Slapstick vs. Realistic Violence

There's a trend in media to market slapstick to small children and realistic violence towards adults. This leads to children seeing violence without knowing the actual consequences of violence.

The question is, what is the effect of this on children and society? What is the end result of removing violence from it's consequences?

I've always been sort of against slapstick violence in children's media. Not sure how to articulate it exactly, but it always feels like the wrong venue for such a thing.

Adults can grasp that slapstick violence is unrealistic, but children -lacking a frame of reference, at least hopefully- cannot.

I guess you could say my discomfort grows when I look at censorship in children's media...which basically seems to say "you can show someone beating someone else up, but no blood or crying or anything". Isn't that showing behavior without consequence?

I remember watching an old Three Stooges comedy routine on TV (one of those classic comedy specials) and my dad explaining to me and my brother how poking someone's eye could really hurt IRL.

DS: That's exactly my view on it. I'd rather have realistic violence in children's shows, but minimize the amount of it and have slapstick limited to adults that can handle the idea that violence hurts.

Wow, I never thought about this. This is some good question you are raising, shimaspawn. This is actually quite troubling.

You can double the troubling up, mate... Consider the fact that a lot of kids before the ages up to about 12 - 16 (depending on individual development, and, to some extend, gender) can actually have an interest in guts and gore that turns adult's stomachs. :P Seeing the consequences of violence in cartoons wouldn't resonate in precisely the way most adults expect... but still carry the message "bad things happen and it's not good or funny in every way".

I've seen kids watch Princess Mononoke with mouths agape at the flying limbs, etc... and taking the message on board that's it's fairly cool, but also horrible and scary (but safe, as it's not happening to you: thank goodness). Whereas, a couple of the adults were squirming.

Contrast with the hyperactive bouncing you get in front of the more bloodless cartoons... and... well...

edited 17th Sep '12 10:04:09 PM by Euodiachloris

Kids know what it's like to get hurt, though. They've fallen down, bumped their heads, skinned their knees, stubbed their toes. They've gotten soap in their eyes, sunburns on their skin, splinters in their fingers. And, if they have siblings, they've probably been pinched, poked, shoved, slapped, and manhandled quite a bit, too.

So when people say children don't understand any of the consequences of violence, I think they're giving children nowhere near enough credit.

edited 18th Sep '12 1:10:56 AM by RavenWilder

But, there's the slight issue about detachment that younger stages of development have. It takes years to gain empathy for others, even if you are well aware how anything might feel yourself. The blood helps.

edited 18th Sep '12 1:21:49 AM by Euodiachloris

What exactly counts as slapstick? Are cartoon Non-Fatal Explosions slapstick, or are they their own category?

This isn't quite related to "slapstick" violence per se, but I will note that as a child, Star Wars made me think that war was a rather fun thing as faceless stormtroopers collapsed bloodlessly at the hands of the good guys. When I was twelve or thirteen, I saw Saving Private Ryan and its infamous opening twenty minutes was far more effective at showing me what a brutal and stupid thing war really is. So I'm not entirely convinced that showing young people horrific stuff is always such a bad thing, especially if they're raised on sanitised versions of such stuff.

Granted, that doesn't necessarily mean we should take all children of a certain age, plop them down in front of Saving Private Ryan or Gunner Palace or whatever and tell them "LEARN SOMETHING."

Well, no. But I hope my point is clear.

I don't know, I grew up watching a mix of both the slapstick and the realistic violence, especially as a product of videogames like Fallout as a child. So I always grew up thinking war is cool, and everything about it is awesome. Then I joined the military, went to a war, and my perspective changed considerably.

If I were a civilian I'd probably still have the same nonchalant view of violence and war with no thought put into it. Honestly, I still hold similar views, it's just that I've put a lot of thought into it and understand the impact.

Any child that can't tell that slapstick violence isn't like real life probably has existing problems that need checked out.

That also depends on the age, though.

I would further that by saying it depends on the child and their family.

I am the daughter of a now retired cop. He taught me how to clean my own rifle and shoot at 2 years. We had extensive gun safety and care training, especially me, because I was curious enough to probably find one hidden in the house. We were too poor for a gun safe at the time, so us kids just learned better.

Now I wasn't taught any fighting or holds because my dad was afraid we would use them on each other. I remember my brother jumping on my back in immitation of a cartoon. I just slammed him against the wall of the hallway, got my feet propped on the other wall, and pushed until he tapped out. My older sister wasn't so smart.

My boyfriend wrestled with his brother sure. They were allowed to watch many things they probably shouldn't have and imitated wrestling moves on each other. But they never hurt each other the way my siblings and I did even though we were very sheltered in our media exposure.

When it comes to my son, violence of any kind is a lesson. Batman gets to drop bad guys because he's freaking Batman. I've promised he can study martial arts if he is older and keeps his grades and chores together. He sees me shoot and box, but he knows these are responsibilities that are earned, not just games.

I hate the slapstick in most cartoons because it trivializes violence, removes a context, and makes it all fun and games.

This. Especially when you stack it against the egregious (and often irrational) attempts to remove all sexual content from young children's media. I mean, children are eventually going to grow a sex drive...but they are not automatically going to be violent. Which is more important for them to be exposed to and which should they be sheltered from, really?

edited 21st Sep '12 7:30:27 PM by drunkscriblerian

My boyfriend was telling me about an anime that made a point about how often girls abuse boys (mainly jr/high school level) by making the character have to go to a hospital from a girl kicking him between the legs.

It sets up confusing standards, which I know are supposed to lend to the comedic effect, but if some girl whacked my son for no real reason, I'll be damned if I'm going to be laughing since "he can't hit back".

The thing is, children are fully capable of experiencing and inflicting pain, and most will do so, even if just in small ways like pinching. However, they won't develop sexual urges until later, and while we consider a few scrapes and bruises and acceptable part of a child growing up, the same can't be said for sexual contact.

Maybe it's also because violence and the negative consequences of it are relatively easy to explain to a child, while sex isn't.

That's a really good question. Dirty Harry for example is nowhere near as violent as say The Terminator, yet the former was and still is rated R. I think this is because the film is more realistic.

It's easy to be violent towards things that aren't human.

Children's cartoons are very easy to notice this in: Black/White Morality, good is pretty, bad is ugly, the other is dangerous...

I am very lucky not to own a television. So anything my son watches is handpicked by me at least at our house.