I've always been fascinated by how some children's book authors are able to bring up story lines which tap into feelings that arise at various ages (i.e death, divorce, etc). I watched Mr Roger's growing up but really had no idea everything seen was a smartly curated way to make children more empathetic and analytical.
Honestly, I think most of society has a big blind spot on child education.
I would wager most of society reckons child education - whether a book writer, media creator or a school teacher - is a pretty basic and run of the mill sort of job/thing to do.
But more and more I'm seeing that it's a profession and an area that really requires a lot more thought and need for well trained professionals being given space to do their thing just like any other professions.
Unfortunately, I really don't think people give them much respect, and/or funding for that matter.
The great problem was the discovery of "pester power": children are particularly susceptible to advertising. That's why children's media tends to have selling toys as a primary objective, unless it's some sort of state-funded low-budget Reithian production.
It definitely happens, and there are a lot of really bad children's books whose primary purpose is to fit into merchandising empires out there.
But the ratio of quality work to crap is much higher in children's books than in other media. Especially if you stick to children's books that aren't attached to toys or other media. Compare, for example, anything Disney, where the books are often just a long series of nonsequiturs with barely any narrative structure, let alone emotional depth, to anything by Philip Stead.
This is especially true today. I have seen a critique of Marvels infinity war where (spoilers) Thanos needs to "sacrifice that he loves the most" to gain a special stone.
So he throws his daughter off a cliff, and cries as he does. He "loved" her.
People have pointed out that for an abused child sitting watching with her abuser, this reinforces the idea that the person who is harming her actually loves her ... a repulsive idea and perhaps as damaging as jumping off a roof with a towel.
I guess "with great power comes great responsibility"
PS
not being American Mr Rogers is a mystery to me - can anyone recommend a documentary / example ?
Or here's his speech to Congress fighting for funding for public television (it's more complicated than just funding for public television, but that's the basic idea).
> People have pointed out that for an abused child sitting watching with her abuser, this reinforces the idea that the person who is harming her actually loves her
Maybe. But maybe the story that the abuser doesn't care about the victim isn't actually accurate, even if it is more useful for resolving the problem. I think it's entirely possible that a large class of abuse happens from abusers that do love and care about the victims, but are so screwed up in their own mind that they can't help themselves.
That does lead to the interesting question, does continually asserting to the victim that the abuser doesn't care lead to helping the issue faster than asserting that they might care, but by allowing the situation to continue it harms both the victim and the abuser, and the best way to improve both their lives is to be separated? Not that helping the abuser is the main goal, but if it helps to extricate the victim faster, that's a net win, and just because the abuser is not someone most people would find pity for doesn't mean they don't deserve some help fighting their own demons too.
Not that I think that's necessarily true, but it would be interesting to know whether this is one more case where the common knowledge "best thing to do" is sub-optimal.
> I think it's entirely possible that a large class of abuse happens from abusers that do love and care about the victims, but are so screwed up in their own mind that they can't help themselves.
In that case, the abuse would be visible in public. If abuser is doing what he/she is doing in private only, then it reasonable to assume that abuser is in control.
Not really. A person addicted to food, alcohol, porn, etc. is perfectly capable of keeping these addictions at bay in public, but lose control while in private.
I'm not sure the public/private distinction is meaningful. That's a pressure on the abuser too. We all do things in private we'd be frozen in shame at attempting to do in public. It doesn't mean we're 'in control'. It just means we're sometimes out of control, in private
Kind of beside the point though when we're talking about a children's cartoon. A straightforward 'people who hurt other people don't love them' message is probably preferable.
I'm sure we would all sleep much better at night assuming that's the case, but I'm not sure there's much basis to it besides wishful thinking.
The fact that some people actually opt for chemical castration because they cannot control their urges leads me to believe that it's fairly deeply psychologically ingrained, and I'm not sure why a compulsion to do something somehow negates any other feeling a person might have.
