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The original “Bambi”

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Re: The original “Bambi”

#161

Post by ehejdud »

mberning wrote: post #152
nemo44x wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

burns my ass is quite an image

Re: The original “Bambi”

#162

Post by vt240 »

at_a_remove wrote: post #101
ineedasername wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Requiem for a Dream" Well, if we're thinking about the moral messages of some of these old tales, I've always thought Requiem could be a good movie to show tweens+ as a cautionary against drug abuse. If Disney threw in an evil witch selling smack, a few catchy songs, a handful of dead parents, and a handsome prince to kiss Harry's arm back to life then I bet they'd have... well, maybe not a hit. But it would be so…

Tween-me would have been wondering what the adult showing me the film was thinking right around the time a grinning man suggested for the crowd "Ass to ass."

The section of the book where he sends Marion off to get money from Arnold, is some of the most haunting writing I've ever come across. The book is truly amazing. I've never come across another novel to so aptly relate the feelings of addiction.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#163

Post by iinnPP »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #157
hervature wrote: post #132

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.…

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.

I think you can prove his point to a degree if you take the dog example. Specifically when said child doesn't already own a dog.

They could use the knowledge to either not get into the situation entirely or to embrace the situation regardless.

The former will always result in less trauma over time. Unless I am missing something. The latter is open to debate.

Thinking like this is regards to past relationships, I have prevented a lot of self trauma through experience with trauma.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#164

Post by iinnPP »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #159
smaddox wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The story in full will contain pieces of information that would help a child avoid said trauma entirely.

Don't go into the random abandoned house alone.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#165

Post by unethical_ban »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #157
hervature wrote: post #132

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.…

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.

Your assertion is that reading or hearing about life experiences does not prepare a person for a similar life experience.

This is absurd on its face. I'm sorry I don't have a journal article to substantiate my claim.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#166

Post by diehunde »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #122
tragictrash wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be afraid, they're wrong.

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'm actually with you on this. I've been reading articles about the trauma the war and displacement are causing Ukrainian children. I remember one mentioning older kids who knew about war already (because of stories or TV) had practically the same behavioral symptoms as younger kids who didn't understand what was happening. And this came from psychologists assessing hundreds if not thousands of kids.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#167

Post by drooogs »

senko wrote: post #83
ineedasername wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Requiem for a Dream" Well, if we're thinking about the moral messages of some of these old tales, I've always thought Requiem could be a good movie to show tweens+ as a cautionary against drug abuse. If Disney threw in an evil witch selling smack, a few catchy songs, a handful of dead parents, and a handsome prince to kiss Harry's arm back to life then I bet they'd have... well, maybe not a hit. But it would be so…

This description totally reminds me of Trainspotting! Those two, along with Kids (1995) could definitely be used as cautionary tales for t(w)eenagers.

kids is a cool film, but not much of a cautionary tale. it's more like a 90s urban euphoria, in that the message is really more to adults: "this is what teenagers are actually doing right now".

what (imo) would make requiem for a dream really effective is that it shows the transition from the "honeymoon phase" of drug use to the "consequences phase" really well. I think this is the part that teenagers really don't understand (or at least I didn't). when you're starting out, it can seem like a lot of the anti-drug messaging is just fear mongering (and it is, to an extent). but most people that age don't yet have the perspective to distinguish between harmless fun and a slow motion crisis.

trainspotting is also great, and a bit more realistic than requiem for a dream. but if I had to pick one of the two to show to teens, I'd probably pick the former.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#168

Post by westcort »

My key takeaways:

1. This year, “Bambi: A Life in the Woods” has entered the public domain, and the Chambers version has been joined by a new one: “The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest” (Princeton), translated by Jack Zipes, with wonderful black-and-white illustrations by Alenka Sottler

2. Stephen King called “Bambi” the first horror movie he ever saw, and Pauline Kael, the longtime film critic for this magazine, claimed that she had ever known children to be as frightened by supposedly scary grownup movies as they were by “Bambi.”

3. The film in question is, of course, the 1942 Walt Disney classic “Bambi.” Perhaps more than any other movie made for children, it is remembered chiefly for its moments of terror: not only the killing of the hero’s mother but the forest fire that threatens all the main characters with annihilation

4. With the old Prince’s prompting, Bambi concludes from this experience not that we humans are a danger even unto one another but, rather, that other animals are foolish for imagining that we are gods merely because we are powerful

5. It was adapted from “Bambi: A Life in the Woods,” a 1922 novel by the Austro-Hungarian writer and critic Felix Salten

6. What makes it such a startling source for a beloved children’s classic is ultimately not its violence or its sadness but its bleakness

7. The implicit moral is not so much that killing animals is wicked as that people are wicked and wild animals are innocent

8. Salten insisted that he wrote “Bambi” to educate naïve readers about nature as it really is: a place where life is always contingent on death, where starvation, competition, and predation are the norm

9. What purpose are scenes like that one serving in this book? Salten maintained that, despite his own affinity for hunting, he was trying to dissuade others from killing animals except when it was necessary for the health of a species or an ecosystem

10. What are we to make of this muddy, many-minded story? Zipes, in his introduction, blames some of the confusion on Chambers, contending that he mistranslated Salten, flattening both the political and the metaphysical dimensions of the work and paving the way for Disney to turn it into a children’s story

Other works of Felix Salten: https://www.locserendipity.com/TitleSearch.html?q=Salten

Re: The original “Bambi”

#169

Post by billfruit »

photochemsyn wrote: post #64

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…

Another one might be "Lord of the Flies", it really has spine chilling moments.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#170

Post by slowmovintarget »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #155
tablespoon wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that's not it. We have a whole generation of adults that can't handle rejection, can't handle difficulty, need emotional support peacocks on planes... because they were taught (repeatedly told the story, a.k.a. narrative) that they were special and would always win if they felt good enough about themselves.

In other words, we told stories that specifically set them up for disillusionment and disorder. Telling stories has been the way one generation prepares the next since the telling of stories began.

Oral tradition, religious texts, myth, legend, fables, fairy tales... all of these had purposes beyond entertainment. Don't go in the woods by yourself, it's dangerous. Don't swim in that river, it's dangerous. Don't be mean to other people, because you don't want to live in that society. Don't lie, because people won't believe you when you need them to.

We've always told these kinds of stories... until recently. The kids that did get these kinds of stories built the modern world. The kinds of kids that aren't getting these kinds of stories are the ones going on shooting sprees or rioting because they didn't get that raise or someone was mean to them on social media.

We do have evidence, it just isn't organized into a formal longitudinal study for you. Here's the thing. It is possible for people to discuss an idea and even draw conclusions of efficacy without a longitudinal study.

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