Some time ago, I posted a thread about violence against children as a cinematic device in horror films, wondering why we don't see more of it. It's guaranteed, most of us agreed, to disturb a viewer. That being the goal of horror movies, the general consensus, as I recall, was that it shouldn't be deemed "going too far" if a filmmaker chose to use it in his films.
Several of the posts replying to that thread also mentioned the idea that this sort of imagery hits parents differently from the way it hits the rest of the audience. One or two disagreed, saying they were parents and didn't find the imagery any more cringe-worthy now that they were parents than they did before they had kids.
I just finished reading Brian Keene's "Dead Sea". There were a couple scenes during the first "act" of the novel, wherein the protagonist is attempting to escape zombie-fueled carnage in his hometown of Baltimore, where children - infants in some cases - were the subject of some pretty intense violence, zombie and otherwise. And these got under my skin. Noticeably so.
I am the father of a son who's almost two. And while imagery of violence against children, infants in particular, has always disturbed me (a classic example I can think of off the top of my head is that scene in "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster", of all things, where the news anchor is speaking about the smog monster's rampage, and in the background is a bank of screens with images of his pollution infected carnage, including a baby floatng in some soup of filth and crying. . . and no one apparenlty available to help it; this one always creeped me out quite a bit), I think it's pretty safe to say it's worse now that I have a little one of my own. I never really liked kids much until I had one, and no one is more surprised than me at how attached and affectionate I am toward the little guy. NOTHING scares me more than the prospect of harm coming to him, so I guess it follows that violence against kids around his age will hit me particularly hard.
Now, I'm not saying for a minute that this concept is in ANY way "going too far" for a horror movie/book, and that authors or filmmakers should shy away from it. Although I have to admit that on an instinctual, visceral level, my first reaction to the above mentioned Keene scenes was "That's awful; why'd he have to go there?" I just couldn't help myself. But fast on the heels of that thought was: "You know, that takes guts for a writer to do. And if they ever film this book, I hope the filmmakers have the balls to keep it in." Mr. Keene apparently succeeded admirably in his goal of horrifying the reader. I had a professor that told us the first sign of true learning is confusion. After all, if everything makes perfect sense the first time you hear it, are you really learning anything new? It's when you tackle something that confuses you and overcome the confusion that you really learn. In the same vein, you can't really have good horror if at first you aren't . . . well, HORRIFIED by what you're seeing or reading. That's an unpleasant sensation at first, but it is what we all pay our eight bucks to feel, and leads to true catharsis, I'd argue.
To the horror viewing parents: has your experience been similar? Is violence against children in films (or books, comics or whatever) harder to take now than it was before you had kids?
To those who are not parents, does this imagery bother you deeply as well? And feel free to speculate on whether you'd feel differently if you WERE a parent than you do now.
Several of the posts replying to that thread also mentioned the idea that this sort of imagery hits parents differently from the way it hits the rest of the audience. One or two disagreed, saying they were parents and didn't find the imagery any more cringe-worthy now that they were parents than they did before they had kids.
I just finished reading Brian Keene's "Dead Sea". There were a couple scenes during the first "act" of the novel, wherein the protagonist is attempting to escape zombie-fueled carnage in his hometown of Baltimore, where children - infants in some cases - were the subject of some pretty intense violence, zombie and otherwise. And these got under my skin. Noticeably so.
I am the father of a son who's almost two. And while imagery of violence against children, infants in particular, has always disturbed me (a classic example I can think of off the top of my head is that scene in "Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster", of all things, where the news anchor is speaking about the smog monster's rampage, and in the background is a bank of screens with images of his pollution infected carnage, including a baby floatng in some soup of filth and crying. . . and no one apparenlty available to help it; this one always creeped me out quite a bit), I think it's pretty safe to say it's worse now that I have a little one of my own. I never really liked kids much until I had one, and no one is more surprised than me at how attached and affectionate I am toward the little guy. NOTHING scares me more than the prospect of harm coming to him, so I guess it follows that violence against kids around his age will hit me particularly hard.
Now, I'm not saying for a minute that this concept is in ANY way "going too far" for a horror movie/book, and that authors or filmmakers should shy away from it. Although I have to admit that on an instinctual, visceral level, my first reaction to the above mentioned Keene scenes was "That's awful; why'd he have to go there?" I just couldn't help myself. But fast on the heels of that thought was: "You know, that takes guts for a writer to do. And if they ever film this book, I hope the filmmakers have the balls to keep it in." Mr. Keene apparently succeeded admirably in his goal of horrifying the reader. I had a professor that told us the first sign of true learning is confusion. After all, if everything makes perfect sense the first time you hear it, are you really learning anything new? It's when you tackle something that confuses you and overcome the confusion that you really learn. In the same vein, you can't really have good horror if at first you aren't . . . well, HORRIFIED by what you're seeing or reading. That's an unpleasant sensation at first, but it is what we all pay our eight bucks to feel, and leads to true catharsis, I'd argue.
To the horror viewing parents: has your experience been similar? Is violence against children in films (or books, comics or whatever) harder to take now than it was before you had kids?
To those who are not parents, does this imagery bother you deeply as well? And feel free to speculate on whether you'd feel differently if you WERE a parent than you do now.