And this isn't a defense of pedophiles (which were not what I was envisioning when I mentioned abusers in my original comment), but it is an attempt at better understanding them. I think that's the best path for everyone involved, as if we understand them, perhaps we can stop them, and help them (preferably prior to any bad behavior), and then everyone is better off. Simply rationalizing that pedophiles do horrible things therefore they are horrible and evil people is a cop-out and will likely never actually fix the problem, as we've seen. I think that results in more victims and more people in prison. If we can prevent the crimes and help the people that would commit them be productive members of society that don't hurt anyone (preferably before they've hurt anyone), should we not do so? Are we not all better off with that outcome?
I am not an expert, but I do not believe we have any framework for understanding paedophilia, let alone any category for all other forms of child abuse.
There is a framework for understanding say schizophrenia, and so potential for a cure
But without such a framework then I cannot see much progress - like downthread i say bank robbers are not bad all the time, abusers are not bad all the time. But the crime is enough to take action.
Yes I would like a cure for abusers, just as a cure for robbers. Till then we should treat them all as crimes and prosecute accordingly
> I do not believe we have any framework for understanding paedophilia, let alone any category for all other forms of child abuse.
So, I'm saying perhaps there is something to be learned from examining the problem in depth rather than taking a "shoot on sight" sort of stance. Nothing about that required there be some single unifying framework, it's simply calling for an evidence based examination of whether there are methods that have a more beneficial outcome than that.
E.g. In the case of trying to reduce crime in general, you can increase criminal punishments or you can try to prevent people from becoming criminals. I suspect the latter is a better return on investment socially, and for the victims and criminals in particular.
> There is a framework for understanding say schizophrenia, and so potential for a cure
Good! All the more reason to look for additional frameworks that can help in other types of situations.
> Till then we should treat them all as crimes and prosecute accordingly
I'm not sure anyone here has said they shouldn't be prosecuted. I certainly haven't. I'm confused as to why you keep bringing it up, since it seems to assume people are arguing against treating sexual child abuse as a crime. Who here is proposing that?
Sure, loving actions put the child's interests first. But the point was an abuser is not acting against the child's interests 100% of the time. Just like even the best parents are not acting in the child's interests 100% of the time.
> People have pointed out that for an abused child sitting watching with her abuser, this reinforces the idea that the person who is harming her actually loves her
Viewed another way, it validates the idea that an abuser can be a mortal risk even if he loves her, which, because quite often the abused in such a scenario already has a deep and unshakeable (and possibly accurate) belief that the abuser loves them, which leads them to discount the risk of escalation and try to manage the situation without escaping it, is potentially a more valuable message than repeating the “abuse is incompatible with love” message that society puts out through quite a lot of channels, and which promotes discounting abuse if you are convinced of love as much as the reverse.
I think that ends up saying "if only the child realised she would then be able to leave" as opposed to what I think we need "if only society at large realised, then we would put a stop to it"
It feels like you’re arguing definitions. If you had to restate “abuse != love” without using either word, how would you state it? I suspect you might find more people agree than this thread indicates.
I have firsthand experience with abuse, and I think in many cases abusers do love those they harm. I don't see how acknowledging this makes abuse any more acceptable. In fact, I think often that's what makes abuse so hard on victims: they know that their feelings towards their abuser are real and they also see that their abuser often cares about them, and it is hard to reconcile this with how they are treated.
I'm not an expert on this, but it seems to me a better way to frame it is something like: loving someone doesn't excuse being treated this way.
I also have extensive experience with chronic abuse. I would argue strongly that abusers do not love those they harm. Abuse is not an expression of love.
If you want to argue that abusers think they are loving those they harm, perhaps because they don't know any better, perhaps because they themselves received abuse disguised as "love" during their formative years, then I could agree with that. But love doesn't cause harm to people. Full stop. Not even "tough love".
In my experience it has actually been quite liberating to realize that AbuserX does not and did not love me. It's really confusing to be in this middle ground where I think they love me and yet they continue to deliberately harm me. This leads to a very twisted version of love that exposes one to more dysfunctional, abusive relationships that repeat the original cycle.
Break the cycle. Repeat after me. If somebody is abusing you, it's not love.
