Good Guys or Bad Guys

I love the show History Detectives on PBS, however this season I've totally been forgetting to watch. I looked it up online today and discovered to my delight that I can watch full episodes right on my computer.  Mikaela loves to watch it with me, so I queued up the latest episode this morning and we sat down to watch it. I didn't even give it a second thought when Sofia sat down as well.

I don't do much censoring of media around here. We watch little television and most of what we do watch is on PBS. This last fall and winter we watched The Amazing Race every Sunday night as a family and that was pretty much the only mainstream show we fit in to our schedule. We all love movies though. The general limits are any movies with a G or PG rating are fine, and we've been letting Mikaela watch some PG-13 movies here and there that we have pre-screened. She's seen all the Harry Potter and Pirates flicks, as well as Avatar. Sofia has also seen some of those since it's really hard to keep her away from what her older sister is doing. In general she does perfectly fine, and even seems to enjoy "scary" movies. This kid loves Tim Burton, and went through a Corpse Bride phase a few months ago where she watched it late at night almost every night while the rest of us were in bed.

I'm not painting a pretty picture of my parenting skills here, am I? I move in some circles where my views regarding my children and media are not very popular, but I totally respect other parent's choices. I've read the articles and studies that say our kids are getting far too much screen time, and that it should be limited and possibly even forbidden before age two. I guess I'm just a proponent of an "everything in moderation" mindset. We've allowed some PBS shows and videos since the girls were little. Sofia loved the Baby Einstein videos when she was an infant, but I had no illusions about them making her smarter. They were pure entertainment for her and a 30 minute break for me.

My thoughts on the matter are that television and movies are a huge part of popular culture, and I don't want my kids to miss out on what's going on in the world at large, but I also want them to learn to have a discerning mind when engaging in it. I want them to be aware of what's out there, immerse themselves in it if they so choose, but to not be obsessed. It was great to hear my tween say when asked if she liked the Jonas Bros, "I don't get it." But she has an awareness of who they are, and that a lot of girls her age do like them, a lot. She has always been discerning in her viewing choices. The first time she saw a snippet of Barney she was about one, and she looked back and forth from the screen to me with a look of absolute disgust on her face and demanded, "Off."

I like to discuss movies just as we would literature. Movies are written before they are shot, after all. It's visual literature and it's art. I want them to be able to digest what they watch and glean lessons from it, if there is a lesson. We had a discussion a few days ago about how Disney has made bank by rehashing the same storyline over and over and over, and how one parent (usually mom) always dies or is absent.

Entertainment for the sake of entertainment is a totally valid reason to watch as well. There are shows that I enjoy simply for the fact that they are really frickin' funny. (Flight of the Conchords, anyone?) I certainly don't want to be or have semi-conscious couch potatoes in this house, but sometimes a little channel surfing or watching something silly and/or dumb is stress relief. I'm the same with books. Sometimes I just want some "fluff."

Back to my story: The episode of History Detectives that we watched had a story about the Korean War, and there was real war footage included. Sofia asked if what they were showing was real and if it really happened and I told her yes. She then asked if they were good guys or bad guys. I realized that I didn't know what to say. I could say there was "our side" and "their side," but I didn't want to imply that one side was good and one bad. It was really interesting to have a simple question from my 5-year-old daughter force me to reconcile my thoughts on war; that there are no good guys. It's horrible all the way around. We talked a little bit about it, but she became increasingly agitated and then chose to walk away, saying, "I don't like this show. I don't like it when it's real."

I've had some interesting (and funny) conversations with Sofia lately that show me she is trying to discern between reality and fantasy, including her making up a story about a ghost that she sees at night. I was totally intrigued and apparently she could tell because she looked at my face and said, "I'm just making it up, but just pretend that it's real." During her Corpse Bride phase we drove by a cemetery and she calmly announced, "There's dead people in there. But they can't come up out of the ground!"

Another aspect of film that I have enjoyed is how the ones that we love get ingrained into our family culture. All four of us incorporate quotes from movies into our dialog on an almost daily basis, the majority lately from the hilarious and inventive Fantastic Mr. Fox. Sofia recites an entire scene from that movie perfectly. I really should get it on video.

As I'm rereading this I'm realizing it's very long and rambling without much of a point, so I'll leave you with some movie recommendations from our family to yours.

Fantastic Mr. Fox
Anything directed by Hayao Miyazaki, particularly My Neighbor Totoro and Howl's Moving Castle 
The Pixar films, particularly Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles
The American Girl movies
The Narnia films
The Golden Compass