Aug 06 2008
Star Wars and a Parenting Conundrum
While Benjamin decides which movie to watch (above)*, I’m second-guessing a parenting decision.
Benjamin received a very cool Star Wars sticker book for his fifth birthday. He came to a page with Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace characters on it and asked, “Do we have the one with these guys in it?”
I happily answered, “Yes,” and told him it was the one with the pod race (a scene he and I have watched together many times). He opened the DVD cabinet, removed the correct disc, and inserted it into the DVD player.
While he hasn’t seen Star Wars as many times as he has Cars, he has seen it a handful of times on movie night. The subsequent two films he has seen once each.
When I first tried to watch The Phantom Menace with him, however, he asked questions like, “Where’s Luke?” and “Is Darth Vader in this one?” He also was confused by Ben Kenobi’s youthful appearance, and after I explained it he still didn’t understand what the heck Liam Neeson was doing there. I’m very proud to say he laughed at Jar-Jar only once and never seemed the least bit taken by him.
He lost interest after the pod race and instead played with his action figures from the original trilogy. As a fan and a father, I was proud.
I wonder sometimes whether I should be showing him these movies at all.
The first three films feature death but do not depict it graphically. During those scenes Benjamin asks questions like, “Did he go to Heaven?” and, “Daddy, where do bad people come from?”
To the first question I responded, “Yep,” without missing a beat, because it’s made obvious later that Yoda went to Jedi Heaven alongside Obi-wan and Hayden Christensen (don’t get me started on that crime of revisionism).
The next query required a little more thought, but my initial reaction was easy. “The same place good people come from. They’re born.”
I then tried to shift from labeling people “bad” or “good,” and babbled on. “Somewhere along the way they start doing bad things. But people who do bad things can turn around and do good things again.”
At least I didn’t launch into a discussion of the modern penal system and the arguments for and against rehabilitation. Good thing, too, considering he probably would have asked, “Daddy, what does ‘penal’ mean?” and I would have laughed, because that word is just funny.
The next three films show fights resulting in stabbings, separation of legs from torso, severance of all four limbs and both hands (respectively), and just lots of death in general. I figured all of that could wait several years for Benjamin.
Then, just last weekend, he asked again to watch The Phantom Menace. I rationalized. Hey, the character who gets stabbed doesn’t give us time to get attached to him, and the one who gets cut in half isn’t shown as such until he’s in the distance. Plus, he’s a bad guy.
Oops. There goes that labeling again.
After that viewing, Benjamin said, “Daddy, let’s play Star Wars. I’ll be Ben and you be Qui-Gon Jinn.” That last is Liam Neeson’s character, for all you who are not SW geeks but somehow made it this far in both life and this post.
Until I had a child I never considered Star Wars a particularly violent series of films. I saw the first one several times at age 7 — during its original theatrical release. While I may be a bit desensitized to violence in movies, I’m terrified of it in real life. I know that not every child is the same when it comes to these matters, but for Benjamin’s sake I’m hoping that when it comes to handling the films’ themes, his age 5 isn’t too far from my age 7.
* Before anybody gives me a hard time about my son picking out a movie when it’s sunny outside, I’ll just tell you that it was about 104 degrees. In the worst of Texas summer, our outdoor play times are morning and evening.
(Note: I covered a similar topic in “Star-Crossed Innocence Lost,” wherein I detail Benjamin’s reaction to his first viewing of Star Wars)
Watch for that playset to catch fire neath that Texas sun. We’ve discussed this before. He’s seen the original movies first and become familiar with their characters in the right order. Oh yeah, and it was 86 here yesterday.
I honestly couldn’t tell you when I first saw Star Wars. I can’t remember a time before I knew it and loved it. I was 7 when Jedi came out and I know that I had already spent years collecting the toys and fretting over the fate of Han, wondering what Jabba would look like, curious about coming face to face with the Emperor. So for me, it seems like 5 is plenty old enough for most of the films. Anakin’s turn is a bit darker, so maybe that could wait, but most the other stuff seems ok to me. It’s all parental perogative, of course, and I’d never presume to tell you what’s right for Benjamin. But since you asked…. for me, Star Wars seems as good a place to introduce these difficult topics as anywhere. I mean, if he’s old enough to wonder about such things, then he’s old enough to have a simplified conversation about them. And I might add that it looks to me like you’ve been handing that aspect smoothly.
I’ll say what I say anytime someone asks me about showing a child a movie that may be a bit violent (I don’t mean the beginning of Saving Private Ryan or anything else extremely gory)
I explained to my own kids early on, that unless I tell them different, EVERYTHING in movies is make believe. Everything. Nobody actually dies, no real blood is shed. I’ve even showed my kids how to make fake blood with Karo Syrup and ketchup. I explained special effects, stunt people, and everything I could to inform them.
We would even talk during the movies about how bad that shot was, how fake or how good it looked.. etc. The best ones to pick apart, are the Rocky movies. You’ll see that very little blows actually land.
Maybe Ben is old enough for this, maybe not. Only you can tell.
I started out this life exactly right: my dad took me to go see Star Wars in the theatre in May of 1977. I was only two and a half, and of course don’t remember any of it. In fact, I only remember seeing Jedi in the theater in 1983, and walking out with a insatiable desire to BE Luke Skywalker, though part of the appeal (then) was probably the cool green lightsabre.
The original Star Wars films are much better fodder for a wee boy, and I don’t think I’d have any trouble showing any of them to either of my boys. The Rancor might scare them a bit though.
With the new flicks, the violence is more on the surface, and the ideals are deeper and harder to get at (though they are still there).
Heck, both boys have now seen Kung Fu Panda, and are leaping about with a reckless violence I’ve never seen in them before. They’ve both been chastised for hitting one or both of their parents far too hard in their fervour. So you never really know what effect certain movies are going to have on the little ones.
Josh - Great surfing weather down there! Just today, after work, while Benjamin and I played Hot Wheels, he told me all about your O’s light sabers and how he and O hold them when they play with them.
Moksha - I just try to make sure I’m never in the camp of guys who makes up something crazy or blows the kids off and tells them to stop asking questions.
So many kids have been brought up on Star Wars now that it’s as much an institution as “Sesame Street,” and almost as old.
Dave - Sounds very similar to my approach, except that Benjamin asks me before I have a chance to tell him that it’s all just pretend. Then, of course, I answer that it is.
Cool that you made your own movie blood. But, come on, didn’t the local slaughterhouse have something you could have used?
Simon - What a cool way to be introduced to the galaxy far, far away.
The monster that Luke kills, not the Rancor, is one Benjamin asks me to skip, like the snow monster in Empire.
Kung Fu Panda is high on Benjamin’s list, too. We’re lucky, I guess, that he hasn’t tried to Hong Kong Fooey us.
“Star Wars?” I thought that was a benighted program to shoot down missiles with ray guns. Ronald Reagan’s full employment program for physicists (who were not involved in such things as energy conservation). You mean it was a movie?
Low 60s here last night (Saugerties, NY).
Local Slaughterhouse??? Where do you think we are… Arkansas??? *LOL*