I think you're misunderstanding me. I don't believe abuse is an expression of love, and certainly didn't intend for my comment to be interpreted that way. My claim was someone can abuse someone and also love them. It seems like you disagree with that statement, which is fine. I don't think we will resolve that disagreement online.
What does it mean, to “love” someone? Is it a prescriptive phenomenon - where if I say I love you, then we must take it at face value regardless of my actions towards you? Or is it a more descriptive thing, where my acts may show that I love you even though I may never tell you the words “I love you” explicitly as such?
Or is the act of “loving” a purely self centered one - where my love is purely a means to fulfill my own needs (of wanting to be desired, appreciated, needed, respected, empowered, etc)?
I don't think it makes sense to try to define "love" independently of a relationship between two people. If person B says person A loves them, then that it a good indication that A does in fact love B, particularly if person A would agree with that statement as well.
> People have pointed out that for an abused child sitting watching with her abuser, this reinforces the idea that the person who is harming her actually loves her ... a repulsive idea and perhaps as damaging as jumping off a roof with a towel.
Some good critiques of Infinity War's questionable messages:
I'm not religious but isn't that a common story from Christianity? God sacrificing his son to save the world? Not religious and not saying there aren't other interpretations of that story but it is a common one.
Yeah, it seems a common trope in western culture. In the Iliad, Agamemnon leader of the Greeks does not get favourable wind that is needed for his armada to sail to Troy before he sacrifices his daughter who he loved.
Pretty crazy. God sends his son down to ultimately sacrifice himself. Not clear who is in charge here. Then he 'sacrifices' himself by being arrested, charged and convicted. Then he dies(?) Then he's re-born. So, unsacrificed? Or didn't really die? Not like regular people anyway. Then he goes to heaven without dying again.
Really not trying to be rude, but I do think it's worth pointing out that nothing you said except "God sends his own son down to ultimately sacrifice himself" is what Christians believe. This is not the story of Christ.
Maybe read the Gospel of John (4th book in the New Testament) if you want to know the details. It's pretty short, you could easily do it in one sitting. If you don't want to know the details that's your business of course, but be aware that the story you relayed is not Christianity.
That's all in what they wrote - he dies, he's back after a couple of days, he ascends into heaven. I think I have it all accounted for. If 'true scotsmen', ahem, christians, don't believe their own writings, then well, we're done here. I don't believe them either.
I mean technically Jesus is a human embodiment of God (according to the Council of Nicaea) so he is both himself and his Son. That whole story is a mindfuck and a logical nightmare. Right up there with the Tower of Babel when it comes to "What the fuck is this omnipotent, omniscient being fucking doing up there?!"
According to Nicea and the Christian tradition, there is one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Son incarnate, but not the Father. You may not think this makes sense, and that's fine, but it is quite different from what you are claiming above.
>>I mean technically Jesus is a human embodiment of God (according to the Council of Nicaea) so he is both himself and his Son.
I'll just assume it was my pronouns that got ya on this one. God is Jesus. God is God (or Father God, or Allah, or I Am, or whatever your preferred term for the overbeing is) "he(God) is both himself (Father God) and his son (Jesus)"
Wow that is a misleading argument. Wave particle duality is not a logical nightmare. It might be to someone who only has an extremely superficial understanding of it, but the more you dig into the topic, it becomes easier to understand.
There is no analogue to this in christianity. You just have to accept it as mysterious, and then you claim that if there weren't such mysteries, it would seem fake. That's a rationalization. There is no logical reason for there needing to be mysteries to god. You need there to be one because in the reality of your beliefs there are mysteries.
I mean religion as a whole smells like a fabrication, but that's just me. I never said anything about truth or not in my previous statement, just that it's a logical nightmare, which you're admitting it is.
I'm a logician and I wouldn't call those stories a "logical nightmare". I'd even go so far as to say they have a profound deep inner logic.
It's a bit arrogant, given a book which alleges to reveal divine secrets of reality, to assume said book should all be perfectly intuitive and easy to understand. "Sacred Hidden Truths for Dummies"? :)
Think of it this way. Imaging you're immortal, and you're going to go to a deserted island for all eternity, and you can take one book with you. Suppose you want to maximize the probability that the one book you take with you will provide you value as long as possible.
