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The original “Bambi”

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Re: The original “Bambi”

#151

For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on. Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable. However…

Yep read animal farm in middle school and it was dope. (Along with Brave New World + Naked lunch which IMO is a bit racier) One of my favorite things about the internet when I was younger was that it let me find books I couldn't get without begging my parents haha. Adults really underestimate how resilient kids are, and how much media isn't able to approximate the real world (yet). Modern ppl really don't realize how…

I think you mean they underestimate how resilient kids are.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#152
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tear jerking properties of the treatment of Dumbo’s mother doesn’t get enough attention. There really is no greater love than that of a mother for her child. / notice I said “greater” leaving space for an equal ie a father’s love

> There really is no greater love than that of a mother for her child. You don't really know the intensity and unconditionality of the love your own mother has/had for you until you have kids yourself and see how your wife loves your child. I always appreciated my mother, but I was only able to fully appreciate her after I had kids myself.

Totally agree. I go pretty far out of my way to make sure my mom gets plenty of time with her grandson, which she loves.

It also burns my ass to hear my wife say “I couldn’t have imagined how much I would like being a mom”. Society and culture is so screwed up around children and raising a family.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#153
I recall something Stanley Kubrick said about Bambi being traumatizing:

    I saw Mary Poppins three times, because of my children, and I like Julie Andrews so much that I enjoyed seeing it three times. I thought it was a charming film. I wouldn’t want to make it, but … Children’s films are an area that should not just be left to the Disney Studios, who I don’t think really make very good children’s films. I’m talking about his cartoon features, which always seemed to me to have shocking and brutal elements in them that really upset children. I could never understand why they were thought to be so suitable. When Bambi’s mother dies this has got to be one of the most traumatic experiences a five-year-old could encounter. I think that there should be censorship for children on films of violence. I mean, if I didn’t know what Psycho was, and my children went to see it when they were six or seven, thinking they were going to see a mystery story, I would have been very angry, and I think they’d have been terribly upset. I don’t see how this would interfere with freedom of artistic expression. If films are overly violent or shocking, children under twelve should not be allowed to see them. I think that would be a very useful form of censorship.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true if the young ones in question are in a psychologically safe and emotionally supportive environment. I read things as a young child, without having the support to talk and parse them out, and additionally on top of the chaotic environment I was already in, where reading things like Animal Farm, or, specifically in my case, being introduced to the concept of destructive extinction events in books, mov…

I was 11 when I read All Quiet on the Western Front and maybe 13 when I read Innocent Erendira . I don’t remember talking to anyone about these, though I did feel terrible for a few days after. Honestly, no lasting effects. This is probably the same as the fact that 70% of soldiers experiencing combat stress do not get PTSD and 30% experiencing severe combat stress don’t either. This means human variability is signif…

Do you have any evidence that there is a susceptible set? Books especially fiction come with two fundamental safety features. Firstly the book never subjects itself upon its reader. The reader is always in absolute control. Secondly the fundamental unreality of the setting allows one to dismiss it.

I recall observing with morbid curiosity a video of someone losing their life to a terrorist many years ago thinking it would be no different than a gory movie. I was very very wrong. It isn't the realism of the simulation that matters its the inability to dismiss what one knows is in fact real.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a form of McNamara's fallacy. In reality, the data you are looking for is impossible to obtain. In practice, causing traumatic events is obviously unethical. Then, even if you had a proper study, there would be so many confounding factors that basically any conclusion is worthless. For instance, listening to an e-book on the subway is obviously different than discussing your emotions and response to the book.…

Exactly. If you have an intuitive and common-sense take (exposure to stories with difficult themes can help kids cope with similar things in real life) and an unintuitive contrarian take (they don't, so let the kids get blindsided), the onus is on the contrarian to "list a single shred of scientific evidence." Sure, it would be great if everyone could offer "evidence" for every position, but that's obviously unrealis…

It's not contrarian...there's simply no evidence either way, that's all I'm saying. For every anecdote you can come up with showing a kid doing well after hearing scary stories, I'll come up with another of a kid doing without without hearing them. That's it.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#156

For some reason I got my hands on George Orwell's "Animal Farm" at a very young age, as it looked like a kid's book. That's a fairly bleak book, for example when the pigs sell the draft horse to the glue factory, but only the goat (whose only friend is the horse) knows what's going on. Watership Down is another good one, the character of the Black Rabbit of Inle (the Grim Reaper of rabbitkind) was memorable. However…

Should also lump in Metamorphosis into this category of bleak but fascinating stories.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

List a single shred of scientific evidence showing that kids who are exposed to stories with similar themes to traumatic events they experience in real life are more likely the have better outcomes. Be afraid to call someone wrong without more than just-so stories and anecdotes.

This is a form of McNamara's fallacy. In reality, the data you are looking for is impossible to obtain. In practice, causing traumatic events is obviously unethical. Then, even if you had a proper study, there would be so many confounding factors that basically any conclusion is worthless. For instance, listening to an e-book on the subway is obviously different than discussing your emotions and response to the book.…

What you call "intuitive" I call "not at all obvious or even remotely expected". There's simply no evidence either way that can't be contradicted by opposing anecdotes. That's really all I'm saying. It's not related to The McNamara Fallacy at all, because there's no obvious observation that supports the initial notion. It simply isn't common sense, even if you want it to be.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#158
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a fat, stuttering early elementary kid, so I read a lot to avoid the cruel other kids. To the degree my 4th grade teacher would no longer allow me to do book reports for a grade using children's or teen books any longer. She pointed me at the literature classics and said only those were grade worthy at my reading skill. The right there was on of the most instrumental decisions of my life. By 5th grade I'd read…

haha, high-five. My parents read with us every night as a kid, and that got me going on my own. At the start of third grade I did a book report on a junior textbook about the allied air campaigns during ww2 and the teacher didn't really know what to do with that. (I'm a smart guy but reading with my parents made a huge difference imo, it is probably the single biggest thing you can do to give your kids a head-start i…

I'm curious what sort of books they would read. I like to read to our kids, but it's mostly books targeted at a bit above their reading level, not adult-level stuff.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

List a single shred of scientific evidence showing that kids who are exposed to stories with similar themes to traumatic events they experience in real life are more likely the have better outcomes. Be afraid to call someone wrong without more than just-so stories and anecdotes.

I don't know if there are any controlled studies, but there's plenty of informal evidence that naive people cope poorly with traumatic events. Resilience is a product (though admittedly not a guaranteed product) of experience.

Life experience, yes. Scary stories told to children...that's what I'm very skeptical of.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

List a single shred of scientific evidence showing that kids who are exposed to stories with similar themes to traumatic events they experience in real life are more likely the have better outcomes. Be afraid to call someone wrong without more than just-so stories and anecdotes.

Do you have a source to claim the opposite?

Of course not. I'm simply saying that I'm very skeptical of the claim and would bet actual money that the opposite (or null result) was actually true.
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