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The original “Bambi”

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Re: The original “Bambi”

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty obvious strawman. I'm saying I'm skeptical that kids who've been told scary stories actually handle real-life trauma better than kids who weren't told scary stories.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you.

That is a more apt response than I could muster and encapsulates my thoughts on the matter.

I feel like everywhere today we are beset with scientism. As if defending your own position is unnecessary as long as you can call into question the rigor of your opponent's. History has taught us well the value of myth

Re: The original “Bambi”

#193
post #2

I’ve grown watching „The Animals of Farthing Wood” (1993 cartoon). It has episode showing family of mice struggling to survive and worried about future for their babies. In following episode we get shot of same mice family impaled on needles by birds going to eat them. https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c3201142/comment_EkpfJKfyX8WRKQnr7H... Entire story is told around forest dying out and animals struggling to survive in it.…

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…

Alfred J Kwak was surprisingly adult about a lot of these topics. It didn’t beat around the bush at all!

Re: The original “Bambi”

#194

I made a browser extension called No Scary Parts that skips traumatic scenes on Disney+ while trying to hold together a cohesive plot. Mainly for young kids who enjoy the music and other scenes, but aren't ready for the full story yet. https://thomaspark.co/projects/no-scary-parts/ Fantasia was easy. Managed to do The Lion King. Haven't been able to pull off Bambi yet...

> Fantasia was easy You no need an extension for that one. As a kid, I tried to watch it multiple times and I always fell asleep. And I was a very patient kid.

“Night on bald mountain” with Czernobog and his creepy fire slave demon things gave me nightmares for months.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#195
post #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 ab…

I think conflating violent or frightening scenes with tragic scenes is a mistake here.

As a young kid I watched Lion King and Land Before Time, which both feature dramatic depictions of the death of a parental figures, which both lead to kids fending for themselves. I don't remember being traumatized by this at all, and watched them repeatedly. As an adult I see the tragedy and it's kind of shocking, but I think as a kid it was just make-believe and I wasn't relating to the characters in that way. And obviously tons of other kids watched and loved these movies too.

On the other hand the more intense scenes from Indiana Jones were terrifying and burned deep into my brain.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget about Pinocchio, who in the original Italian children's book is tortured and hanged for being such a "bad boy" [0][1]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio#Fictional_character_... 1: https://slate.com/culture/2011/10/carlo-collodi-s-pinocchio-... The part of the movie where all of the boys on Pleasure Island begin to turn into donkeys always freaked me out as a kid.

Judging from the plot summary ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Pinocchio#Pl... ), the original Pinocchio book is pretty messed up as a whole!

I'm not sure "messed up" is the most appropriate expression, if that may refer to a shaky mental status. It's all probably very intentional and lucid. Benedetto Croce - one of the greatest Italian philosophers - would not had taken that book in such high regard otherwise.

It's just about life, explained through metaphors from somebody who had lived it a bit to some who may have lived it less, and could benefit from a few warnings.

Collodi was also a gambler: one night he lost an especially large amount of money, then happened to meet a friend, who commissioned him a literary work so as to help with the payment of his debts. "Le Avventure di Pinocchio" was in a way born out of deeds, to warn against deeds.

Re: The original “Bambi”

#197
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

(other readers: sorry, I know this post is going to be a bit obnoxiously long, but I didn't want to put it on a pastebin or some other external service and potentially have it disappear if someone wanted to reference it in the future. If you're not interested please feel free to collapse this!)

I actually asked my mom to compile a list of books she could remember, because a friend had kids and was getting to the age where they were starting to read too. Here's what she came up with (note, no particular order of difficulty or maturity here):

My Father’s dragon series

Where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein

A pizza the size of the Sun

Choose your own adventure books

The Great Brain

The Boxcar Children series

Captain Underpants

Roald Dahl books: The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/The Great Glass Elevator (not as good)

My Side of the Mountain

No More Dead Dogs

The Secret Garden

Bridge to Terabithia (Deals with death, a little older)

The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe

Across five Aprils (civil war historical fiction, older)

The Broken Blade (Voyageur) & Sequel

Island of the blue dolphins

The witch of blackbird pond

Johnny Tremaine (a bit older)

The sign of the Beaver

Charlotte’s Web

Because of Winn Dixie

Tuck Everlasting (sad at end)

Ruby Holler

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Treasure Island

The Pushcart War

Maniac Magee

Rascal

Frindle

Hatchet (Gary Paulsen)

Mr. Popper’s Penguins (young)

Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing (Juy Blume)

Pippi Longstocking

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle (young)

A Wrinkle in Time

Moccasin Trail

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

From the Mixed Up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

The Egypt Game

The Phantom Tollbooth (young)

Holes (little older)

Sideways Stories from Wayside School (young)

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Homer Price (easy reading)

The Indian in the Cupboard

Misty of Chincoteague (series)

Aesop’s Fables (young)

The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm

Redwall series

Watership Down

(I'll throw in the Discworld series too for kids that are getting a bit older! It's probably very readable for, say, an advanced 5th grader. I was tearing through all the redwall books and the Golden Compass series at that point and Discworld is probably comparable. Golden Compass wasn't finished then and The Amber Spyglass ended up being kind of a disappointment. I know I was reading Discworld by 7th grade for sure.)

Re: The original “Bambi”

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life will give those hard lessons out for free - why build a curriculum for it?

> Life will give those hard lessons out for free Does it?

> Life will give those hard lessons out for free

Free of cost for the teacher, not for the student

Re: The original “Bambi”

#200
Live kids movies used to be pretty savage too. I showed my young kids Born Free and Old Yeller.

Well, in the first, lions eat some people in the first scene. In the second movie, the wild pigs attack is terrifying. Never mind the rabid animals.

They didn't want to see my recommendations after those two.

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