RE:
POSTED BY: Succatash
UPDATED: Thursday, February 26, 2004 05:36
VIEWED: 26788
PAGE 5 of 6
Quote:
Originally posted by kalathena:
Thank you, David! I get sooooo tired of how body-phobic most people are in the US. As a parent myself, I could care less what body parts my 6-year-old sees. What those body parts are *doing* is another matter entirely. No, I'm not going to let him watch sex acts, but I refuse to make a big deal about him seeing the occassional body part. If you don't make a big deal about it, then it becomes a non-issue.
Absolutely - straight out of the womb we're confronted with breasts. It seems somewhat farcical that they're fine till 2 years old, then covered up for 16 years because they're morally wrong... :)
(I'm sure I have better points to make, but phneh
)
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HAHAHA Funniest thread ever!
Let's see... man-> unexpected beast-> eyes a poppin'!
Breasts are such a big deal with American TV viewers. You know, the rest of us have loads of sex on TV while in the U.S you go on and on and on about sex in American TV. Well, there ain't any! Except perhaps Janet Jackson and now this.
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality - Oscar Wilde.
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Pudor:
I absolutely do not think that your views are in the minority. As a 14 year old once (might have been twice, I am not quite sure, this karmanic thing is driving me crazy), I am pretty darn sure that I thought I could rule the world when I first came out of my "I am the center of the universe" phase back even a few years back. I felt sure that I had much more gusto, feeling, passion, and just plain common sense then those folks who were quite apparently (at least to me) born 35+ years old and a bunch of old asses.
But I think you might be in the right, I should in fact expose my 4-8 years old to as much crap, violence, random shooting, brains and guts plopping all over the place, and raw sex act as much as possible. And then just hold a two hour marathon discussion on what the carnage that they have just witnessed. I am sure that will toughen them up for the real world.
Oh wait! Maybe I can raise real human beings to think critically by providing them with a stable platform of family bond and trust to build ideas and morals off from. And it would be a better world if we build it up one piece at a time instead of stabbing it right into their little brain. An absolutely crazy perception that I, and I assure you, would never have taken had I not fell unluckily the victim of twice pregnancy. What a curse of a responsibility!
Look, nowadays, we spend most of our adult life worrying, philosophising, planning crap that absolutely makes no sense and gets us no where. At the end of it all, if we are lucky, we get to rot slowly in a wooden box. Let the kids be kids until they are ready for rational thought and discussion. Until then, keep the carnage out of the heads.
I am not worried about sex, violence, or ideas. I watch Matrix, Tarantino, & porno and enjoy them in the proper settings. Just not with my kids, they get their own programming until they are ready to talk about those things and absorb them.
Maybe you are ready, but let the other kids be kids. There's always time for adulthood. Plenty of lengthy and drudgery time.
Quote:
Originally posted by pudor:Quote:
I think though, that as a 14-year-old, you may be somewhat biased in your opinion of what 14-year-olds should do.
I know my view will be somewhat in the minority, but I disagree - I think it's far more likely that the views of a parent are skewed than the view of the actual 14 year old in question. Parents trick themselves into imposing an ultra-flawed or an ultra-innocent version of themselves onto their children. At the age of 14, however, we are often at our most critical and self-aware.
If you want to find out how someone feels about something, or how it affects them, you talk to them first, and those around them later. How comes the debate surrounding minors and what they can and can not see never involves any dialogue with anyone under the age of 25?
As a society, we need to get a grip on this delusion that it's even remotely possible to hide the real world from children - or that it's preferential to do so. Having parents or a parent who can be looked up to and respected, and who goes about their life with a decent amount of conviction and decency, will do a far greater good to a child's moral sense than blindfolding them whenever breasts seem imminent ;)
My two (euro) cents :)
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Before I answer this stuff I should probably point out that I'm not a 'kid' - at least not by my definition - I'm 20 years old on the 9th of March. Having said this, I'm not a parent either, and so I would expect a fair response to my points to be along the lines of "wait until you have children, then you'll see".
On the other hand - and this is a point I was trying to make earlier - it's not necessarily important that you go through a certain experience in order to understand it. It seems to be a commonplace argument, but it doesn't really hold water with me. It gives you a different *perspective*, yes. But the experience of raising a child is only one part of the argument - we are talking also about the experience of growing up itself.
So, I would suggest that the 'blinkered view' a 14 year old apparently has is equally as blinkered as that a parent has. I know from talking to my parents that their image of me is probably quite different from my own image of who I am, and different again from the image my friends, or my girlfriend, has of me. The same applied when I was 14, without a doubt.
So I'm basically just making a disclaimer, so that you know I've taken the fact that I'm not a parent on board. I know I might feel differently about these things when I am one, but I hope I consider all these other viewpoints at that point too.