You could take a practical book about how to survive on a desert island. But, since you're gonna live forever, everything in there is stuff you could figure out on your own eventually. So this book's value is only short-term.
You could take a new age book with lots of feel-good, intuitively-pleasing platitudes. But, again, you could just invent all that by yourself. Probability of eternal-term value: 0.
A collection of stories like the ones in question at least has some chance of providing eternal-term value, precisely BECAUSE on the short-term they seem so absurd. If they were intuitively pleasing at first glance, then you could just come up with them yourself eventually. This same reasoning would apply to any similar collection of stories, but the stories in question at least have a lot of precedent / test-of-time / reputable endorsements.
I'll take a stab at answering this in a different way.
I think the pride comes in assuming that the being that created the book is exactly like yourself. That assumption is egocentric.
That the nature of the being who created this universe is complex, and isn't exactly like us, shouldn't be that surprising. Any being capable of such things would surely be different from us in some material way. When that being describes himself, and those descriptions do not line up with our expectations, thats ok. He doesn't exist inside the confines of the universe he created and that we live in, and is not bounded by it or its rules.
The gospel isn't, on the whole, that complicated. All mankind are sinners. The consequence of sin is death. The way to be saved from death is to accept a divine gift. To accept the gift, you need to acknowledge your sin, accept that the giver exists and that the gift exists, and ask for it. There are further details and surprising depth and beauty, but the basics are very simple.
Some lessons are easier learned through parables/fables/stories than through direct teaching. That's especially true for children. I can tell my little daughter the story of "the boy who cried wolf", or "the dog that bit the hand that fed it", and that'll be a lot more effective than if I try to directly teach her the underlying lessons without the emotional stories attached to them.
If a higher power would try to teach me some lessons, I assume (by analogy) that those lessons would similarly come in the form of stories or parables etc. Just like my daughter understands my teachings better in that form, I assume I would understand a higher power's teachings better in that form.
If a book claims to be inspired by a higher power, and I read it and everything looks immediately feel-good intuitive/logical on the surface, than I'm going to reject it, saying: "I could have written that myself!"
> Jesus is a human embodiment of God (according to the Council of Nicaea) so he is both himself and his Son.
What you've described is called "modalism" (aka "Sabellianism", after a guy named Sabellius) and is taught against in Scripture and rejected by the Church under all non-cultish denominational flags. The doctrine of the Trinity is difficult to "wrap your arms around" but very easy to state:
1. The Father is God.
2. The Son is God.
3. The Holy Spirit is God.
4. The Father is not the Son.
5. The Son is not the Holy Spirit.
6. The Holy Spirit is not the Father.
7. There is one God.
From this the language of the Trinity (1 being, God, who consists of 3 persons, the Father, Son, and Spirit) was developed by the Church to describe what is taught in Scripture.
The logical fallacies of the Bible are only a problem if you expect the Bible to be logical, to possess a singular coherent narrative, or feel it must be taken literally. It's much easier to tolerate if you take it for what it is, an anthology of ancient mythology and poetry.
And then there's the Messiah going around saying we are all 'children of God'. So how is he different? Either he's the only son, or we're all daughters and sons, can't have it both ways. So when any of us sacrifice ourselves for others, we've done exactly as significant a sacrifice as the famous one. Or more so - because when we die, its permanent and not a sort of symbolic dying where you get to walk around and talk with your buds again for days.
Jesus would be the first born, and has preeminence (https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_...). Christians, when they enter into the family of God are adopted (in the roman sense). Jesus is different because He is God, because He was first, because when He lived on this earth He did no sin and thus when He died his sacrifice was sufficient for sins that were not His own, and because He was God, His sacrifice was sufficient for the sins of all mankind. Our deaths must atone for our own sins and can't be applied to another. According to Christian doctrine, our deaths are not permanent, as all people will be resurrected, either to live with God or to suffer punishment for rejecting Him.
