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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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