Good Parents Wait a Few Decades For a ‘Thanks, Dad!’
by Tom Shillue
There is a public service announcement that runs on TV from time to time, I can’t remember what organization it is for, but it goes like this:
A man sits in his easy chair reading the paper. His tween-age daughter comes downstairs in a skimpy outfit and tries to walk out the door. The father says sternly, “Young lady–you’re not going out dressed like that. Get back upstairs and change your clothes.”
“Dad!” she says, then angrily heads back upstairs to change.
Next, we see her dressed more conservatively, walking out the door. She still looks angry, but turns suddenly before going out. “Thanks, Dad!” she says.
Cut to the dad smiling as the voiceover intones: “Be firm with your children. They will appreciate it.”
Please. In real life, the girl does not say, “Thanks, Dad!” in the doorway.
I like the message of that PSA, but it’s not realistic. I don’t buy the simple, happy resolution.
When I was 13, the movie “Bonnie and Clyde” was aired for the first time on TV. The broadcast was promoted with a warning: “Violence may not be suitable for younger viewers.” Of course, I desperately wanted to watch it. My parents wouldn’t let me. I pleaded with them.
“I can handle it!” I protested.
But it wasn’t the guns and blood that my parents objected to. It was the fact that it glorified a life of crime. In this movie the bad guys were the heroes.
“But I’m thirteen!”
They didn’t relent. I was not allowed to watch “Bonnie and Clyde.” I was furious. I swore I would never forgive them.
O.K. Never is a long time. I forgave them; it just took about thirty years.
This is why that father/daughter public service announcement bugs me. It claims that parents can expect to see the results of their tough decisions right away. It’s not that easy. Sometimes it takes decades.
Now I understand why my parents wouldn’t let me watch “Bonnie and Clyde.” They didn’t like the messages of these new, morally ambiguous Hollywood films that were all the rage at the time. Luckily, they didn’t have to police my TV watching that often. In most of what was available on TV, it was easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
I was thinking about this as I read this interview with Disney executive Gary Marsh in The Hollywood Reporter. (Note: I think Gary Marsh is one of the good TV executives. He is responsible for creating fairly wholesome stuff like “That’s So Raven” and “High School Musical”) But I found this exchange interesting:
THR: What did you watch as a kid?
Marsh: At the risk of dating myself, I really liked “Dennis the Menace” and “The Rifleman.” What’s frightening is “The Rifleman” passed for appropriate television for kids.
THR: You’re worried about guns? I saw “Aaron Stone” and that was much more violent than anything on “The Rifleman.”
Marsh: I don’t think that’s true. There’s a pretty big difference between fantasy adventure and gun violence.
The funny thing is that Gary Marsh didn’t as much date himself as reveal his geographic location. His statement had the ring of someone who has spent too much time living in the vicinity of zip code 90210.
Gary Marsh reduces “The Rifleman,” a show about family, honesty, law and order, justice, and all that other good stuff, to simply “gun violence.” This coming from the head of a new cable network for adolescent boys! Doesn’t he remember we tuned in to “The Rifleman” because of the rapid-fire gunplay in the opening sequence, but we stuck around for the good lessons, like Lucas McCain telling his son, “A man doesn’t run from a fight, Mark, but that doesn’t mean you go looking to run to one!”
Why is it “frightening” that a show like this “passed for appropriate television for kids”?
My parents didn’t make that mistake. They allowed me to watch “The Rifleman,” but not “Bonnie and Clyde.” As a result they were willing to make their son very angry and didn’t expect a “Thanks, Dad!” in return.
Here’s the thing. My parents might have been wrong. By the time I was thirteen, I probably was ready to watch “Bonnie and Clyde” on TV. I had been raised on enough “Rifleman,” “Gunsmoke,” “Batman,” “Bonanza,” and “Dragnet” to know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. I was ready to sit through a few hours of moral ambiguity, and come out all right. But they didn’t want to take any chances. And who can blame them for that? Not me. Even if it took thirty years.
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"He is responsible for creating fairly wholesome stuff like “That’s So Raven” and “High School Musical”"
Big Hollywood: That Zac Effron is So Dreamy
I am older than you are. My parents wouldn't let me see "Psycho" or "On the Beach." I stomped and stormed, but it was simply not going to happen. I promised them that I wouldn't try to sneak out and see them, and to this day I have not seen either movie. I'm just not interested.
