> Some shows and movies seem harmless, initially, but then we noticed in so many kids movies (e.g., Zootopia, Sing), they're always yelling at each other, expressing anger, frustration, and hostility towards one another.
Although there are definitely a ton of kids shows that I find 100% garbage and would never let my kids watch under any circumstances, none of the 'name-brand' kids movies I've seen in the past 10 years struck me as unacceptably negative in the way you describe.
On the contrary, I get the impression that at least some of these movies are attempting to depict feelings and situations that some kids are feeling in a way that helps them understand 1) they're not alone and 2) their feelings or situations aren't wrong or abnormal.
Like, I took my kids to see Elio when it came out. BAM, right off the bat, dead parents. Anger. Frustration. Fear. Power struggles with parental figures.
This is all intentional—to the point that it's formulaic. A 2021 study found that slightly over 61% of the 155 animated kids features of the last ~80 years had no mention of the child protagonist's biological parents. There are a lot of reasons for this. The simplest are that it's way easier to come up with challenges and conflict for the protag(s) when their parents aren't around.
A more charitable reason is that there are all too many kids who, well, do have absent or fucked up parents. But it doesn't have to be that specific case either—any kid eventually has feelings of anger, fear and frustration, and seeing depictions of this in stories is important (for everyone, of any age, at any time).
I overall doubt that watching those stories causes kids to act angry and frustrated even when they're not angry and frustrated. I'm well aware of how profoundly mimetic human children are (and why that's important), but it doesn't happen with everything 100% of the time.
But this is also age-dependent in various ways. An 8-year-old can absorb a movie depiction of a fight between child and parent in a way that a 3-year-old can't. Are some toddlers going to act out because they watched that? Maybe? Probably?
Anyway, it's tricky to have these discussions because every child is different, even though there are broad anthropological patterns to humanity. But I've been more impressed than annoyed with lots of animated kids movies that I expected to loathe.
My mother used to call it the "Disney story," due to it's utter prevalence in their media. Be it death or divorce, seems like you cant throw a rock at the Disney catalog without hitting it
This is interesting; I always assumed that the Grimm's tales and all kinds of folklore throughout cultures and history were responding to anxieties about, say, super-high rates of infant death.
It would be, in a way, hilarious if it was all just lazy writing the entire time.
Although there are definitely a ton of kids shows that I find 100% garbage and would never let my kids watch under any circumstances, none of the 'name-brand' kids movies I've seen in the past 10 years struck me as unacceptably negative in the way you describe.
On the contrary, I get the impression that at least some of these movies are attempting to depict feelings and situations that some kids are feeling in a way that helps them understand 1) they're not alone and 2) their feelings or situations aren't wrong or abnormal.
Like, I took my kids to see Elio when it came out. BAM, right off the bat, dead parents. Anger. Frustration. Fear. Power struggles with parental figures.
This is all intentional—to the point that it's formulaic. A 2021 study found that slightly over 61% of the 155 animated kids features of the last ~80 years had no mention of the child protagonist's biological parents. There are a lot of reasons for this. The simplest are that it's way easier to come up with challenges and conflict for the protag(s) when their parents aren't around.
A more charitable reason is that there are all too many kids who, well, do have absent or fucked up parents. But it doesn't have to be that specific case either—any kid eventually has feelings of anger, fear and frustration, and seeing depictions of this in stories is important (for everyone, of any age, at any time).
I overall doubt that watching those stories causes kids to act angry and frustrated even when they're not angry and frustrated. I'm well aware of how profoundly mimetic human children are (and why that's important), but it doesn't happen with everything 100% of the time.
But this is also age-dependent in various ways. An 8-year-old can absorb a movie depiction of a fight between child and parent in a way that a 3-year-old can't. Are some toddlers going to act out because they watched that? Maybe? Probably?
Anyway, it's tricky to have these discussions because every child is different, even though there are broad anthropological patterns to humanity. But I've been more impressed than annoyed with lots of animated kids movies that I expected to loathe.