Adam CR wrote:

Marsupialized wrote:
an 8 year old is plenty old to know the sad truths of human existence.

I like your posts on the whole, but in this thread you're doing a great impression of an angry, 'emo' teenage retard.

I believe the proper nomenclature is retard-american

Marsupialized wrote:an 8 year old is plenty old to know the sad truths of human existence.

I don't think an eight year old should have to start thinking about war and street violence and crime. It is not going to help him later in life. Kids from the ghettos of chicago who know about gang colors and turf borders and guns are not lucky, because they're getting a head start on the real world that the kid in winnetka doesn't get. It's a good head start if you want to put your kids at risk of growing up to respect thug life and to glamorize that lifestyle. Kids are mimics. They don't have the tools to properly contextualize violence and sex at eight, but they do have the instinct to imitate that bullshit.

I know what you're getting at, marsupialized, we agree that street smarts are good, but there's a difference between warning your kid about the real world and dumping him in front of stylized pop culture violence and sex because he'll see it eventually. That is too mature and too raw and upsetting for an eight year old. Eight year olds don't grasp the subtexts that adults do, and they haven't finished building their moral foundation at eight. The same goes for showing an eight year old graphic images of war- that's not going to train a kid to hate war, it's going to desensitize a kid to war, and when a generation is desensitized to war, it resorts to more war to solve problems when it comes of age. The parents in Iraq don't want their kids to see war. They look in their eyes and can see that they are growing up too soon.

Humans are animals like any other.

You're really off base on this. Humans can act savagely, but we are not savages. The opposite is true for the animal kingdom, unless you're talking about dolphins or primates ( our cousins ).

Marsupialized wrote:My parents told me from the get go that there are degenerates out there who would love to grab me and diddle me if I left my guard down. They told me exactly what they might say and do to try and back me into a corner to have their way with me. In turn, I was able to save myself a lot of therapy bills later in life by extracting myself from situations exactly like what they described.
They showed me homeless people, drug addicts and criminals and told me how they became that way and how it could easily happen to anyone if they did not stay on top of their business.
They explained to me stories in the paper about murders and kidnappings and robberies and explained what sorts of people do such things and how to keep my distance from situations such as the ones that could produce such acts...
...As far as this flick goes, showing a kid how brutal war is and how evil humans get when given power over others is exactly the type of thing I want my kids seeing, not some talking car or singing goat teaching them nothing but garbage.

The flaw in your analogy/vignette/point is that you infer the assumption that parents are going to EXPLAIN the film, just as your parents probably explained the things they were showing you (although your story smells a little bullshitty). The kind of parent that will knowingly take a kid to a gratuitously violent film is unlikely to be doing it for educational purposes. More probable is they couldn't get a babysitter or they just don't give a fuck. Your parents might have begun your weekly childhood trips to the ghetto whorehouse/snuff studio with a preamble regarding the nature of evil, but that's cuz you'se lucky.

Also you assume that your logic will magically rub off on the child, that they'll instantly accept the pragmatic value of such an experience. There's a reason kids get scared by scary things, and it's not just Nintendo or MacDonalds coddling. It's cuz they're fuckin' kids, they don't look at things critically! Jump out of a closet with a boogie man mask on and a butcher knife in your hand next time you're around your nephew, niece etc. regardless of upbringing they will be scared shitless and harbor a phobia for some time.

I agree that it's uncool how long it takes for humans to develop into fully functional adults. I think babies are fucking stupid, they take forever just to learn to walk and feed themselves. Little idiots.

This movie was fucking amazing. As of this typing, there are two people who voted crap, they are morons without peer.