The problem often is that PG-13 movies are so raunchy that they really should be R-rated. The rating system that Hollywood uses simply doesn't work well.
Good article. I agree with your points whole-heartedly.
And I like the fact that the Hollywood Reporter guy tried to call him on the gun comment.
My friends wanted me to buy the tickets at the theatre to see The Omen (at 15 I could pass for 18); my parents forbid it, giving me a gracious way out—have still not see The Omen—-I thanked them then, and I thank them now.
And Tom, you don't look like you are in your forties.
Morally ambiguous doesn't bother me much. Morally inverted that's sold as morally virtuous bothers me tremendously.
The two movies that I remember giving parents fits when I was a child were, The Warriors, and Monty Python & The Holy Grail.
I think The Warriors was removed from the local affiliate TV station and I wound up watching as much as I could see from the grainy network signal from the next state over. Viewing the movie today, its hard to believe that such a corny movie had anyone worried at all.
I lucked out with Holy Grail… A neighbor took me to see it at the theater.
Is it too much to ask for a little bit of common sense here, if you fall in love with the characters the last thing you want is for them to get shot full of holes, watching the movie to its ultimate end will leave any halfwit viewer aware of the cost of crime. I mean you want them to stop being criminals for f's sake, there compulsive criminality is deplorable. I really get a kick out of some of my fellow conservatives arguing for the 2nd amendment and against the "nanny state" then crying like a wounded dove over the conflicting human emotions B&C create in the viewer. Heres a big LOL for you. Hey lets just throw all the movies out that don't star Roy Rogers and Trigger. Unreal. Bunch of sissies. Oh and while I'm posting Juno a top conservative movie? ok…
My parents took me to see "Jaws" in the theatre when I was 7. I guarantee I didn't ask to go– maybe they couldn't get babysitting, I don't know. That movie scared the crap out of me. I literally took a flying leap into my bed for years because of the irrational fear that a shark was under my bed. (I didn't say I was a child genius).
I think you've got it backwards. Most conservatives don't have a problem with whatever they put in movies, they just complain about the stupid or gratuitous use of violence or sex.
Liberals are the ones who whine about movies making people "do" things. It's the liberals, not the conservatives, who want guns taken out of movies (ET), and smoking removed (like the UK did to the Looney Toons), and racist words removed from old movies (the Shining).
Seven may have been too early for Jaws, but I really am not a fan of people trying to shield their kids from everything bad in movies. When kids get old enough to deal with more adult issues, I think it's pretty healthy to let them see these kinds of movies and explain to them how to deal with those situtations.
Take the idea of gun violence for example, I would rather my kids saw the Rifleman and had me to explain that guns aren't toys and that you don't settle your disputes with guns, than hope they pick this up when they run across their first gun.
(continued)
That said, I am sympathetic to the idea that violence is so pervasive on television that it drowns out any effort to tell your kids that violence is not the answer. (Not to mention, from a movie buff perspective, guns are slowly losing all meaning because they're so pervasive.) Seriously, have you ever stopped to realize how pervasive guns really are in our movies? (Big fan of guns, so that's not my point). One day, my grandmother said she wanted to see a movie, but one without guns in it. I had a really tough time finding such a movie. Even commedies eventually get around to using guns.
Sir I try not to brush in broad strokes and this nanny affliction crosses both sides of the spectrum hence the use of the word "some." I am all to aware of Britain's video nasties era, head butts being removed from Mulan etc(and there is a certain part of our coalition that adores those actions make no mistake) … That's not the topic at hand, I am concerned with people who are afraid to ponder moral quandaries, in other words B&C are likable people but because they do despicable things Hollywood must want us to follow suit else why make then like-able. Kids aint watching B&C and deciding to dope up or have babies, (pretty sure we can leave most of these cultural erosions at the feet of television,) for television unlike great cinema asks us not to ponder moral questions or debate the ethics of a character, it instead has us tune in absorb and copy. This kind of blatant attack against thoughtful cinema should not be a goal of Big Hollywood.
I'd take Vanessa Hudgens (if it wasn't for that whole restraining order misunderstanding).
Tom,
This essay should be read twice, slowly, by everyone who cares about our popular culture.
In your two question interview excerpt is written the madness of "post-modern" philosophy and psychology.
Gary Marsh can't see his illogic because "post-modern" culture is purposely illogical.
