Picturenose

Many of you will know that I am an unashamed Batman fan, and always have been. I was quite happy - eager, even, that my eldest son (who’s 10) should come to see it with me. For me, it’s the same thing as the Dads who drag their children of two years or so to see Nohope United every Saturday when the poor buggers have no idea what’s going on. I at least waited until I thought was mentally mature enough to get something out of the experience.

While in pursuit of my rapaciously hedonistic lifestyle, I was perusing the UK Sunday Times over a coffee and was surprised to see the shock horror headline Batman ‘too violent’ for children. OK, they put the ‘too violent’ in quotes (probably to avoid a costly court case) but the gist was that The Dark Knight (2008) - along with the previous Bond outing, Casino Royale (2006) - were deemed too violent for under-12s. I will grant you that the torture scene in Casino Royale did prompt my son to an audible ‘aargh!’, but then I had my legs crossed too. What it didn’t do was corrupt or deprave him any more than I’ve so far managed.

Of course, I’m not advocating that children be given completely free access to watch films such as Cannibal Ferox (1981) or Chainsaw Donkey Lesbian Gangbang (don’t bother - I made that last one up) but there are certain films I will let him see, despite their certification. Kids today grow up way too quickly as it is, and I want him to enjoy the movies he sees, as I did when I was a kid. He is very keen on films and I don’t want to spoil that for him by making him sit through the third viewing of Beethoven (1992) or some other such unedifying crap.

The Sunday Times story goes on to say that in the first week of release, The Dark Knight had garnered no fewer than 70 complaints against the 12A certification. I’m no mathematician, but if the audience figures are to be believed, some 400 thousand million people have seen this and there have been 70 complaints - largely from people who went simply to have a basis on which to complain, I’d guess. Now if we do the maths, that’s an incredibly small percentage, however you massage the figures.

There were a couple of scenes in The Dark Knight that may have been a little edgy. The pencil in the eye was sudden and surprising (but actually quite wittily done, and to a ‘bad person’ to boot), but there was nothing graphic. It was largely there to set up The Joker as an unpredictable and edgy character, which it did very well. The other point that stands out as potentially unpleasant was The Joker describing how he prefers knives to guns, as guns are too quick and you don’t get to see how someone is in death. Yes, it’s not exactly the biggest laugh in the movie, but my son was distinctly unperturbed - to the point I thought I might have to slap him in the back of the head for making such an awful row with his popcorn bag.

For me, I think that The A-Team and the like send out completely the wrong signal. There are people out there who simply aren’t nice, and who don’t play by the rules. When Mr T or Hannibal blow the bejesus out of a jeep, sending it flying into sub-space, the creeps always get out with just a tinge of whiplash, instead of being spread across a few hectares of war zone. When they capture the bad guys, they are repentant or are assured a lengthy stretch in the big house. This is not how things are. Kids today know how to understand and process this information, and whether or not it’s just to act these things out. They’re so mollycoddled in every other way, I’d be surprised if they didn’t all turn out to be completely maladjusted. Children (boys, I mean here) need to start a fire, climb a tree, fall into a pond and generally try to hurt each other with sticks - escapist fantasy stories are part of this lost boyhood, and I would hate to see it all disappear behind a cloying cloud of so-called responsible parenting.

If you want an decent example of unpleasantness, read any classic Anderson or Grimm story. Subject matter includes: transvestite wolves, threatened ingestion of small girls, poisoning, witchcraft, breaking and entering, stealing, axe attacks and many more. And all you responsible parents out there are reading this filth to your precious little boys and girls? Shame on you.