PACIFIST GUIDANCE (PG):
WHAT'S TOO VIOLENT FOR KIDS?

An Activist Dialogue

Here comes International YouthPeace Week again, along with WRL's annual campaign against violent toys and playthings for children; yet--would you believe it?--we don't all agree about which toys'n'things we're against. So we're having another dialogue in the NVA's series of occasional discussions posing questions that are "controversial even within the community of nonviolent activists," as we wrote in our introduction to the series (March-April). Reminder: This is the NVA feature that requires your active participation. Join the fun; let us know where you put your foot down when it comes to kids and what they play with and see.
         PART ONE: "When the T-Rex Ate the Guy" by Murray Rosenblith
         PART TWO: Severed Body Parts and Buckets of Blood by Judith Mahoney Pasternak

"When the T-Rex Ate the Guy"
By Murray Rosenblith

MY BROTHER-IN-LAW and my nephews, aged nine and 12, were visiting us the weekend that The Lost World opened. The boys--who had been waiting for the event for weeks--spent the first night of their visit figuring out where they had the best chance to catch the opening show. My son Elijah, going on six, was not going to be left out of the expedition; he only recently started enjoying movies and is, of course, fascinated by dinosaurs.

My wife Carol and I were initially a little hesitant to let him go. The reviews had pointed out that, while a lot more people got eaten in The Lost World than in Jurassic Park, there was only one instance where someone was actually consumed on screen. We talked to Eli about the movie; we told him it was going to be very noisy, the dinosaurs were going to be big and scary, and they were going to eat people. Eli said that was okay because he knew there weren't really any dinosaurs around today. My brother-in-law assured us that if Eli got upset he'd take him out of the theater. Carol and I looked at each other, shrugged and said all right, though if it had been a movie where people were killing each other, we might have decided otherwise.

We were very curious as to how Eli would react to all that mayhem, and as soon as they got back from the movie, we asked him if he had liked it. He told us it was great. We asked what his favorite part was, and he broke into a big smile and said, "The part where the T. Rexes eat that guy!"

What have we done wrong?

For Carol and me, being parents has largely meant raising our children in a way that is consistent with our politics and our moral beliefs. We don't think of ourselves as being very different from other parents who are involved and concerned with their children's lives. While we live in a racially and socially mixed area and are both political activists, we do not follow an "alternative" lifestyle, so I doubt that the environment in our household is very different than most others. Like many parents, we often make up our parenting as we go along.

Eli is six and our other son and daughter, Rubin and Audrey, are almost three. We have not had to confront any of the major questions yet in choosing to select what our children see or do. We have decided that we will not buy them any toy weapons, and we ask that they not be given as gifts. But it has never occurred to us to forbid them to watch a particular movie or show, mostly because no occasion to do so has yet come up. They haven't been exposed to much media violence because we don't watch a lot of TV and we don't go to blood-and-guts movies. Eli doesn't play with,and has never asked for,action figures and has never shown any interest in commercial children's shows on television. When the kids watch TV, they almost exclusively tune in to PBS for children's fare like Sesame Street and Barney; the only commercial television shows they've ever watched and liked are Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. (One of Rubin's first intelligible phrases when he started talking was "Daily Double.") Ad they're hooked on the grand old musicals; if you ask them what their favorite movie is, their current answer is Singing In the Rain. (Eli can do all the songs).

When I was a child, I had more toy guns and weapons than anyone else in the neighborhood. My toy chest resembled the arsenal of an army battalion; I even had a tank! (Well, a cardboard tank.) I loved war movies and was a big John Wayne fan. As I grew up, I came to distinguish between real violence and fantasy. I reject and detest the former and have only a passing interest in the latter, though I still occasionally watch "action" movies and TV shows like NYPD Blue.

There are a lot of ugly things in the world, some real, some not. We learn how to deal with them. We hope our children will grow up to act creatively when confronted by violence. As they grow, we want them to understand that it exists in many forms.

We also want them to be able to distinguish between reality and fantasy. I believe that we all have inner demons and "politically incorrect" thoughts, no matter how principled we may be as pacifists. It's our ability to separate action from thought that dictates our ability to live nonviolently. Since I've never been able to figure out when one becomes capable of considering the alternative to violence, for now Carol and I keep an eye on our children to see how they react to such things, but let them make choices.

So far, they seem to have decided that they don't like violent media, so I guess we're lucky. But things do change; Eli liked The Lost World. Like most of our other parenting decisions, I think we'll have to figure out this issue on a case-by-case basis. We'll see what happens if and when they start asking for Friday The Thirteenth.         

[Nonviolent Activist Index]

September-October 1997: Indonesia Unraveling Disarmament: What's the Agenda? "When the T-Rex Ate the Guy" Severed Body Parts and Buckets of Blood Activist News Activist Review: Pushy Priests

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