He has been taught this nonsense, and heard it from his peers, probably most of his adult life.
When we can't think straight, we are pushovers.
Thanks for spotlighting the insanity.
So, let's unpack some assumptions.
Gary Marsh is ashamed to admit he watched "The Rifleman" as a kid, because it was so violent. Mr. Marsh believes violent shows are bad, because they desensitize people to violence.
Does this mean that Gary Marsh is a violent, desensitized person?
No?
Well then doesn't his own concern about violence kind of disprove the point about "The Rifleman" being too violent?
"there compulsive criminality is deplorable"
Where? I think compulsive criminality is universally deplorable, not just in one location. (And I don't know if you're talking about Hollywood or Chicago.)
For liberals, desensitization to violence is always something that happens to other people. The fact that it has not happened to them personally detracts nothing from the possibility of its happening to others.
My parents took us (my older sister and I) to see Bonnie & Clyde when I was about 10 or so. I don't know why! My mom forbade us to watch "Combat" on TV, and didn't let us play with toy guns (we played with the toy guns our friends had.)
The movie had zero effect on me, since I did what I often did when I was a kid and went to the movies in the evening: fell asleep after I ate all my candy. I did wake before the end and saw the bloody shooting. I didn't see the movie again until many years later, but always wondered what the fuss was about. The bad guys got shot in the end. Crime doesn't pay, even if you're pretty. I never felt any kind of empathy with B&C.
Now Butch Cassidy and Sundance, on the other hand…
My parents did not rely on television or movies to open dialogues. They were more direct. Take guns for instance. Dad took my brothers and me out the firing range and taught us about gun safety and how to shoot. a gun We were taught that the only reason to use a gun was for hunting for food. At the same time, told us to never point a gun at anyone unless you were ready to kill them. I guess we were fairly obedient children because we never did and since we had held a gun and shot it, there was also no great mystique about shooting a gun. Of course we were not constantly surrounded by violence the way kids are today.
Sir D.
"Blatant attack against thoughtful cinema"? I am well aware that B&C is a very good film. Read my post again. You didn't understand it.
When I came upon that statement in the Gary Marsh interview, I was thinking the same thing. Good to know I'm not the only one that thinks that way. Thanks, Tom.
We were allowed to play with toy guns… if we didn't point them at each other.
I got my first real gun at the age of 12… I didn't point that at anyone either.
As a kid I grew up watching the Dirty Harry movies at the drive in and anything else you can think of. I didn't really understand most of it, but at least Dad was entertained. He had me and my siblings on weekends and there wasn't much else to do. We saw the Omen. Not a good idea to take a four year old (my sister) to see that by the way. My mom use to drop us off at the the theater downtown, the kind with the balcony and red velvet curtain that swept open at the beginning of the move. Double feature vampire movies were big, such as House of dark Shadows. My parents didn't give a lot of thought to our viewing habits and we all seemed to turn out okay…at least no mass murderers, vampires or vigilanti cops amongst the four of us.
Good point about being willing to wait to thanked.
I don't mind shows with violence and generally don't restrict my kids much (they're pretty much all teens now) although they have been forbidden to watch Kill Bill. I do mind shows with sex… and I know that's the sort of classic disconnect between European and USian morality… or so I'm often told. But it's easy to teach your kid good rules about gun use (I took gun safety from the American Legion the summer after sixth grade) and self defense.
Sex is harder because the damage is less well defined. Wrong messages about sex are wrong messages about relationships. It's not easy to explain to a kid what is a healthy relationship and what is not or what the emotional impact might be, and a big screw up can impact a person for their entire life.
But I'm not hung up too much about sex on television either. I just try to pay attention to what they're watching.
The shows that are 100% off-limits in this house are any show about psychics or ghosts that pretend to be real. The Pet Psychic is off limits. Ghost Hunters are off limits.
Reminds me of an observation Mark Twain made on his father. Perhaps I am paraphrasing but he said "When I was 16, I couldn't believe how dumb he was. By the time I was 21, I couldn't believe how much he had learned."
On the Rifleman I was a regular viewer. However I did notice that Chuck Conners had to kill someone every week in between his ranching chores. Never could figure out how Sky King made his money to be helping people in that Beech 18 (and later Cessna 310) – each week – was he a cocaine runner?
