Basic Trope: A child sings a song, puts on a play, writes a story, etc. that is a bit too dark or adult for their age.
- Straight: A first grade class puts on a play of Macbeth.
- Exaggerated:
- A first grade class puts on a play starring little Alice as a Serial Killer who brutally kills all the other characters.
- A first grade class performs an actual pornographic play.
- Toddlers reenact MacBeth.
- Downplayed:
- A fifth grade class puts on a play of MacBeth.
- A third grade class puts on Much Ado About Nothing - not as full of violence or harsh subjects as his other plays, but with a few racy stuff in there most kids wouldn't do.
- A first grade class has a play that, while mainly kid-friendly, has some dirty jokes in it.
- Justified:
- The teacher is new to his job and doesn't know what's age appropriate.
- The class is full of Creepy Children.
- Culture Justifies Anything is at play, and that includes showing kids plays that whoil well-known and acclaimed.
- Inverted: Adults put on a play based on a syrupy kids' book.
- Subverted: We see the school play start with little Alice, Betty, and Claire as witches chanting, "Double, double, toil and trouble". The superintendent says, "Are they seriously playing MacBeth?!", to which the principal clarifies that it's only a parody of it.
- Double Subverted: The parody still involves gruesome deaths, though.
- Parodied: The first grade class puts on a play of Chicken Little. The parents are horrified.
- Zigzagged:
- The first grade class reenacts a parody of MacBeth that keeps some of the gore, adds more gore in other places, and subtracts other gory scenes.
- The school play of MacBeth casts students from all the classes, from the first grade to the fifth grade.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Aren't we a little young for this play?"
- Invoked: The teacher is aware kids like gory, age-inappropriate stuff they know they're not supposed to watch, so they chose Macbeth to get them engaged.
- Exploited: Alice's father Dave sues the school for making his daughter play a character in MacBeth, for money.
- Defied: "What should we do for the school play? MacBeth? Nah, they're too young."
- Discussed: "My little sister is cast as Lady MacBeth in the school play. Yeah, I know she's only six. Crazy, right?"
- Conversed: "If that happened in real life, the school would be sued for making little kids act out that play."
- Implied:
- We see all the kids who acted in the play looking scared and sad.
- The details of this school play are unknown, but the parents who watch this play look horrified.
- Deconstructed:
- The kids end up having nightmares.
- See Exploited, but Dave sues the school for any reason.
- Reconstructed:
- The kids get over the fear.
- However, it does make them more comfortable with the darker literature they wind up reading later in school.
- Played for Laughs: The kids have to hide that their reading and studying for MacBeth from their parents since they'd freak if they found out.
- Played for Drama: ???
- Played for Horror: The teacher is making the kids do a play of MacBeth because he's possessed.
Back to Age-Inappropriate Art and—- OMG! Did you seriously edit the Everyone Has Lots of Sex page when you were five?!
