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Emily, this is, as they say, a failure in the marketplace. Despite years of protest and battle, movie ratings still draw lines along the old Puritan boundaries and bear no relationship to the sensibility of an actual child. They measure nudity, or language, and maybe specific acts of violence, but they are not sensitive enough to pick up something like nightmare-inducing terror. I took my daughter to see Man on Wire, in which there is a fleeting, silent-movie sort of sex interlude that flew right by her. This is an adult documentary about the Frenchman who tightroped between the Twin Towers, and she read it as a straight up inspirational tale. But in the various cartoons we've seen with violent chases or fistfights or mock torture scenes she is hiding under her seat. Some of this has to do with video-game culture and the fear factor brought on by better animation, as you say. And some has to do with our cultural tolerance of violence. Once a home-schooling mom recommended a Spiderman movie for my 5-year-old but warned me about a "disturbing scene," by which she meant not the death by impalement, or bombing carnage, but the upside down kiss. I think we need to set up our own informal rating system, based on the coming night's sleep: sound (S), light (L), disturbed (D), high possibility of night terrors (HPNT).
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On a different topic: I took my 5-year-old son to see The Tale of Despereaux this week and then cursed its apparently kid-safe G rating when he found it really scary. I looked into the meaning of G for General Audience and learned that the promise of "minimal violence" that the rating makes often isn't kept. More from me on this here. Have any of you tangled with fearsome kids' movies, and what if anything do you do about it? For my kids, the problem isn't quickie punches or even shootings. It's prolonged suspense, which movie makers often seem unable to resist. I don't try to shield my kids from everything harsh or sad, but movies exert real power over kids because of their visual impact. When a film keeps one of my kids up at night, I wish he hadn't seen it. Thoughts?
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