Are parents too sensitive on what their kids watch now?
I keep hearing about all this news about how people want to censor older movies, such as the movie Splash being recently having CGI added to hide the main mermaid character's butt.
And how Disney wants go back and redub over some lines in Dumbo that are considered racist, because they do not like the accents and vernacular of the original voices.
Or how now Looney Tunes is back but now Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam
And now I read about how HBO temporarily, or at least they say temporarily, took off Gone with the Wind and it's being considered for alterations.
But I think kids can watch these movies with the acception of Splash, which is for older kids like around 13 maybe, but you can see a butt 13 I would think and not be brain damaged from it. I saw Splash when I was about 10, and I do not recall any childhood disturbances from it.
I recently recommended the movie Singin' in the Rain I saw not too long ago, to my sister and told her she has to see it. So she watched it with her 8 year olds, which I didn't tell her to do, I just told her to watch it by herself. But she watched it with her 8 year olds, and she was really disturbed that her 8 year olds saw a woman blow cigarette smoke into a guy's mouth in the movie.
But when we were 8 we saw worse things that. I remember when I was 8, my dad showed me Star Wars, and a guy gets his arm cut off and you see a bloody arm on the floor. My parents also showed me Back to the Future and you see a guy shot to death, and a teenager has to deal with his Mom trying to put the moves on him without realizing it's her son of course. But I think I turned out fine as an adult as far as movies I saw as a kid goes.
And my sis is getting bent out of shape about cigarette smoke being blown into a guy's mouth? I don't know, I feel maybe people are a little too sensitive about what their kids are seeing nowadays, if Singin' in the Rain for an 8 Year old or Splash for someone around 12 maybe, is too much for them to handle? Or Looney Tunes for kids is too scary these days? Unless of course you alter the footage?
Or am I wrong?
I don't think you're wrong. While what's acceptable has always been constantly changing, it does seem that most of these things were a nonissue until recently. In the early 2000s me and my peers watched some of the same things you mentioned, and more, and we all turned out fine. None of us are traumatized from it or learned anything bad. Some of us even grew up watching worse things on YouTube before the content on it was like how it is now.
What caused this could have been the fact there was already a small subset of parents that are this protective, and then due to media and the internet more people were exposed to these people and their ideas. Over time it probably caused parents to reconsider what their children and other peoples children are watching, as it seems like parents can be very critical of themselves and each other sometimes. The more parents that believe things like this, the more parents are going to question themselves and consider limiting what their children watch. It might be a self-feeding cycle that turned a nonissue into an issue.
I definitely can sympathize with why parents would want to hide some of these things from their children, such as racist things in older cartoons, but I honestly feel like most of this it's not going to do them any good. As long as it's age appropriate it would be better to instead explain to children why those things are wrong and honestly answer questions they may have about the things they're watching.