Wait…moral ambiguity is bad for a child? Yeah, let's all just believe that the "villains" out there are clear cut and easy to identify and that we are always "right" because we are clearly human and the are…well…something else.
Hiya Des, it's me Gwen!
One of the reasons we decided to homeschool was because our son's school sent a note home informing us that he participated in a game where other boys pretended to shoot him with their fingers. As someone who grew up shooting real things with real guns, I could see my kids becoming people I didn't even want to know if I allowed them to be raised by these robotic strangers.
Bev,
I'm just using guns as an example. I don't advocate relying on television to train kids about guns. Change the example to drugs or prostitution or even liberalism (any of the standard sins).
What I'm saying is that its a bad idea to try to isolate your kids from the unpleasant things presented in movies and television. When the kids get old enough to handle the material, parents should not be afraid to let them see these things, provided the parents are there to help them understand what they're seeing and how to interpret it/understand it/react to it.
Kids will eventually see these things. If the parents haven't already discussed these issued with their kids, that leaves the movie as the only voice in the debate. That's a lot of power to give a movie.
I see the basic point of this article as being that good parents have to put their foot down sometimes, even if it means *gasp* that your child will be angry at you. And that thanks might not ever come. My mother died when I was 25 and dad died when I was 30 and I'm pushing 50 now. At least once a week, I remember something they said or forbade me to do and now that I am middle-aged I see the wisdom of their actions. But it's too late for me to say "Thanks!"
There are far too many parents now who confuse parenting with a popularity contest. Rather than risk their child's ire, they'll agree to anything.
I was not allowed to watch R-rated films as a child. As a result, I went to the library and saw every single old horror movie I could. Wolfman. Dracula. Frankestein. The Invisible Man. Psycho. The Birds. Jaws. And I learned to love them.
However, as I got older, I was still not allowed to see R-rated movies. It didn't stop me. I was seriously in love with cinema, and frankly, the R-rated movies I wanted to see were generally good movies, instead of the obvious crap that I was permitted to see. All it did was teach me that my parents had arbitrary rules set in place as a way to control me.
My mother gave me copy of Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions' to read when I was 13…but wouldn't let me see a movie rated R for language when I was 15. It taught me that she was a hypocrite. She insisted on treating me like I was about 1/4th as smart was I was, and as a result, I ignored ALL of her advice, including the stuff that I would have done well to listen to. All her censorship did was ingrain my issues with authority .
So, if you must censor, do it case by case, and make sense. If you say "because I said so" too often, you children will just phase you out and go through a whole lot of unnecessary unhappiness.
Sir D,
I agree that there is a fringe of the conservative movement that want to see all movies look like Leave it to Beaver. But these few compound dwellers really don't speak for 99.999% of conservsatives and I doubt anyone here is advocating that at all. I think a slightly larger group would like to see less sex, violence and swearing, though few of them are advocating any sort of content restrictions. They just want to see more options.
On the other hand, it is quite common among liberals to argue for content control. They want to see movies stripped of things they consider racist, sexist, pro-smoking, pro-commercialism, pro-violence, and anti-some-religious. If you're talking about being afraid to see moral quandries, these are the people you should be talking to.
The problem with tweens and teens today is that the kids dictate what they will watch and do and the parents simply let them. It's a complete role reversal. It's sad, especially when you see the results of those actions. What is so wrong with parents acting like parents? I see too many parents who choose to be their kids' best friends instead of their parents. That is a serious mistake. BTW, my dad wouldn't let me watch BONNIE & CLYDE either and I turned out okay. I think.
http://the100mostannoyingthings.blogspot.com/
Rent "On the Beach" from Netflix…it's a great movie…better yet, read the book. AWESOME!
I've seen that commercial, or at least one just like it. What the audience didn't see was the girl going upstairs and putting the "conservative" clothes on OVER her sleazy clothes!
I saw Bonnie and Clyde when I was an Air Force wive overseas, 7 months pregnant. I had nightmares for weeks after seeing that film. How anyone could have let a child watch it, I do not understand.
To this day I have not seen anything starring Faye Dunaway or Waren Beatty. Because of this movie, both of them creep me out.
Dear lord, why is it a bad idea to try and isolate your kids for the unpleasant things in movies and television? Isn't it your job to protect them from unpleasant things for as long as possible??
