceived. At least at an
| intuitive and visceral level.
|
| There's a theory that Hansel and Grettel represents a
| cultural memory of a time of famine where children were
| abandoned, left to starve.
| isolli wrote:
| Children's songs are also often cruel. "Il etait un petit
| navire" tells the story of a young sailor about to be eaten
| because the ship ran out of food. "Sur le pont du Nord" tells
| the story of a brother and a sister who ran off to a ball
| without their parents' approval and die when the bridge
| collapses. "Il etait une bergere" tells the story of a young
| shepherd who kills her mischievous cat in anger. These are
| examples from French folklore, but I would be surprised if it
| was different in other cultures.
| anthk wrote:
| Spaniard here. You could be scared if you paid attention to
| what little girls actually sang in those songs made to play
| with hands and such.
|
| Killing depictions, mild sexual jokes... as nothing.
| kmote00 wrote:
| "London bridges falling down."
|
| "Ring around the Rosie... and we all fall down" (refers to
| the Great Plague of London in 1665)
|
| "Rockabye baby in the treetops" (eventually sent crashing to
| the ground by storm winds).
| leobabauta wrote:
| Snopes disagrees with the plague theory:
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ring-around-rosie/
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Many children's stories of old had an entirely different moral
| sentiment than today.
|
| They exposed children to the idea that the chaotic world is
| outside your ability to control, but you must live in it and
| navigate it to the extent you can nonetheless. This will not
| always end well for you, despite your best efforts.
|
| In contrast, the message of modern fairy tales is that life has
| challenges, but they can all be overcome. If you are noble,
| persistent and hard working, you can achieve anything.
| Characters nearly always end up royalty or some variation of
| happily ever after.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I know Disney pretends that "Song of the South" never existed,
| but Joel Chandler Harris' "The Tales of Uncle Remus" etc.,
| includes a few stories where the animals meet their ends.
| Disney passed on those tales of course (leaving them as well
| out of the Disney book that followed the film and included
| additional Harris tales).
|
| Like the suggestion that "Bambi" is a parable, it has been also
| suggested that Brer Rabbit represents the slave of the
| Antebellum South surviving against the toothed and clawed Brer
| Fox and Brer Bear only by his wits (though in fact Brer Wolf
| meets his own end at the hands of Brer Rabbit's "wit" ... or
| boiling water in his specific case).
| amelius wrote:
| The saddest part is that the greatest idea-thief of all is the
| one who extended the copyright term.
| drno123 wrote:
| Finding Nemo also has a sad beginning. And the beginning of Up is
| both sad and sobering. But none of those I see as traumatising.
| On the other hand, The little prince basically sells suicide to
| kids. And all the teachers always praise this book and force kids
| to read it while obviously the book is not written for children.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Bambi was actually a favorite of mine growing up, but The
| Princess Bride scared the living daylights out of me.
| drakonka wrote:
| I have just realized that I may not have seen the Bambi movie I
| thought I saw as a child, because I could swear I remember seeing
| some of the scenes this article claims never made it into the
| film. I remember the oak leaf conversation from somewhere, as
| well as some of the harsher scenes they said were cut from the
| Disney version. I wonder if I read the book and forgot about it.
| spanktheuser wrote:
| It wasn't the first horror film my children saw (they watched
| Jaws, Alien, and Stranger Things) but the most terrifying and
| traumatic experience they've seen was the shipwreck scene in the
| Black Stallion. If you want to frighten children, murder what
| they love while they watch: their parents and animals.
|
| Coincidence both Bambi and the Black Stallion were written during
| or in the immediate aftermath of world wars?
| masklinn wrote:
| > Coincidence both Bambi and the Black Stallion were written
| during or in the immediate aftermath of world wars?
|
| Meh. Every generation has its angsts, and writers putting it
| down to paper.
|
| Watership down was written in the very late 60s / very early
| 70s.
| anthk wrote:
| Bambi was a movie for war kids who lost a parent (or both) in
| the war.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| One thing I've really noticed is that a lot of people -
| children and adults both - have no qualms about depictions of
| violence and murder of people in media, but they get really
| squeamish when it's (cute) animals. I wonder what causes that,
| is it just a kind of desensitization? Or a built-in kind of
| justice that bad people dying is fine but innocent animals
| isn't?
