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A trailer (see below) for the upcoming film of Where the Wild Things Are is out on the Web, and while I know the world has bigger problems, watching it infuriated me. I don't want a real-life Max, who goes to school and has a backstory! I especially don't want to see his face while he peers at his parents kissing in their bedroom! Nor am I moved by the 2009 special-effects version of Maurice Sendak's 1963 monster illustrations. Why did Hollywood have to come for this short poem of a children's book, which I'II bet many of us know by heart?
The magic of children's literature is the magic of imagination, of making up the visual renderings and actions of the characters for yourself. I know that some books are filmmaking candy, and to the inevitable screen version of Harry Potter I am resigned. I'll even concede that once in a while the movie or TV version of a kids' book augments the original, though for me these exceptions are usually cartoons, like The Hobbit. (And no I am not pleased that there seems to be a real-life version of that one in the works.) But do the imagination thieves in Hollywood really have to rob me of Max? All I want from him are the few words Sendak gives him. No more.
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Emily and Hanna, you might be interested in This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick's 2006 documentary about the Motion Picture Association of America.
Through a side-by-side comparison of footage, Dick revealed several prevailing MPAA biases: beyond drawing distinctions that favor violent displays over sexual ones, the MPAA seems to punish homosexual and female sexual displays with harsher ratings. Additionally, Dick asserted that the MPAA is intimidated into assigning more lenient ratings to big studio films while cracking down on the content of movies that were independently produced.
The MPAA claims to be comprised of average parents with children ages 5 to 17. Dick discovered, however, that some of the raters didn't even have children and none had received any formal training for their job. This might explain why you found their ratings (ostensibly created for parents' use) to be more than a little off-base.
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On a different topic: I took my 5-year-old son to see The Tale of Despereaux this week and then cursed its apparently kid-safe G rating when he found it really scary. I looked into the meaning of G for General Audience and learned that the promise of "minimal violence" that the rating makes often isn't kept. More from me on this here. Have any of you tangled with fearsome kids' movies, and what if anything do you do about it? For my kids, the problem isn't quickie punches or even shootings. It's prolonged suspense, which movie makers often seem unable to resist. I don't try to shield my kids from everything harsh or sad, but movies exert real power over kids because of their visual impact. When a film keeps one of my kids up at night, I wish he hadn't seen it. Thoughts?
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