Some hand wringer did chart the number of violent acts in The A-Team back then. It was nonsense back then as it is now to single out something as innocent as The A-Team as harmful to kids. One of the highlights of my week back then was to discuss the latest exploits of Hannibal and crew with my ultra-conservative Southern Baptist pastor. He didn't approve of dancing but he got the joke when it came to The A-Team.
I recently got the first season on DVD, and it's amazing what great conservative, pro-American messages were in that show.
The only point I was trying to make is that it's up the parents to make sure what the kids were watching is age appropriate. I wasn't old enough to understand that "Jaws" was fake. I'm pro-gun but I think that kids also need parental guidance when they watch films that show any kind of gun use. Video games kind of cross over into this territory too. Kids see guns so much they're desensitized to the serious nature of the weapons. Too much sex on TV too early has the same effect, at least in my opinion. I believe the point the author of this post was trying to make is that no matter what, parental involvement is key. We're their parents, not their friends.
Hold on… I'm not talking about lining them up at age four and showing them Trainspotting.
What I'm saying is that you can't isolate your kids from the rest of the world. The more they're allowed to roam free, the more likely they are to start running into things like sex, drugs and violence. My point is that, when they reach that point where they are going to start running into these things ("when the kids get old enough to handle the material") it is better to give them the freedom to encounter these things in movies, under your supervision, so that you can talk to them about the issue. I think it's a lot more dangerous to assume that they aren't seeing these things and let the movies become the de facto teachers.
Sir D,
I agree that a very small number of conservatives would like to see all movies made at the level of Leave it to Beaver. But they don't speak for the other 99.99999% of us. I also agree that a larger group of conservatives complain about sex, violence, swearing in modern movies. But, these conservatives aren't advocating content limitation, they're simply asking for an alternative. I don't see them as being afraid of any moral quandries.
On the other hand, a significant portion of the liberal population routinely advocate content limitations. They want content they consider racists, anti-homosexual, anti-certain-religions, sexist, pro-consumerist, pro-smoking, pro-gun, and violent removed from movies. If you're talking about people who are afraid to deal with moral quandries, there are your suspects.
Also, as for Tom's article, I don't see him advocating any sort of attack on B&C. He's just saying that his parents didn't want him watching it as a child. He never said that kids should be kept from watching it.
I'm hardly wringing my hands over it, and I agree that it was innocent enough, or not intentionally meant to do any such harm, but I still wonder. I do remember that another show of the same period, Police Squad, was deemed by some "deemers" (or whatever they were called) to be the most violent show on TV. It was supposedly cancelled because of that. That was the excuse they gave, anyway. Of course that was silly because it was satire, but the A-Team wasn't. Not to little kids, anyway. My case in point: "Mr. T". To little kids, he was real.
I agree about the pro-American, conservative, "eat your vegetables" messages the show conveyed, and I don't mean to diss Steven Cannel. I like a lot of his other stuff, and I'd definitely trust him to watch my back in a death match with Uber-Liberal Nazi Zombies.
Encountering them in real life is much much better than in the movies because real life is real.
If your kids live like normal people do, they have been exposed to the problems that real people have at whatever level they are aware according to their age. They have neighbors and family friends and family that are older and get into trouble and they are not unaware of what is going on around them unless everyone is excessively careful to keep them in the dark.
The problem with movies and television is that there are stealth messages in it… messages like "fathers are childish idiots/mothers are wise and responsible" and if you've ever watched The Proud Family you'll see why "educational" television or anything with supposed good messages for kids was on my "beware" list. When my son was 5 he got done watching a show on PBS with multi-cultural puppets (which was usually fine) but they had an episode about racism and he thought what it meant was that he wasn't supposed to like kids that looked different. The exact opposite of what they intended and I was *pissed* about the damage control I had to do.
Real life is better. In real life fathers are people and not caricatures. In real life friends are white or black or brown and no one thinks it matters.
And if you ever want to ruin your kid's fun, you'll make a habit of watching television with them and pointing out every last stupid thing that happens and why it's wrong. (Goes over like a charm… trust me.)
Thinking back, my Dad would have loved to let me watch Warren Beatty get pumped full of holes.
I would say three things in response.
First, kids have a much firmer grasp on reality than people give them credit for. No single show is going make them into violent criminals — it might give them crazy ideas for stupid stunts, but it won't change their natures. Of course, that logic MAY (not sure) break down when every single person on television settles their problems with a gun. That may affect their thinking.