| kumarsw wrote:
| This is a pretty well-observed phenomenon that the relative
| sadness of humans and cute animals dying in movies and real
| life is (presumably) reversed. Someone had even coined a term
| for it - "dog-dying-in-movie sad." I'm at a loss to explain
| why, but it feels like Peak Internet Discussion so hopefully
| someone here will feel like expanding on it.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| See also - John Wick
| watwut wrote:
| There are movies that show violence against people in a way
| that hits and in a way that people react to. However, not in
| typical action/war/thriller story.
|
| The context matters. The depictions of violence of people in
| media if typically very intentionally written in a way that
| does not make you feel too bad. The killed people rarely have
| personalities or matter. Modern media rarely kills characters
| that people had a chance to know or relate to. They are not
| cute and their deaths are sort of "clean".
|
| The cute animals people are squeamish about are played up for
| cuteness, the owner is played up to be sad. It is all very
| intentionally made up to make you feel sad.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Parents being murdered is in plenty of kids movies. I don't
| think it has much to do with war I think it's more just you're
| writing a story with kids as the protagonists. How do you build
| a plot where they can overcome things if their parents are
| still in the picture.
|
| Don't think its much deeper than that.
| thomaspark wrote:
| I made a browser extension called No Scary Parts that skips
| traumatic scenes on Disney+ while trying to hold together a
| cohesive plot. Mainly for young kids who enjoy the music and
| other scenes, but aren't ready for the full story yet.
|
| https://thomaspark.co/projects/no-scary-parts/
|
| Fantasia was easy. Managed to do The Lion King. Haven't been able
| to pull off Bambi yet...
| copperx wrote:
| > Fantasia was easy
|
| You no need an extension for that one. As a kid, I tried to
| watch it multiple times and I always fell asleep. And I was a
| very patient kid.
| micheljansen wrote:
| "Night on bald mountain" with Czernobog and his creepy fire
| slave demon things gave me nightmares for months.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Live kids movies used to be pretty savage too. I showed my young
| kids _Born Free_ and _Old Yeller_.
|
| Well, in the first, lions eat some people in the first scene. In
| the second movie, the wild pigs attack is terrifying. Never mind
| the rabid animals.
|
| They didn't want to see my recommendations after those two.
| rendall wrote:
| Bambi meets Godzilla
|
| https://youtu.be/8s3UogfAGg0
| photochemsyn wrote:
| For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm"
| at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a
| fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse
| to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the
| horse) knows what's going on.
|
| Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black
| Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable.
|
| However I disagree with claims that these kind of works
| 'traumatize' young readers. It's just an introduction to life's
| realities - everyone has to die, nature is beautiful but also
| violent, and humans can be crueler to each other than any animal
| ever could. Kids aren't traumatized by reading, or by playing
| video games - if trauma occurs, it's due to things like war and
| poverty and neglect and abuse.
| kndjckt wrote:
| As a kid I watched the film a bunch. It was scary but I liked
| it. Worth checking out. Amazing that it's from 1954
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047834/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
| bsenftner wrote:
| I was a fat, stuttering early elementary kid, so I read a lot
| to avoid the cruel other kids. To the degree my 4th grade
| teacher would no longer allow me to do book reports for a grade
| using children's or teen books any longer. She pointed me at
| the literature classics and said only those were grade worthy
| at my reading skill.
|
| The right there was on of the most instrumental decisions of my
| life.
