Peo was at a friend's house yesterday evening and they had Beauty and the Beast on. Peo was enthralled and refused to leave until I promised her that she could see it at our house. She's never seen it before. She hasn't seen any of the big Disney flicks, other than the opening to Lion King that I showed her about a year ago and she wasn't very interested. Oh, and she did watch Mary Poppins about a year ago, loved the songs, was bored by the dialogue. Oh yeah, and she saw Cars at
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foshka's house.
Anyway, I spent most of last evening trying to find the damned tape (yes, tape), and of course it was in a box under a huge stack in the back of a closet that had other boxes in front of it. So it was too late to watch last night, but Peo asked today (I was kind of hoping she'd forget...nice try), so I let her watch it, and I sat with her, not knitting or anything, so I could constantly gauge her reaction.
She was very concerned at the violent bits, which I anticipated, since she hasn't been allowed to watch violent stuff before (all of her friends in Vegas seemed to have seen Shrek, but we haven't let Peo watch it because it's far too violent for little kids...when she's older, sure, and we've read the book from the library, which is more about being smelly and yucky than violent). She's seen implied violence in the Wallace and Gromit movies, and some amount of slapstick in Chicken Run, the Fraggles, and the Muppet Show, but not actual slug-out, constant battery fight scenes. Most implied violence she's seen has involved puppets chasing each other around, or Miss Piggy and man, Peo emulates Miss Piggy's hitting FAR TOO WELL.
Back to the point: Beauty and the Beast was the first thing she's seen with stronger violence. She was spooked a bit by the wolves, wasn't particularly happy with the castle siege and defense, and the last fight-out between Gaston and the Beast left her with lots of hard questions.
And did I take the modern approach of telling her the hard and gruesome details of things like being eaten by wolves or falling to one's death? FUCK NO! I lied and lied and lied! Wish I didn't have to, but hey, I wasn't going to have her freaking out for weeks about this stuff.
I told her the wolves were trying to bite, and left it at that. When one did bite the Beast, it confirmed it. Yay.
I told her that the mean people attacked the castle and that wasn't playing very nice, so the furniture had to defend it, but that nobody was really hurt because it was just silly stuff like the candle burning the man's bum. Yay.
And for the end, I told her that Gaston was very mean and that he hurt the Beast, but then when he fell, he fell far, far away to another place where he can live by himself until he learns to play nicely and not hurt anybody anymore. She wanted to know where he lived, so I said he fell down into a house at the bottom of the castle.
As for the overall concept of the film, I summed it up for her as this: there was a Prince who wasn't nice and didn't play nicely with other people, so a witch turned him into a Beast until he learned to be nice. When he learned to play nicely with Belle in the snow and do good sharing with her, she became his friend and the magic turned him back into a man. Then Belle and the Prince could get married and play nicely and do kissing and snuggling.
Obviously, there's a lot more to the story than that, like the emphasis this version puts on Belle being a smart girl while the swooning blondes just drool over Gaston, or loyalty to one's family and friends, or giving up someone you love when it's better for them, or all of that good stuff, but that's all way above Peo's head. So too are the darker elements, like how Stocklholm Syndrome isn't particularly romantic when you view the story that way.
And it's funny...we've endured some shock on the part of other parents when we say we've allowed her to see Chicken Run, because of course adults recognize that it's a parody of The Great Escape, and that brings to mind war and Nazis and concentration camps, which are utterly horrible things that one would not want to discuss with a little kid. But all of that is adult perception. Look at Chicken Run through the eyes of a little kid who has no context for the implications, and it is what it is: a story about some chickens who want to be free of their pen and go to comical lengths to achieve that. The one death is offscreen, totally implied, and completely contextual. I guarantee you that Peo doesn't get that it even happened. Peo doesn't think it's murder to be made into a pie, because as far as she knows eating chicken is no different than eating an egg; if the chicken is still around, alive and happy, if you eat the egg, surely it is if you eat some chicken too, right?
But Gaston singing, "KILL THE BEAST!", shooting him with an arrow, clubbing him, and stabbing him in the back leaves little room for fudging.
It's very interesting how some things are societally deemed as appropriate for children and others are not, and most people fall in line without really examining the elements closely.
I think I liked it better when Peo's viewing habits were uncomplicated, just singing people in funny costumes who went on and on and on and ON AND ON AND ON AND ON about dancing dinosaurs or musical farms or whatever. Bring on the Wiggles and Biscuit Brothers...lying about death is exhausting.
STOKED.
reflective
Wow, is it time for Coruscant Nights: Street of Shadows already? The new Michael Reaves book should be in stores today. Also keep an eye out for The Dark Lord Trilogy trilogy, a trade omnibus that collects Labyrinth of Evil by James Luceno, Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover, and Luceno’s Dark Lord.
amused