Second, the A-Team made it pretty clear that guns were only used when the bad guys resported to them, and then you never shoot to kill (actually, not a great lesson as gun owners know).
Finally, the influx of semi-auto "assault" rifles in the hands of gangs has nothing to do with television, but everything to do with the drug trade. Television could be showing nothing but Bambi and these kids would still be doing the same thing (of course, if tv was just showing Bambi, more of us would be looking to buy drugs)….
Brilliant!
When I was a youth, I grew up watching GI Diary (which opened with footage of a Japanese freighter getting shot up and exploding), Rat Patrol and virtually every '60s and '70s "cop" drama I could after school on the UHF station (my 2nd grade teacher asked my father where I picked up the phrase "Book 'em, Danno"), and I actually turned out surprisingly well-adjusted, even with my toy guns and reading about various wars and all that.
I attribute this to my parents, who actually cared enough to raise me correctly. The youth of today, in my very humble opinion, are simply not being disciplined enough by their parents, and our culture is dying as a result from the ground upwards.
This coming from the head of a new cable network for adolescent boys!
I've followed Disney's offerings for young girls and boys for a while now. They've cornered the market for the tween girl audience, but lag for boys. Considering the drek they've pumped out for boys I'm not surprised. Obviously this executive is a clueless hoplophobe who is likely the product of being raised by a single mother, that or he had a girley-man father has no idea how to appeal to boys, otherwise he'd be having boys with muskets hunting bar in the hills like a certain older Disney hit show with young boys did.
I didn't mean to accuse you of hand wringing. And I think the other show that got cancelled for being too violent was Sledge Hammer!. That was a funny show.
Also remember the hoopla over Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take it video. They thought that was just terrible. "Conservative" groups like the PMRC were all wadded up about it. It turns out the PMRC was headed by Tipper Gore, hardly a conservative, who had bought her daughter a Prince tape without listening to it first.
The point is more often than not what gets cited as too whatever by activist groups turns out to be good, harmless if not wholesome entertainment. It's not our fault Tipper Gore can't tell the difference between what's bad in a Prince tape and the cartoonish violence of Twisted Sister.'
Ouchies. I'll just try and move on from that one.
The ad is a little over-positive, but kids actually will thank you occasionally–eventually. Out of the clear blue sky, my older daughter who had two kids of her own by then caught me flat-footed with one of those "thank you's." She said she wanted to thank her mom and me for being tough. Whenever her friends (peer group?) would try to get her to do something unacceptable, she would simply tell them that her parents were really strict and would ground her for life is she went along with them. Then she would embellish it with the contention that her parents are really smart and know everybody in town, so she couldn't do anything they wouldn't know about right away. She told me that it had made her life a whole lot easier just to shift blame for her "squareness" to her parents. It was one of those rare times I was brought almost to tears. It's not easy protecting kids from themselves, but it's worth it. And they might, could, maybe, thank you later.
Good article, good points. When I went through G-12 (Carter, Reagan era), we were already innundated in school with the kids whose parents wanted to be their best friends. Not surprisingly, these kids were all in the dumbsh*it classes. They were also prone to making really stupid personal decisions. Can't imagine why?
By the way, with regard to your point about the PSA, let me suggest that maybe the PSA knows its target better than you think. The people who don't want to raise their kids — the ones who need this kind of ad to tell them to stop being idiots — do not think long term. So an ad that says, "do this now, it will pay off in 20 years" will go right over their heads.
Unfortunately, as you point out, the ad overpromises and they are likely to stop following its guidance when they don't get the "thanks dad" response. It's a bit of a catch 22.
"Gary Marsh reduces “The Rifleman,” a show about family, honesty, law and order, justice, and all that other good stuff, to simply “gun violence.” This coming from the head of a new cable network for adolescent boys! Doesn’t he remember we tuned in to “The Rifleman” because of the rapid-fire gunplay in the opening sequence, but we stuck around for the good lessons, like Lucas McCain telling his son, “A man doesn’t run from a fight, Mark, but that doesn’t mean you go looking to run to one!”
The Rifleman was a single dad that was truly dirt poor, (his shack was actually a shack), every evening he would be reading his bible while his son did the dishes.
Once a guy came into town and was hustling his girlfriend with phony war stories, Lucas (Lt. during the civil war)got his Civil war Fact book off of his small bookshelf and proved the guy wrong.