|
| By 5th grade I'd read the entire high school literature
| section. I joined an adult book readers club to better
| understand what I was reading. Even the adults in my club
| agreed an adult life is continual situational ignorance,
| misunderstood tragedy, betrayal by those close to you, and
| servitude to the powerful. I no longer believe adult life is
| quite so harsh, but that attitude prepared me far better than
| my peers. I've spent a good amount of time talking down people
| ready to quit everything. Thankfully, I can reference some
| fantastic hopeful passages, and they have not failed such
| situations yet.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Can you share some hopeful passages, or some recommendations
| on what to read? I could use a bit of positivity in my life
| this month.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Without your personal context, recommendations are
| difficult. If you like science fiction, check out "Stories
| of your Life" by Ted Chang; if you like historical
| strategies for success, check out "The 48 Laws of Power" by
| Robert Greene; if you like grand philosophical views of an
| entire life well lived and how to have one "The Glass Bead
| Game" by Hesse; if you're interested in extremely practical
| advice in how to be successful today read (believe it or
| not) Harvard Business Review - it is far more down to earth
| than should be possible. If you like cynical SciFi, read
| Philip K Dick's Valis trilogy - it's a failed 2nd coming of
| god, wreaked by modern brand marketing.
| krferriter wrote:
| Thanks for giving some recommendations, these sound
| interesting.
| js2 wrote:
| Have you read _Klara and the Sun_ yet?
| paulmd wrote:
| haha, high-five. My parents read with us every night as a
| kid, and that got me going on my own. At the start of third
| grade I did a book report on a junior textbook about the
| allied air campaigns during ww2 and the teacher didn't really
| know what to do with that.
|
| (I'm a smart guy but reading with my parents made a _huge_
| difference imo, it is probably the single biggest thing you
| can do to give your kids a head-start in life. Give your kids
| the ability to sponge up as much information as possible
| during those critical years of childhood brain plasticity!)
|
| I've always been a sensitive person (until cruel kids taught
| me to hide it) and Watership Down and Where The Red Fern
| Grows got me bad as a kid... but not like lifelong trauma or
| anything, just baby's first exposure to death.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I'm curious what sort of books they would read. I like to
| read to our kids, but it's mostly books targeted at a bit
| above their reading level, not adult-level stuff.
| paulmd wrote:
| (other readers: sorry, I know this post is going to be a
| bit obnoxiously long, but I didn't want to put it on a
| pastebin or some other external service and potentially
| have it disappear if someone wanted to reference it in
| the future. If you're not interested please feel free to
| collapse this!)
|
| I actually asked my mom to compile a list of books she
| could remember, because a friend had kids and was getting
| to the age where they were starting to read too. Here's
| what she came up with (note, no particular order of
| difficulty or maturity here):
|
| My Father's dragon series
|
| Where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein
|
| A pizza the size of the Sun
|
| Choose your own adventure books
|
| The Great Brain
|
| The Boxcar Children series
|
| Captain Underpants
|
| Roald Dahl books: The BFG, James and the Giant Peach,
| Matilda, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/The
| Great Glass Elevator (not as good)
|
| My Side of the Mountain
|
| No More Dead Dogs
|
| The Secret Garden
|
| Bridge to Terabithia (Deals with death, a little older)
|
| The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe
|
| Across five Aprils (civil war historical fiction, older)
|
| The Broken Blade (Voyageur) & Sequel
|
| Island of the blue dolphins
|
| The witch of blackbird pond
|
| Johnny Tremaine (a bit older)
|
| The sign of the Beaver
|
| Charlotte's Web
|
| Because of Winn Dixie
|
| Tuck Everlasting (sad at end)
|
| Ruby Holler
|
| The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
|
| Treasure Island
|
| The Pushcart War
|
| Maniac Magee
|
| Rascal
|
| Frindle
|
| Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)
|
| Mr. Popper's Penguins (young)
|
| Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing (Juy Blume)
|
| Pippi Longstocking
|
| Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (young)
|
| A Wrinkle in Time
|
| Moccasin Trail
|
| Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
|
| From the Mixed Up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
|
| The Egypt Game
|
| The Phantom Tollbooth (young)
|
| Holes (little older)
|
| Sideways Stories from Wayside School (young)
|
| The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
|
| Homer Price (easy reading)
|
| The Indian in the Cupboard
|
| Misty of Chincoteague (series)
|
| Aesop's Fables (young)
|
| The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm
|
| Redwall series
|
| Watership Down
|
| (I'll throw in the Discworld series too for kids that are
| getting a bit older! It's probably very readable for,
| say, an advanced 5th grader. I was tearing through all
| the redwall books and the Golden Compass series at that
| point and Discworld is probably comparable. Golden
| Compass wasn't finished then and The Amber Spyglass ended
| up being kind of a disappointment. I know I was reading
| Discworld by 7th grade for sure.)