Because Thanos is the protagonist - it is his story, he drives the narrative. His desires (to collect the stones) is what causes all the action and reaction.
We are asked by a story to place ourselves in the position of the protagonist- which is why reading Lolita is uncomfortable or worse.
The killing Joke is the jokers story. Batman is just in it. Infinity war is Thanos story. The Avengers are just in it.
So the decisions Thanos makes are important - especially in a under nuanced blockbuster as opposed to say Lolita as above.
It sounds like you're saying there shouldn't be stories with villains in the leading role? We shouldn't ever empathize with or put ourselves in the shoes of flawed characters?
There's a school of thought that says that portraying moral complexity is a more mature, realistic approach to storytelling than simplistic black-and-white narratives where the villains are pure evil and the heroes are pure good. Part of the reason for doing that is so that we, the audience, realize that although we might think of ourselves as good, we are capable of doing bad things. We learn that moral purity and moral certainty is a form of self-deception. Think about the moral certainty of war, for example.
Nah, he's not the protagonist. Villains in general have to be proactive for there to be a story, at least in situations where the bad guys aren't ruling the world as a dystopia.
It's like real life to be honest. Real life police officers don't go pre emptively looking for crime to stop, and the crises they stop come about because the criminal is trying to get something.
I still don't get what the big deal is. It is just a movie. A 12 year old should be able to tell what is real and what is not. Kids are dumb, but maybe not as dumb as you make them out to be.
Learning is more than rational examination of facts. A person whose mind is not fully developed, especially the rational emotional control portion, may still internalize something about how to behave without realizing it.
Many people grow and change by merely being immersed in culture and behaviors that are different from their current selves, rather than holding everything at arm's length and saying "what is this, how does it affect me." This is especially relevant for young people, who have little control over their environment and who and what they interact with.
Think back to your early years at school. How much of what you thought of the nature of the world around you was because of your particular school environment? How the teachers interacted with students? The emotional messaging in the posters on the wall?
Most of us have no idea how much of that stuff formed who we are and what we think as adults, because growing up is a long and complicated process, and no one is fully aware of how they're changing day-to-day as 12 year olds. Many of us don't know how we're changing as adults.
This really has been a common theme through mythology though. One needs to look no further than Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son on god's word. I'm not saying this is good, quite the opposite, but it seems to reflect a dark theme in humanity. The ones most likely to hurt you are your loved ones. Of course our media is going to reflect that.
At the end of the day some parental digression is required here, and if you do take your child to see this film, it may open up a good opportunity for an earnest conversation about healthy and unhealthy relationships.
I think that solution here would be to show point of view of sacrificed child too. She is getting nothing in exchange of sacrifice, has no choice and suffers more then him. Manga Berserk had this theme in it.
It does not matter whether abuser loves his victim or not.
The bit in the article about extending children's attention spans:
> explains that Rogers deliberately lengthened scenes as the theme week progressed, so that the children would get used to an environment that extended their attention spans as they became more and more familiar with the story line.
I wish more content creators would do this. I'm amazed at how many jump-cuts there are in even the most innocent-looking children's programs (e.g. "Peppa Pig" here in the UK).
'His feelings extended to programming of any kind, including advertising and entertainment watched by very young children. In a speech given at an academic conference at Yale University in 1972, Fred Rogers said, “The impact of television must be considered in the light of the possibility that children are exposed to experiences which may be far beyond what their egos can deal with effectively. Those of us who produce television must assume the responsibility for providing images of trustworthy available adults who will modulate these experiences and attempt to keep them within manageable limits.”'
Children (by definition) are not fully developed human beings. It should be obvious that care should be taken in their development, and that there should be some burden of responsibility on those creating things specifically targeted at children.
This is backed up by years of data. For instance, fast food ads aimed at children can have lifelong impacts on obesity and consumption habits: http://www.apa.org/topics/kids-media/food.aspx
You call this "quaint" if not "prehistoric". Yet you neither demonstrate that this view is old, nor explain why an old view is necessarily a wrong one.
The fact that, in 2018, much commercially-produced entertainment runs counter to Rogers' views says nothing about whether he was correct.
