General Matters

I just had to have something to say regarding how the entertainment industry portrays children, both in animation and outside.

Kids, to the filmmakers, have insignificant concerns. Like for example, getting beat up by the school bully would be depicted humorously. Or taking out the garbage. Something you’re supposed to do. Or playing video games. Gotta go to bed on time, so video-game playing is restricted. Despite the fact that the kid probably has to endure another round of hell at school, and is just rewarding himself for enduring the hell he faced the previous afternoon.

In “The Iron Giant”, the character of Hogarth has seemingly nothing to do. Sure, he lives in a single-parent household, with a mother who’s too cynical--unhealthily so. His spot-on description of Mickey Mantle and his “magic bat” fails to impress his mother. Yes, Hogarth is viewed as a boy who lives in his imagination, not as a person with very real concerns, and this character--along with major portions of this story--reflect the society’s behavior towards children. Americans do not take children seriously enough. It is only when they shoot up schools and take drugs and engage in general unlawfulness that we take serious note, and only because some of us can’t afford to ignore the endangered young anymore.

Children’s entertainment has been conditioned to speak to the psychologically underdeveloped child, reducing entire complex stories to simple sentences of summary. We as adults can’t look at “Pokemon” or “Zoids” or “Alienators: Evolution” and take it seriously. Ah, but when we watch shows like “The Practice” and “Law & Order” and “Gilmore Girls”--yes, even “Gilmore Girls”--we can accept those episodes and view them as legitimate fare, even though some of their episodes contain plots that are just as infantile as “cartoons”.

I believe that I can make a correlation between the way we view children and the way that we view their entertainment, “cartoons”. Do you ever recall hearing an adult make fart jokes? Okay, do you remember correcting that adult? I’m just talking about someone you know, someone over the age of 18. Do you?

What did you say to that adult? “Stop being a kid?” “That’s so gross. You’re beyond the fifth grade?” Any of the aforementioned comments ring a bell? Okay, now let me tie up some loose ends. Since when did you associate fart jokes with being infantile? Granted, it is very juvenilistic, but since the majority of kids do it, it’s immature? I request that you think again.

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