| idleproc wrote:
| I remember watching the Watership Down film as a young child
| and being rather disturbed. I think it set me up well for
| watching Nightmare on Elm Street when I was about 9 though.
|
| However, I've turned into a fairly well rounded individual (I
| don't try to murder rabbits or children in their dreams at
| least). The only downside is that I don't find horror films or
| rabbits particularly interesting.
|
| Something recently made me think of Moses the raven though.
| fsloth wrote:
| I read the Animal Farm to my below K12 kids on one sitting and
| they were hooked.
|
| Kids needs scary stories in a safe environment. This will help
| them process these thoughts and prepare them for the inevitable
| trauma they will face at some point in their life.
|
| Animal Farm is also not a bleak read but also fun as you can do
| all the animal voices with their characteristic animal sounds.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Stories don't prepare kids for trauma, and I don't think
| there's any real evidence in support of that idea. I would
| wager a large sum that a child who has heard scary stories is
| not more likely to better handle, say, the loss of an
| immediate family member, than a child who has only heard
| happy stories about unicorns, rainbows, and friendly
| interactions.
| ohreallyhmmm wrote:
| I see that you are talking about exposure to negative
| stimuli (bad stories) having no demonstrable positive
| impact to individuals. Perhaps this helps: Psychology has
| examined the impact of lots of praise (the absence of
| negative stimuli - e.g not allowing criticism of others,
| getting a 14th place ribbon) on an individual, vs those
| that are given critical feedback (negative stimuli is
| provided and/or no positive stimuli is provided e.g no
| ribbon or "good job" for 14th place; being excluded from
| the running team due to poor performance etc) for at least
| the past 30 years. The overall conclusion of this research
| is that lots of praise is a problem, and fosters the
| development of narcissism and leads to poor outcomes when
| the individual experiences "real" results (e.g they got a
| high five for getting a "c grade" in high school, but in
| their workplace performance review they get a "meets
| expectations" and a verbal warning from their boss that if
| they don't improve they will be put on a Performance
| Improvement Plan).
|
| Lots of this research can be read if you look for the
| impact of developing high self-esteem in individuals
| (typically this is done as described above), and measuring
| the impact of these actions.
|
| Example paper here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/1
| 0.1111/1529-1006.0143...
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| Not commenting on whether you're right or wrong, but that's
| a bit of an apples and oranges comparison there - nearly to
| the point of arguing in bad faith.
|
| A more apt comparison might be a story about urban war
| where the main character looses many immediate family
| members (and explores the grieving process against the
| backdrop of the war) - and how that would help a kid
| process the loss of an immediate family member.
| tragictrash wrote:
| Don't be afraid, they're wrong.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| List a single shred of scientific evidence showing that
| kids who are exposed to stories with similar themes to
| traumatic events they experience in real life are more
| likely the have better outcomes. Be afraid to call
| someone wrong without more than just-so stories and
| anecdotes.
| hervature wrote:
| This is a form of McNamara's fallacy. In reality, the
| data you are looking for is impossible to obtain. In
| practice, causing traumatic events is obviously
| unethical. Then, even if you had a proper study, there
| would be so many confounding factors that basically any
| conclusion is worthless. For instance, listening to an
| e-book on the subway is obviously different than
| discussing your emotions and response to the book. From
| first principles, it seems rather intuitive that if you
| expose anyone to a story of a trauma and discuss possible
| coping mechanisms, then that person is better prepared to
| cope with that trauma. Of course, being exposed to the
| thought might be traumatic itself (a kid might come to
| the realization that their dog is actually going to die)
| but if they react so poorly to the thought, how would
| they have reacted to the actual event? Intuitively, much
| worse. I'm all for data driven decisions, but our shared
| human experience can be a tremendous guiding light for
| things that are difficult to quantify.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Eh, in psychology the default is "nothing ever happens
| ever". No one ever changes, no effect lasts, and nothing
| ever replicates. There are all sorts of "intuitive"
| results which utterly fail to replicate, so I'd be
| surprised if things are better when you can't do a real
| study even in principle. I suppose I might just be jaded
| from the replication crisis, but my expectation is that
| things mostly just kind of happen. It's why I left for
| the gentle shores of math, where things work exactly as
| much as any pure math can be said to work.