Quote:
Originally posted by Jasonzzz:
Pudor:
But I think you might be in the right, I should in fact expose my 4-8 years old to as much crap, violence, random shooting, brains and guts plopping all over the place, and raw sex act as much as possible. And then just hold a two hour marathon discussion on what the carnage that they have just witnessed. I am sure that will toughen them up for the real world.
Surely an over-reaction? I am in no way suggesting that we need to toughen the next generation up for the real world. In fact, the point I'm far more interested in making is that we need to make sure our children recognise the boundaries between reality and fiction. It is easier to do this with books, etc, than with TV (we know TV can have a profound impact on anyone, otherwise we'd all be watching FOX-produced reality TV all day), but this gives us all the more reason to emphasise that line. Removing, or limiting, censorship, gives us that possibility. Putting off the day when children see breasts / violence / swearing (bearing in mind they will probably get access to these things independently before they are particularly old) will only increase their importance, and bring them to the forefront of the child's mind.
What I would consider to be more important is backing up the message that these things are acceptable in fiction / reprehensible in real life (in the case of violence at least) by positive examples by parents. At the risk of recieving flame after flame, surely you can appreciate that daddy picking up a gun and going off shooting, or taking his 13-year-old son to a boxing match, etc, is far more likely to encourage a child to behave violently than seeing the first 15 mins of Saving Private Ryan.
Quote:
Oh wait! Maybe I can raise real human beings to think critically by providing them with a stable platform of family bond and trust to build ideas and morals off from. And it would be a better world if we build it up one piece at a time instead of stabbing it right into their little brain. An absolutely crazy perception that I, and I assure you, would never have taken had I not fell unluckily the victim of twice pregnancy. What a curse of a responsibility!
Obviously I agree with you completely - Rome was not built in a day, etc. But I am not suggesting, as noted above, that a marathon session of violence and vice is at all sensible. All I am suggesting, however, is that allowing children to find out about these things when they start wanting to know, rather than covering up until you're ready to talk to them about it, doesn't make sense. Neither do arbitary government- or MPAA-imposed restrictions on who can see whi
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Well... I couldn't have said it better about the entire thing myself. What you've said is exactly what I feel and do. The world is out there and there's no stopping it. I do however limit my kids exposure to what it is - they do get a censored view. There are plenty to talk about and exposing them to from books and what movies we do let them watch. There are plenty enough violence on Disney and other Kid type movies - check out the first 5 minutes of Brother Bear, Ice Age, and the entire Harry Potter 2 movie. There are plenty to talk with them just from those things, death, violence, trust, betrayal, struggles, wants, needs, family, protection, on and on. We watch the same movies over and over again - kids seem to never get worn out either - and bring up a new thing each time.
Quote:
Originally posted by pudor:
Before I answer this stuff I should probably point out that I'm not a 'kid' - at least not by my definition - I'm 20 years old on the 9th of March. Having said this, I'm not a parent either, and so I would expect a fair response to my points to be along the lines of "wait until you have children, then you'll see".
... ... ...
[edit: whoa! massive post. sorry!]
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Quote:
The world is out there and there's no stopping it. I do however limit my kids exposure to what it is - they do get a censored view.
I agree with this. I definitely censor what my son watches. For one thing, I don't see the need for him to watch advertizing. As an autistic, it's difficult enough for him to grasp that TV is not real so adding ads to the mix would just confuse him more. So it's either on PBS or on a video or dvd.
What bothers me are parents who don't care how much violence children are exposed to, but they shriek at the top of their lungs if they see ANYTHING that resembles a body part. I just think that making a big deal about one completely non-sexual breast exposure is encouraging poor body image in our children.
--Kala
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Here's something I use a lot if I can't pre-screen myself. I go to:
http://www.screenit.com
for most part, they don't just rate a movie as acceptable to "kids 12-18". But have about 16-20 different categories of things and provide details & justifications on why it was rated in those categories... I find it to be a useful too to quickly find out whether a movie that might be targeted at a younger audience but have content that I might disagree with. For example:
Look at the recently released "Peter Pan" movie, under the "Bad attitude" section:
http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/peter_pan.html#ba
I might base on decision to not take my kids to see this movie, or I might consider that the movie taken as a whole is okay and use these small parts to demonstrate to them what "bad attitude" is and talk with them about why those people did those behaviours. Depends on whether my kids are ready to think about these things and whether the rest of the movie holds up.
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I wonder where they would put "The Passion of Christ" under their categories. I don't see where all the controversy except that it is extremely violent (and I don't care to argue about it either) but many critics said it should have been rated NC-17 rather than R.
"The Passion of Christ" was even bloodier than the firt "Evil Dead"!
Oh, and play Cantr II at www.cantr.net.
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