Age Appropriate

[keiramarcos]

I buy my Padawan a lot of books. He averages two or three a month from me. This month he asked for the Hunger Games books -- I bought them on Amazon and shipped them to his house. My sister flipped her shit because of how "violent" they are and took them away from him. She called me to berate me about buying him books for "adults" and then didn't relent when I told her they were actually YA books. 

So, I asked her -- 

"Would you let him read a series of books about a child who was habitually emotionally abused, neglected and starved because of a genetic condition by his family? Then when he finally did manage to escape them he was thrown into a dangerous world full of people who want to kill and maim him where he would be stalked for seven years by a homicidal sociopath while adults all around him stood back and let it happen? In the end the only way he could escape is to commit suicide?"

And she said, "OF course not!"

And I said, "Well, then you'd better go take the Harry Potter books off his book shelf and confiscate the movies while you're at it."

She gave the Hunger Games book back to him and told me I'd ruined that series for her.

And I responded, "Then you don't even want to know what I think about The Wizard of Oz." (her favorite movie)

On a side note, I didn't even mention the homoerotic subtext that is so evident in the books that my Padawan started calling Draco Harry's boyfriend around BOOK THREE.

Comments

[calanor.livejournal.com]

like seeing the movie 300... My brother loved it for the violence and war... I saw all the slashy love!!!

[demira-watson.livejournal.com]

I love you just a little. Please teach me more you epic awesome woman!

And may I use that argument against my friends?

[keiramarcos]

Of course - spread the snark far and wide.

[firefox1490.livejournal.com]

Dude Wizard of Oz is the WORST. Serious girl shows up and starts off her trip by killing someone. And rather than just send her home the "good witch" uses her to murder her enemies all for the "greater good". tisk tisk.

[keiramarcos]

Let's not forget how instead of checking on the witch under the house -- the Munchkins decide to sing a song instead and then have the coroner check her out afterward.

[keiramarcos]

And -- by the time Dorothy has been in Oz for 15 minutes -- she commits 2 felonies -- maybe 3 because she stole the Scarecrow too.

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

Oh. I *know* I love you and things like this are why. Calling people on their bullshit and laying out the facts in ways that they can't avoid.

Very cool.

~L

The video rocks too

[i-cant-talk-now.livejournal.com]

suicide? wha...?

[keiramarcos]

Harry commits suicide by Dark Lord -- I mean he survives it, but he walks right in and lets Voldemort kill him.

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

*snort*

[timespirt.livejournal.com]

Alot of the stuff kids read or the cartoons geared towards kids are really for adults but are passed off as kids stuff these days. I read the Harry Potter books and I thought they were geared for adults not kids.

[qbic1.livejournal.com]

My 12 year old niece got me hooked on The Last Airbender and Naruto a few years ago. Talk about weird freudian cartoons written for 'children'. Definitely not. I've long since given up on comics being made for kids. Is nothing sacred anymore? Now they're changing Dr. Suess. Very scary. And Disney is just as bad. Of course, Grimm's Fairy tales weren't exactly PG either. Guess no childhood escapism is safe anymore.

[timespirt.livejournal.com]

Not what we grew up with anyway but then again Bugs Bunny and all those cartoons were very violent too. Loved them anyway because when your young, you don't know any better. LOL

[ladymina.livejournal.com]

I think the first book was actually meant for kids, then she realized what a lucrative market the adults were too

[timespirt.livejournal.com]

True, but even that book had a lot of violence and abuse in it.

[celia311.livejournal.com]

Heh, the snark wins again.

I love how you described the Harry Potter books. My friends and I have had long discussions about how Hogwarts really is an awful school! Kids are in serious trouble and the adults are looking the other way ALL THE TIME.

[zoolooney.livejournal.com]

**Snort** A coworker was reading cracked.com during lunch break. I thought I'd share two of the articles that were read:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19667_6-horrifying-implications-harry-potter-universe.html

http://www.cracked.com/article_18881_5-reasons-greatest-movie-villain-ever-good-witch.html

[elf-powder.livejournal.com]

YES!!!!! Even a little freaking kid, (who is exceptionally perceptive which I write as excellent role modeling on your part), could tell the sheer amount of homoerotic subtext going on between those two. It's not just my imagination, feverish as it is these days. It is there, dodging under their cloaks and robes, always in the periphery. Ginny Weasley is just his beard, and you can totally tell that in the Epilogue, when he all married and sorrounded by his kids, eye-fucks Draco across the train platform.