| tablespoon wrote:
| Exactly. If you have an intuitive and common-sense take
| (exposure to stories with difficult themes can help kids
| cope with similar things in real life) and an unintuitive
| contrarian take (they don't, so let the kids get
| blindsided), the onus is on the contrarian to "list a
| single shred of scientific evidence."
|
| Sure, it would be great if everyone could offer
| "evidence" for every position, but that's obviously
| unrealistic and impractical.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| It's not contrarian...there's simply no evidence either
| way, that's all I'm saying. For every anecdote you can
| come up with showing a kid doing well after hearing scary
| stories, I'll come up with another of a kid doing without
| without hearing them. That's it.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Except that's not it. We have a whole generation of
| adults that can't handle rejection, can't handle
| difficulty, need emotional support peacocks on planes...
| because they were taught (repeatedly told the story,
| a.k.a. narrative) that they were special and would always
| win if they felt good enough about themselves.
|
| In other words, we told stories that specifically set
| them up for disillusionment and disorder. Telling stories
| has been the way one generation prepares the next _since
| the telling of stories began._
|
| Oral tradition, religious texts, myth, legend, fables,
| fairy tales... all of these had purposes beyond
| entertainment. Don't go in the woods by yourself, it's
| dangerous. Don't swim in that river, it's dangerous.
| Don't be mean to other people, because you don't want to
| live in that society. Don't lie, because people won't
| believe you when you need them to.
|
| We've always told these kinds of stories... until
| recently. The kids that did get these kinds of stories
| built the modern world. The kinds of kids that aren't
| getting these kinds of stories are the ones going on
| shooting sprees or rioting because they didn't get that
| raise or someone was mean to them on social media.
|
| We do have evidence, it just isn't organized into a
| formal longitudinal study for you. Here's the thing. It
| is possible for people to discuss an idea and even draw
| conclusions of efficacy without a longitudinal study.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| That is a more apt response than I could muster and
| encapsulates my thoughts on the matter.
|
| I feel like everywhere today we are beset with scientism.
| As if defending your own position is unnecessary as long
| as you can call into question the rigor of your
| opponent's. History has taught us well the value of myth
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It's not contrarian...there's simply no evidence either
| way, that's all I'm saying. For every anecdote...
|
| This isn't dueling anecdotes, it is the application of
| common sense and reason. You're taking a contrarian
| position against that, and lack of evidence (if that is
| indeed the case) doesn't create an "anything goes"
| situation where that take is on even footing with what
| you're arguing against.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| What you call "intuitive" I call "not at all obvious or
| even remotely expected". There's simply no evidence
| either way that can't be contradicted by opposing
| anecdotes. That's really all I'm saying. It's not related
| to The McNamara Fallacy at all, because there's no
| obvious observation that supports the initial notion. It
| simply isn't common sense, even if you want it to be.
| iinnPP wrote:
| I think you can prove his point to a degree if you take
| the dog example. Specifically when said child doesn't
| already own a dog.
|
| They could use the knowledge to either not get into the
| situation entirely or to embrace the situation
| regardless.
|
| The former will always result in less trauma over time.
| Unless I am missing something. The latter is open to
| debate.
|
| Thinking like this is regards to past relationships, I
| have prevented a lot of self trauma through experience
| with trauma.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Your assertion is that reading or hearing about life
| experiences does not prepare a person for a similar life
| experience.
|
| This is absurd on its face. I'm sorry I don't have a
| journal article to substantiate my claim.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Pretty obvious strawman. I'm saying I'm skeptical that
| kids who've been told scary stories actually handle real-
| life trauma better than kids who weren't told scary
| stories.
| tragictrash wrote:
| Unapologetically, no
| ubercore wrote:
| Do you have a source to claim the opposite?
