Week 1: Introduction to Children and Media

There's an easy assumption to be made about Son of Rambow (2007), an assumption that would very easily be made by my mother — that regardless of the outcome or implications of the characters' journeys, they still shouldn't have been watching violent movies. This sort of rhetoric may be true on principle, as our society values the protection of children in the Victorian sort of way we discussed in class, but it fundamentally misunderstands the way that real children operate. Son of Rambow has an innate understanding of how the mind of a child works, not only in the realm of imagination, but also in how they desire to explore the real world.

         It’s telling that Son of Rambow is the first movie we viewed for this class, because it surely reflects many of our experiences as people who have been inflicted with the movie disease. My childhood was not dissimilar to Lee Carter’s, growing up in an irreligious household in a deeply faithful town. My friends were very much like Will, and for better or worse, my parents’ VHS collection served as a gateway for them to catch the same bug that I have. Children identify with movies in a remarkable way, particularly once they discover their own powers of creation. Not only that, but the media they consume can influence them for the remainder of their lives.

         As an example, one of my earliest memories is the 1929 Silly Symphony called The Skeleton Dance.

I had seen other Disney cartoons before, but this particular cartoon stuck with me in a profound way. Two moments really stand out — the first is a shot where a skeleton charges towards the ‘camera’ and dances away, chomping his teeth; the second and most terrifying is when the four skeletons combine into a horse-like monster and run back to the grave. That macabre imagery and quiet terror is something that I chased (unconsciously so) throughout my adolescence, and eventually led me to this department.

         This experience is not unlike that of Mark Borchardt, the subject of the 1999 documentary American Movie. In the film, Mark is an unemployed near-alcoholic still living with his parents — but he dreams of making a feature film. It becomes clear that his ambitions are deep-rooted in the same kind of child psychology that affects the boys in Son of Rambow and still affects me. But those goals are seemingly destructive and risk his own well-being. It calls into question the nature of our childhood goals, and the way they must change as we grow and mature(?). Dean Duncan often complains about filmmakers who never grow up and whose names rhyme with Blentin Blarantino, but those same complaints would likely not be leveled at a child exploring the possibilities of the craft. 
         We're affected by the things we see as kids — they stick with us, haunt us, drive us. Regardless of whether the content is violent or innocent, it still colors our adult existence. So how do we draw figurative lines between childhood and adulthood, and when we must adapt to our changing positions in life? How do we retain childlike ideas while not succumbing to childishness? There must be some kind of balance between a Mark Borchardt and a Lee Carter, and I suppose part of this semester will be figuring out how to delicately walk that line.