On a side note, I have never trusted Dorothy, much less the Good Witch Glenda. I mean, using a girl to do all her dirty work by using Dorothy's desperation to get back home. And Dorothy, she was so cold. Didn't shed a tear about killing a person. Two actually, running around with strange men and getting high on poppy...

[kazbaby]

*offers a plate of homemade cookies for being so freaking cool*

[serpentlady69.livejournal.com]

Kids' books are never as innocent as people always assume. I mean, really, it's never stated in Harry Potter, but his home life is terrifyingly abusive... and don't get me started on his school and teachers.
I just can't read kids' books are NOT see how adult they really are.

[silvarbelle.livejournal.com]

*rolls around, laughing hysterically*

That's just plain damn awesome. XD

Keira, some day, will you treat us all to a bulletin point review of The Wizard of Oz? Or however you want. But STILL. XD

Age appropriate

[biblot.livejournal.com]

English writer and critic G. K.Chesterton had a terrific response to those who criticized the presence of supernatural elements in kidlit:

"Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed."

He was a deeply religious man (high Anglican who later converted to Catholicism) whose best known character was the detective priest Father Brown. I think of this line whenever the 'Harry Potter or The Worst Witch is Satanic' or 'this book is unfit -- it has too much violence/profanity/nudity' element get wound up.

Re: Age appropriate

[twilightseeker3.livejournal.com]

Fairy Tales were not written for children. They were moral tales written for adults. Disney came along and sanitized them. The original Sleeping Beauty woke up pregnant with twins. Seems the Prince did a bit more than kiss her.

Re: Age appropriate

[bemus-ed.livejournal.com]

I have read an original version of Little Red Riding Hood where the wolf eats Grandma and then he and Red Riding Hood get it on in the bed while the Grandma's bones rattle underneath.

Re: Age appropriate

[xocoatldreams.livejournal.com]

Disney only sanitized them so much. A lot of the adult subtext is still there if you look at the princes:
Sleeping Beauty - somniphiliac (I know, spelling it wrong)
Snow White - necrophiliac
Beauty and the Beast - abusive
Little Mermaid - wants a wife who doesn't talk

the list goes on and on

Re: Age appropriate

[rebel-kitty-25.livejournal.com]

don't forget the creepiest of all (well it made me ick)

Lion King has incest (Simba and Nala)

As far as original fairy tales go:

Cinderella - was originally the 'fur slipper' of all the ladies that the *Prince* tried on - so from that must conclude they got it on at the ball and he can't remember her face but can remember her vagina?! any excuse to shag every woman in the country I suppose

Cinderella again - After the revision that had the women trying on the famous glass slipper - the ugly sisters were cutting off toes and corns and filling the slipper with blood

Hansel and Gretel: Abandoned children eat an old lady's house when she is furious at them and punishes them they throw her into an oven alive/another version has her dancing to death in red hot shoes

Re: Age appropriate

[kate-fire.livejournal.com]

Oh the Lion King. My friends and I were sad that Nala didn't commit suicide at the end like the Ophelia-designate she was. (of course, if she *had* a Laertes, then there would have been a little more tussling for the crown among the lion cubs, yes?)

I've always wondered if the "Luck Child"/"Devil's Hair" fairy tale was ever based on an Oedipus-type beginning.

Don't forget the other "appropriate" punishments for older step-siblings who actually *do* what their parents are telling them to do: getting their eyes plucked out by birds.

[halftime1030.livejournal.com]

LOL. My friends and I had many a long discussion over Harry Potter over those exact same points.

[twilightseeker3.livejournal.com]

Don't EVEN get me started on Grease or Little Shop of Horrors. Here we call Grease All American Girl Turned Slut.

[txrabbit.livejournal.com]

Good on you!

Both my kids read the Hunger Games Trilogy this summer. It was violent, but it was a book. It's fiction. I taught them years ago what was fiction and what wasn't. In fact, I was sure to teach them that when they were reading the Harry Potter Books years before they were really old enough to do so. *grins*

I adore your posts. Read this one to my husband while he was showering. Made him snort shower water.

[beckys91.livejournal.com]

My 11-year old son, who avidly played videogames and watched Japanese anime and loved movies with explosions and fights -- was horrified to see the towers come down on 9/11. At that very moment I stopped worrying about his ability to differentiate between fiction and reality.

I love that G.K. Chesterton quote. A lot of what my boy has learned about making his way in the world has come from fiction: Heroes exist. Good friends make hard things easier. If you fall you can get up, try again and succeed.