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Of course not. I'm simply saying that I'm very skeptical
| of the claim and would bet actual money that the opposite
| (or null result) was actually true.
| shiryel wrote:
| I don't know how much scientific is the references on
| this article [1], but it's a good read about the topic
|
| [1] - http://web.archive.org/web/20190423155359/https://m
| edium.com...
| smaddox wrote:
| I don't know if there are any controlled studies, but
| there's plenty of informal evidence that naive people
| cope poorly with traumatic events. Resilience is a
| product (though admittedly not a guaranteed product) of
| experience.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Life experience, yes. Scary stories told to
| children...that's what I'm very skeptical of.
| iinnPP wrote:
| The story in full will contain pieces of information that
| would help a child avoid said trauma entirely.
|
| Don't go into the random abandoned house alone.
| diehunde wrote:
| I'm actually with you on this. I've been reading articles
| about the trauma the war and displacement are causing
| Ukrainian children. I remember one mentioning older kids
| who knew about war already (because of stories or TV) had
| practically the same behavioral symptoms as younger kids
| who didn't understand what was happening. And this came
| from psychologists assessing hundreds if not thousands of
| kids.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Stories create plans and set expectations.
|
| Take the "story" of "if we get separated at the mall, meet
| at the fountain and wait there until we all arrive."
|
| That's a story. You can imagine how it goes.
|
| 1. Imagine getting lost. Oh no, oh dear, sweaty palms! But
| hey, I'm not actually lost. No need to panic. Ok, now what?
|
| 2. I should actively work to remember the path back to the
| fountain.
|
| Now, when your five-year-old brain realizes you got
| separated from daddy, you're not FREAKING OUT you're
| backtracking to the fountain and thumb-twiddling.
|
| Your turn - all you have to do is come up with an edge case
| ("I'm sure there are some kids that'd forget where the
| fountain was") and pretend that "some" is statistically
| more relevant than the idea that making a plan makes a
| positive difference.
| tragictrash wrote:
| Stories definitely do help kids and adults process trauma.
|
| I'm not going to go searching for it because you can cherry
| pick anything off the internet, but it's well documented
| that scary stories in a safe space assist children with
| processing traumatic events.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| It's not well documented. It is simply assumed by adults
| who likely don't know whether it's true or not.
| fsloth wrote:
| I was generally chasing the thought that reading to your
| kids is always good for them. Even scary stories, as long
| as they are don't cause too much anxiety.
|
| By trauma I was not implying "the worst thing that can
| happen to a person" - just bad things in general which will
| happen anyway. From my personal experience strategies and
| coping mechanisms inspired by stories may provide true
| insights and help in formulating actionable strategies in
| novel situations. But I can't _prove it_ as other pointed
| out.
|
| My intent was not to claim terrifying stories will
| inoculate a person from terror, despair, loss or anguish.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Quite a lot of adult mental illness can be attributed to being
| overly sheltered as a child... your brain wires itself to
| expect the environment it grew up in and when the adult world
| is substantially different the result is often mental illness.
| billfruit wrote:
| Another one might be "Lord of the Flies", it really has spine
| chilling moments.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I once asked my dad why people who committed treason against
| the king in medieval times were treated so cruelly.
|
| He said that live was nasty, brutish and short in those days,
| and to make an impact and a deterrence the king had to be over
| the top cruel.
|
| I don't know how true that is, as I suspect there's a large
| element of people just liking to be cruel if they have the
| opportunity.
|
| I have a couple books on the cruelties done by armies in WW2,
| and in the American west, and could not finish reading them.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| This is only true if the young ones in question are in a
| psychologically safe and emotionally supportive environment.
|
| I read things as a young child, without having the support to
| talk and parse them out, and additionally on top of the chaotic
| environment I was already in, where reading things like Animal
| Farm, or, specifically in my case, being introduced to the
| concept of destructive extinction events in books, movies, and
| magazines caused much trauma. I had a year where I didn't sleep
| well, until I could finally convince myself that aliens weren't
| going to get me in the shower, and that a giant meteor wasn't
| going to collide with earth any time soon (yet, at least).
