Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The original “Bambi”

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 232 posts

Re: The original “Bambi”

#171

Post by tablespoon »

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.

> It's not contrarian...there's simply no evidence either way, that's all I'm saying. For every anecdote...

This isn't dueling anecdotes, it is the application of common sense and reason. You're taking a contrarian position against that, and lack of evidence (if that is indeed the case) doesn't create an "anything goes" situation where that take is on even footing with what you're arguing against.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#172

Post by [deleted] »

boringg wrote: post #156
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…

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

[deleted]

Re: The original “Bambi”

#173

Post by simonh »

easytiger wrote: post #79
simonh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the world as it was when these stories were first told, yes.

I don't follow. Human history until recently was sustained largely by oral tradition and story telling; superseded by written story telling. What's the problem with telling stories that confer some wisdom or some sense of history or for fun? Many of these stories are embedded idiomatically in many languages? Let each parent decide at what age they should read Rapunzel, when they are ready.

I think I misunderstood the comment. You’re quite right, these stories served a valuable function.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#174

Post by cristoperb »

munificent wrote: post #139
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved a cartoon growing up as a child, called Alfred J. Kwak [0], a Dutch / Japanese series about a duck and his adventures; I believe a lot of it is on youtube if you want. The first two episodes are about two anthropomorphised ducks that meet, fall in love, move into a clog and have a spawn of babies, happily ever after until the whole family but Alfred get killed by a car. That was err. a pretty brutal thing for…

Gotta love the idea of a dude named "Kwak" making a show about ducks. Talk about nominative determinism.

Kwak is the name of the duck, not of the creator of the show.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#175

Post by inanutshellus »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #90
fsloth wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the Animal Farm to my below K12 kids on one sitting and they were hooked. Kids needs scary stories in a safe environment. This will help them process these thoughts and prepare them for the inevitable trauma they will face at some point in their life. Animal Farm is also not a bleak read but also fun as you can do all the animal voices with their characteristic animal sounds.

Stories don't prepare kids for trauma, and I don't think there's any real evidence in support of that idea. I would wager a large sum that a child who has heard scary stories is not more likely to better handle, say, the loss of an immediate family member, than a child who has only heard happy stories about unicorns, rainbows, and friendly interactions.

Stories create plans and set expectations.

Take the "story" of "if we get separated at the mall, meet at the fountain and wait there until we all arrive."

That's a story. You can imagine how it goes.

1. Imagine getting lost. Oh no, oh dear, sweaty palms! But hey, I'm not actually lost. No need to panic. Ok, now what?

2. I should actively work to remember the path back to the fountain.

Now, when your five-year-old brain realizes you got separated from daddy, you're not FREAKING OUT you're backtracking to the fountain and thumb-twiddling.

Your turn - all you have to do is come up with an edge case ("I'm sure there are some kids that'd forget where the fountain was") and pretend that "some" is statistically more relevant than the idea that making a plan makes a positive difference.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#176

Post by AlphaOne1 »

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…

I wonder if there is a difference between oral stories and movies. My kids started to cry while watching the Little Dinosaur (ages 5 and under) several months ago. I recently bought a copy of the uncensored Brother Grim stories. Taking into account how sensitive they have been in the past with G rated cartoons, I decided I would edit the stories in real time (leaving out words like 'blood') and sometimes modify the ending slightly. Recently, I stopped editing the stories. My kids still love the stories and ask me to read them more right before bed time. They even asked me to re-read them Hansel and Gretel, which is quite a brutal tale in my opinion. Show them a single clip of a 'sad/scary' cartoon and they still freak out to this day; however.

I think there is something to be said about Disney cartoons use of music and visual images that sort of forces viewers into a certain emotional mindset. Oral stories/books on the other hand leave it up to the imagination of the listener to conger up the emotions and images. Not sure if this makes sense, but at least in the case of my kids it does.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#177

Post by bradlys »

A lot of weird people in here basically arguing for goatse to be shown to children.

There’s no good reason to show children traumatic events. A lot of them do internalize it. Just because you didn’t doesn’t mean others won’t. This has little to do with bad parenting or other such things. Some children are just able to take what is in a film and vividly imagine it towards their own life or have too much sympathy.

HN obviously isn’t a great place to get advice about how to raise children from people who are known to be chronic over workers and absentee parents…

Re: The original “Bambi”

#178

Post by ohreallyhmmm »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #90
fsloth wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the Animal Farm to my below K12 kids on one sitting and they were hooked. Kids needs scary stories in a safe environment. This will help them process these thoughts and prepare them for the inevitable trauma they will face at some point in their life. Animal Farm is also not a bleak read but also fun as you can do all the animal voices with their characteristic animal sounds.

Stories don't prepare kids for trauma, and I don't think there's any real evidence in support of that idea. I would wager a large sum that a child who has heard scary stories is not more likely to better handle, say, the loss of an immediate family member, than a child who has only heard happy stories about unicorns, rainbows, and friendly interactions.

I see that you are talking about exposure to negative stimuli (bad stories) having no demonstrable positive impact to individuals. Perhaps this helps: Psychology has examined the impact of lots of praise (the absence of negative stimuli - e.g not allowing criticism of others, getting a 14th place ribbon) on an individual, vs those that are given critical feedback (negative stimuli is provided and/or no positive stimuli is provided e.g no ribbon or “good job” for 14th place; being excluded from the running team due to poor performance etc) for at least the past 30 years. The overall conclusion of this research is that lots of praise is a problem, and fosters the development of narcissism and leads to poor outcomes when the individual experiences “real” results (e.g they got a high five for getting a “c grade” in high school, but in their workplace performance review they get a “meets expectations” and a verbal warning from their boss that if they don’t improve they will be put on a Performance Improvement Plan).

Lots of this research can be read if you look for the impact of developing high self-esteem in individuals (typically this is done as described above), and measuring the impact of these actions.

Example paper here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1111/1529-1006.0143...

Re: The original “Bambi”

#179

Post by WorldMaker »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #24

If we're talking about bleaker topics in older Disney works, I'll ask you to take a moment and consider the entire premise of _Dumbo_ (1939). Why are the other elephants scandalized by the baby elephant with the big ears, asking what Mr. Jumbo would think? Why did they mean, just a few moments earlier when they said elephants are "a proud race "? Why would they shun him, declaring that he is not one of their kind? ..…

With all of the elements in Dumbo directly from Minstrel Shows (black face, white face/Irish stereotypes) I think it's incredible that Dumbo isn't already in the same "Never to Reopen" Vault with Song of the South.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#180

Post by hemloc_io »

Digit-Al wrote: post #151
hemloc_io wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fixed thanks :)
Post reply on HN