David Reynolds
Dr. Childs
English 1310
5 Sep, 2012
The movie “My Neighbor Tortoro” is great for young children, providing a
comfortable
environment for them to flourish without any emotional damage from a
negative depiction of their environment.
I
personally did not enjoy watching this movie. It was too serine for me. There
were not enough villains, not enough drama or conflict. It did not translate as
realistic to me; there were kids not afraid to walk through the woods at night,
kids not afraid of extraterrestrial beings three times their size. There was a
father whom was not concerned that his kids were standing at a bus stop on a
lonely road at late hours of the night, in the rain waiting on him. However I
do realize that the move was not made for “me” to like.
As
an adult, I know that this is not the reality of the world that we live in or
at least the world that I’ve lived in. In my world there are crimes commented
and there are also people with less than good intentions. So one would not, for
instance, allow there young daughters to wonder through a forest late at night
unsupervised. Also we as adults are hard wired to anticipate something bad
happening at some point in the movie because that is also our reality. We in a
sense have been tainted by our reality.
While
“My Neighbor Tortoro” may not appeal to the tainted minds
of us adults, however it is ideal for young children. The beauty of a child’s
logic, and the way they rationalize and perceive their world, is that it comes
from a place of innocence and purity. They have not yet been damaged by the realities
of the adult world. The movie displays the type of environment that children
are able to thrive in. It gives them the freedom to imagine. It depicts small black
ghost, or spirits and huge furry monsters as loveable creatures; allowing it to
appall to kids without instilling fear into them.
It should be
the child’s caretaker’s responsibility to shelter the child from this adult
world during childhood. At the age from
1 to 6 especially; the human brain is developing and creating synapses at a
rate faster then it will at any other time in one’s life. This makes children’s
minds very sensitive and susceptible to emotional damage that could shape their
personality and could cause effects that lasts all the way into adulthood. According to The University Record, March 29, 1999 By Bernie DeGroat, News and
Information Services, “Scary movies can have lasting effects on children
and teens.” Study say,
“While the short-term effects of watching horror movies or other films and
television programs with disturbing content are well-documented among children
and teens, a new U-M study shows that long-term effects can linger even into
adulthood. In their
study "Tales from the Screen: Enduring Fright Reactions to Scary
Media," U-M researcher Kristen Harrison and colleague Joanne Cantor of the
University of Wisconsin found that 90 percent of the study's participants (more
than 150 college students at Michigan and Wisconsin) reported a media fright
reaction from childhood or adolescence. Moreover, about 26 percent still
experience a "residual anxiety" today.”
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One in four college students in a recent study said they
experience lingering effects of a frightful movie or TV experience from
childhood. These effects range from inability to sleep to avoidance of
situations portrayed in those movies.
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