rated r kids
saturday, march 30, 2002
warning: rant ahead...probably incoherent too.


tonight saxy and i went to see blade II together. we had planned to see queen of the damned but the reviews of a few friends made us think twice about that. after all, i wanted to enjoy my one day out alone with my man before classes once again get in the way of the whole family and couple thing. and, while there are a plethora of movies coming out that we want to see, we have to pick and choose wisely. so, blade II, which lived up to it's predecessor in the bloodbath department (literally in 2 scenes).

what i did not expect is children. young children. children so young that the mother (i presume) of one was reading the subtitles to her just-above-my-knee son.

i could see teenagers at this movie, not MY teenager, mind you, but i understand i am a bit more restrictive than most parents. so, yea, teenagers. this is could see. but children under the age of 10 or 12? children under the age of FIVE? and it;s not even that i have a problem with the movies themselves. i LIKE vampire movies. i like a number of films that have extraordinarily violent, bloody scenes. but kids under the age of 15 going to these films? THAT i have a problem with. (heck, under the age of 17 is a problem for me, under the age of 23 if they are males and haven't grown up yet, but even i realize that's unrealistic.)

how the heck can we complain about kids and violence when we have parents not only unaware of what their younger children are seeing and doing, not only have teenagers doing whatever they what and seeing whoever and whatever they please, not only condoning this level of violence as a part of their lives, but are TAKING them with them to see this stuff?

and what about the kids? don't 5-year-olds have nightmares any more?

see, younger kids, especially before the age of 12 or 13, are still trying to sort reality from fantasy. i don't even let my kids play ad&d until i'm sure they have that distinction down, and even then they play with me present. now add to this that the more exposed we are to something, the more we find it acceptable, whether it's violence, sex, drugs, whatever. this has been proven in study after study. so you can say "t.v. violence doesn't affect our kids" all you want, it does. recent court cases show the same trend: what kids see enough of becomes acceptable to them.

so how the hell can parents expose children to this stuff deliberately? how can a parent take a child to a movie like this, in essence saying it's ok?

all that lost innocence.

and i just want to cry. what are we doing to our children?