The Rifleman is my favorite TV series of all time and as a young boy it gave me a positive male figure, in my case Paladin did also, but Lucas was more pure.
I totally agree about the psychics and ghosts. My kids get enough damage from grandparents who want to bring them to church.
Yeah, let's just believe that and everything will be all better. Let's just all believe that once we convince everyone to believe in The Good Book we will all be better off.
"Let's just all believe that once we convince everyone to believe in The Good Book we will all be better off. "
Don't know what that had to do with my post, but it does make sense, you brought it up. how could it hurt?
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I guess I was not as concerned with violence on tv and movies, as I was sex. Violence seemed a lot easier to explain. I tried to be careful of what my kids watched, but I remember when my daughter was 8 or 9, I wne to check on her and her brother, make sure they were asleep, etc. And she had hooked a cable box up to the tv in her room, and was watching The Exorcist. I was shocked, because that movie scared the crud out of me, at a much older age. It was almost over, and when I tried to turn it off, she threw a fit. I said that it wasn't a good show for little girls, and she looked at me, and serious as a heart attack, said, You do know it's not real, don't you? They make movies in Hollywood, mama, at a studio. Now, she was a little different, she IQ tested at 167 at age 6, but I thought it would disturb her. I ended up letting her finish the movie, she went straight to sleep, loves horror movies to this day, is perfectly normal, and I still have nightmares every night. Go figure.
The biggest problem I can see with tv and movies for kids, is that they make them out to be not just sexually active, so much so that VD should be rampant on a studio set, but sexually sophisticated. The shows have kids, played by young adults much older, and they don't have sneaky, backseat, awkward sex anymore, but full fledged love affairs. And they take place in romantically lit., tastefully decorated bedrooms. There's none of that half-clothed furtive quickie stuff going on. The girls all have fully developed bods, wearing Vicky's Secret, and the guys don't look like the skinny, pimply punks of yesteryear. And, of course, no one is nervous and naive, the girls have the skills of a modern day courtesan. The guys don't have fumbly hands and lack of control past thrusts. Now they look like they are about 25, and are either body builders, or male models. And top it all off, they all are contraceptive savvy. No wonder kids are so depressed and confused. Who can live up to those expectations?
Stay away from "Intense Debate" , it needs work.
Have you READ the bible? Lots of horrible, horrible morals in that book. Women are property (literally "help-meat") slavery is okay. Killing a 13-year old boy by stoning is okay. It endorses the murder of homosexuals by stoning…I mean, read Leviticus. Jesus never set up a church, and never said the old testament rules no longer applied.
Alex from a Clockwork Orange loved the "good book" because it was more full of rape, murder, incest, torture and violence than anything he had ever seen. And he's not wrong.
You must be an historian,(sarcasm) what era was that? Tipper Gore is the wife of the left winger, Al Gore,
I agree. PG-13 violence is so much worse than realistic violence for children. It teaches them that death is easy, safe and fun. And that, to me, is scary.
Call me crazy, but I think the A-Team did more harm to kids than all the shows/movies already mentioned. It cartoon-ized gun violence to the point where there were never any consequences associated with it. At worst, one of the bad guys might get slightly wounded (a flesh wound, of course) after almost an hour of non-stop submachine gun fire. I wonder if anyone has ever charted the correlation (or not) between that show and the explosion of inner-city gun violence that followed just a few years later.
And no, I'm not anti-gun. I'm just old fashioned. I don't think the 'yutes' of today need to be shooting each other, and innocent bystanders, with automatic weapons. I think they should have to use zip guns and revolvers, like we had to.
If you want to screen your kids from junk and avoid raunchy TV, move overseas and don't buy a satellite dish or subscribe to cable. We did that and our kids found that reading books was a wonderful experience. We paid for whatever books the kids wanted to buy when the enterprising companies in that trade came to school with their lists of books for sale. A few weeks later, they brought the book orders back to school and it was like Christmas.
The result is that we think our children are far more literate and knowledgeable about history and current affairs than their US peers now that they are adults. They also have vocabularies that exceed most of their peers and attention spans that last longer than the average commercial.
Is Tom Shillue the guy who sang that song 'I'm an Artist'? If so, he's one of the funniest people I've ever seen on tv.