[grimm-solace.livejournal.com]

I love you.

It's how I get when I watch shows like Glee. It's the WORST school in the world, with the most obtuse and abusive 'educators' ever.

Yet it's all right, because each episode has chipper song and dance numbers to hide the pain those kids feel.

You are awesome

[serenaharkness.livejournal.com]

Like seriously. And Padawan is awesome too! Of course I was a creepy little kid and decided Draco was of course going to end up as Harry's Boyfriend by book one and if that doesn't happen than he might end up with Hermione..if she shapes up some...of course none of this happened and J. K. Rowling is evil with the character of Ginny. I mean Ginny just popped up and we saw no real character development!

[marmalade02.livejournal.com]

i know, and has she ever really watched the classic disney movies - the little mermade ursella is stabbed to death graphicly, bambi's mother is shot in cold blood by a poacher, snow white.... come on that one shouldn't even need explination, sleeping beauty ... that does wonders for womens lib,
then don't get me started on twilight - thats a sterling example for young girls, if your hot boyfriend leaves you to save your life, it's great for you to go off the deepend, become clinicly depressed and not address it joyride motercylcles go alone with other guys who you know like you but just lead them on, jump off cliffs and just be an all around fruit cake because you are not worth anything if you don't have you're hot perfect boyfriend... ugh. i could have forgiven a lot more if the series were well written.

[csi-chic-jayme.livejournal.com]

LJ needs a like button because I loved this post, I was so amused my mom (who has no idea about the world of slash btw) wondered why I was laughing so I read it to her minus the homoerotic part :D Her response was well that's true, she has a point.

[mad1zel.livejournal.com]

I told my niece the twilight scenario she says I have ruin the series for her now. my mom says the oz scenario should of been told when she was a kid . I will never read or watch harry potter books or movies the same again. and the hunger games are very good but for my great nephew who is 8 I was told would have nightmares if I took him to see the movie this from my sister his grandma who lets him watch saw1-4 movies and the like then sends him home where he spends the night in bed with a adult because he has nightmares. so I going to use these little scenarios to prove how wrong she is because harry potter is ok and so is the oz yeah right.

[cala-jane.livejournal.com]

You made me want to reread Harry Potter...

[soulessamazon.livejournal.com]

You are such a good person for not mentioning that. It might have completely broken her brain.
My mother did her final college psych paper on why the Wizard of Oz has been looked at all wrong. Gelinda the "good" is actually the evil on in the movie. She makes a good argument for it too.

[hedwigs-bane.livejournal.com]

Not to mention Grimm's "fairy tales"! I mean, In Cinderella, the stepsisters cut off toes and heels to fit their feet into the glass slipper! In the original, at any rate.

Of course, I must question your Padawan's perception re: Harry Potter. Draco is Harry's BF? I must assert that it is RON and not Draco... Maybe that's just me. LOL
Nevertheless, good on ya for pointing these things out to the Padamwan's mom. These things take a bit of thought and rationality.

[keiramarcos]

LOL.

Actually, Padawan is so convinced of Ron's poor friendship that he asked me to write him an alternate ending to Deathly Hallows where Ron dies as unheroically as possible.

[tlyna.livejournal.com]

Please, yes, write it!

[legessa27.livejournal.com]

Yes, please have Ron be dead. I hated that after he departed in a snit, when he came back everything was hunky-dory. Also, Ron just magically happening to find Harry and Hermione again- so I'm meant to think that the light putter-outer Dumbledore gave Ron has a dual function as a GPS? Really?

[tlyna.livejournal.com]

I really love your descriptions of the Potter books.

'...my Padawan started calling Draco Harry's boyfriend around BOOK THREE.'

Your padawan is one smart kid.

[jilltanith.livejournal.com]

Then there's that ubiquitous Book filled with murder, incest, and rape . . . You know, the Bible?

[mass-hipgnosis.livejournal.com]

...a series of books about a child who was habitually emotionally abused, neglected and starved because of a genetic condition by his family? Then when he finally did manage to escape them he was thrown into a dangerous world full of people who want to kill and maim him where he would be stalked for seven years by a homicidal sociopath while adults all around him stood back and let it happen?

OH MY GOD THIS IS WHY I REFUSED TO READ HARRY POTTER FOR LIKE FIVE YEARS. I'm over it now that I've realized other people had that reaction (thanks, fandom!), but I'm still mildly horrified that conservative Stepford-ish people like my sister in law consider these appropriate books for children.