| r00fus wrote:
| I remember clearly as a kid scrubbing my head furiously for
| weeks after a local spelunking adventure where the guide
| jokingly told me that, after a stalactite dripped on me
| repeatedly, that a stalagmite would grow from my head.
|
| As a kid with a lot of anxieties (nuclear holocaust,
| overpopulation, etc) I really didn't need to be growing
| stalagmites from my head.
|
| Up to about seven years old, kids take things very literally.
| Understanding metaphorical speech comes only after that
| period, and not everyone fully understands even as an adult.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I was 11 when I read _All Quiet on the Western Front_ and
| maybe 13 when I read _Innocent Erendira_. I don't remember
| talking to anyone about these, though I did feel terrible for
| a few days after. Honestly, no lasting effects.
|
| This is probably the same as the fact that 70% of soldiers
| experiencing combat stress do not get PTSD and 30%
| experiencing severe combat stress don't either. This means
| human variability is significant.
|
| So it's a question of whether you want to roll the dice. I
| think I'll want to permit the autonomy for my children but
| it's entirely possible they'll be in the susceptible set and
| be damaged.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Do you have any evidence that there is a susceptible set?
| Books especially fiction come with two fundamental safety
| features. Firstly the book never subjects itself upon its
| reader. The reader is always in absolute control. Secondly
| the fundamental unreality of the setting allows one to
| dismiss it.
|
| I recall observing with morbid curiosity a video of someone
| losing their life to a terrorist many years ago thinking it
| would be no different than a gory movie. I was very very
| wrong. It isn't the realism of the simulation that matters
| its the inability to dismiss what one knows is in fact
| real.
| boringg wrote:
| Should also lump in Metamorphosis into this category of bleak
| but fascinating stories.
| [deleted]
| nsomaru wrote:
| Small nitpick, cynical old Benjamin was a donkey not a goat.
|
| "He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies
| off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies."
| hemloc_io wrote:
| Yep read animal farm in middle school and it was dope. (Along
| with Brave New World + Naked lunch which IMO is a bit racier)
|
| One of my favorite things about the internet when I was younger
| was that it let me find books I couldn't get without begging my
| parents haha.
|
| Adults really underestimate how resilient kids are, and how
| much media isn't able to approximate the real world (yet).
| Modern ppl really don't realize how dark lots of older child
| stories are, like the brother's grimm etc, and that kids used
| to be taken to executions.
|
| EDIT: over -> under.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| I think you mean they underestimate how resilient kids are.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| Fixed thanks :)
| irrational wrote:
| Reminds me of all the adults freaking out about kids being
| traumatized by wearing masks. Kids don't care. For them it was
| like putting on pants. Not a big deal unless the adults around
| them make it into a big deal.
| verisimi wrote:
| > However I disagree with claims that these kind of works
| 'traumatize' young readers.
|
| Yes, the trauma occurs when you realise how misled you were
| about the nature of reality, that you were sold a lie.
| 6510 wrote:
| I'm still traumatized by animal farm.
| AlphaOne1 wrote:
| I wonder if there is a difference between oral stories and
| movies. My kids started to cry while watching the Little
| Dinosaur (ages 5 and under) several months ago. I recently
| bought a copy of the uncensored Brother Grim stories. Taking
| into account how sensitive they have been in the past with G
| rated cartoons, I decided I would edit the stories in real time
| (leaving out words like 'blood') and sometimes modify the
| ending slightly. Recently, I stopped editing the stories. My
| kids still love the stories and ask me to read them more right
| before bed time. They even asked me to re-read them Hansel and
| Gretel, which is quite a brutal tale in my opinion. Show them a
| single clip of a 'sad/scary' cartoon and they still freak out
| to this day; however.
|
| I think there is something to be said about Disney cartoons use
| of music and visual images that sort of forces viewers into a
| certain emotional mindset. Oral stories/books on the other hand
| leave it up to the imagination of the listener to conger up the
| emotions and images. Not sure if this makes sense, but at least
| in the case of my kids it does.
| [deleted]
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