Moral ambiguity isn't a problem if the teen has parents who are willing and able to discuss it with them. I don't think there are enough of those parents these days.
And yes, I am longing for mere moral ambiguity to come out of Hollywood. Better than some of effluent oozing out of that cesspool nowadays.
Just one other comment. I watch the Gordon Ramsey shows with my 11 year old son. I'm a fan, the 4 letter words are (mostly) bleeped out, and we have interesting discussions about attitudes towards work and career. (Passion about what you do, and hard work, are good; laziness and apathy don't get you far; etc.)
Overall, I spend a LOT more time trying to undo the damage of what he's exposed to at school than what he's exposed to on the computer or TV.
Just saying…
That's how I took your point, and I agree.
My point was just that it's not possible in the modern world for people to put their kids into bubbles (though far too often I have met people who think they can). I think that it's better to recognize that your kids will see this stuff, and to be there to explain it to them, rather than assuming they're safe in a bubble and leaving them to figure it out for themselves — because the only voice of guidance they have then is the movie itself, which may be glorifying the thing you're hoping to protect them from.
I don't see how encountering something like drug abuse in real life is "much much better" than encountering it in the movies. It may be more consequential, but presumably the lessons you would impart to your children would be the same.
As for stealth messages, of course there are stealth messages. Sometimes they're also right out in the open. But that's part of modern life. There are stealth messages in things politicians say, things taugh in school, in advertising. Everyone is trying to convince you to do one thing or another. Part of being a parent is to teach your kids to recognize these manipulative efforts and to learn to think for themselves.
Yes, and she was a strong influencing factor in getting the ratings on CDs. From wikipedia:
"She is also well known for her active role in the Parents Music Resource Center and voiced a strong opinion against records with profane language, especially in the heavy metal genre."
You must be a reading comprehension specialist (Mt. Everest sized sarcasm). Read the post again. When a person puts quotes around something, it's because the word's usage is questionable if not flat out wrong.
Read the post again.
Isn't that the truth!
What's the problem(s)?
Evidently it affects reading comprehension.
"Part of being a parent is to teach your kids to recognize these manipulative efforts and to learn to think for themselves."
Bingo!
Marsh is afraid of The Rifleman as family entertainment? I was raised on 1960s westerns, police / private eye dramas and spy shows. That bodycount taught me to be sad when a good guy died and relieved when a bad guy died. It never once encouraged me to assault someone. Those heroes used firearms as an instrument of good. Even if the violence was overblown for dramatic entertainment (How many times did Ben Cartwright and Matt Dillon get shot?).
My 9 year old son has shot some of my handguns and rifles under my close supervision. He thinks that it is cool that he is shooting a lever action rifle, similar to those that he watches in my beloved westerns. He has seen what a firearm can do to a living being. He has seen a .44 magnum explode a watermelon. He also can give you a 5 minute lecture on proper firearms handling and safety. And, yes, he watched The Rifleman with me all last summer on Encore Westerns. And, no, he is not ready to watch The Missouri Breaks or The Wild Bunch.
"I guess I was not as concerned with violence on tv and movies, as I was sex. Violence seemed a lot easier to explain."
This, in a nutshell, EVERYTHING wrong with our culture. Every. Single. Thing.
I stress, I refer to the sentiment, NOT you or the way in which you choose to raise your children – especially given your testimony as to how well it's worked out.
MB, I think the problem is NOT talking to your kids. I let my kids watch what I thought was appropriate, sometimes I let them watch stuff I shouldn't have, parenting is a learning curve. My parents weren't perfect, either. I watched some pretty gruesome nightmare inducing junk. My parents never explained anything to me, but I felt that I should with my kids. Did I do it right? wrong? Who knows? All I know is that they are both grown mature well adjusted people. I can't focus on anything past that, myself. I don't get any do-overs.
My son became my friend when he was about 25. Before that, he was my responsibility. It often was not pretty nor fun but it was the job. The goodies came later.
Heck, my parents took me to see 'Easy Rider' when I was 5ish, as well as many other now R rated films. I remember seeing 'Bonnie and Clyde' on the big screen to, first release. And I remember seeing the 'Exorcist' on the big screen to, now that scared the !!!! out of me.
No money for a babysitter would be my guess.
I don't think I turned out to bad at all.
[...] Hills Are Alive…With Gophers I was just reading this post which discussed being a responsible parent and what passed for appropriate [...]
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