There’s a significant comment from one author who remarks that some parents would shudder at the thought of their children playing with replica machine guns, but are perfectly happy to let them play with mock medieval swords and shields. Somewhow our attitude to the infliction of violence is tempered by our capacity to historicise, intellectualise or otherwise modify the portrayal of the violence.
And, as is often overlooked, children are essentially less ’socialised’ and more primal creatures than adults, who have learnt the rules of conforming to society, of ‘polite’ behaviour and how to be nice. Children are raw beasts, with a potential for cruelty and violence and aggression that is natural to any untamed creature. One manifestation of this is our social shock and outrage at a child’s violent act, such as occasionally make the news headlines. But it is wrong to confuse children with angels; they only become angels by teaching and learning and ‘humanising’ them. Left un-nurtured, as The Lord of the Flies demonstrates, children would revert to the bloodthirsty and savage behaviours innate to all of us.
Young boys, notoriously, can be consumed with drawing pictures of violent or aggressive acts, and some psychologists would see such behaviour as a manifestation of their inner anger or violent tendencies, perhaps. But it’s a trifle hypocritical, I feel, to be judging children on these terms when often the stories they’re told contain some of the most horrendous acts of cruelty and violence imaginable. Hansel and Gretel burn an old woman (a witch, granted) alive in her own oven! In Cinderella the ugly sisters cut off their toes to make them fit the glass slipper! The wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother – whole – and is then slaughtered by a woodcutter!
The origins of fairytales, as this article points out, was to give children a morality tale, and very often the stories contained darker elements which seem inevitably to be toned down for today’s readers/listeners. But authors like Roald Dahl re-popularised the grotesquery of everyday cruelty, often centred on a child being mistreated or otherwise abused by parents or parental figures. Something about Dahl’s child-friendly gore and ruelty certainly catured my imagination as a child, and his stories remain popular today. His stories revolve around the empowerment of children, and never contain wanton or casual violence.
I consider it to be important for children to have the freedom of expression to be able to articulate angry thoughts and feelings – or the freedom to openly articulate any feelings, so as to avoid the feelings of pent-up frustration that may lead to aggressive outbursts. At the same time, clear boundaries must be set about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate – cartoon violence seems safely in the realm of fantasy, whereas agression in live-action children’s TV somehow has a more powerful ‘reality’ which children may absorb as more acceptable.
And instead of condemning and shutting off children’s agressive expression, it is always worth seeking to understand where it’s coming from; what inexpressed feelings are they seeking to articulate through pulling hair or smashing ornaments or drawing scenes of bloodshood or violence? And more seriously, what is happening for a child who is taunting, bullying or even torturing other children, or family pets? What need do they have which is being unsatisfied, leading them to seek gratification in such a way?
It is never too late to begin to unravel a child’s expressions of inner thoughts and feelings, and to understand what may be behind them. Only by doing this can we help to avoid a more ‘adult’ expression of violence in the child’s future, where the outcome may be less trivial and more overtly damaging to others.
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