I am now on a crusade

I owe my son an apology.
 
He’s eight and he hides his head or leaves the room during commercial breaks on TV, for fear of seeing something that will upset him. I failed to see the menace in a Miller Light or Dove commercial. I thought him overly sensitive, a chicken, a bit of a wuss really. I mean do you know any eight year-old who runs away during...commercials?!
So last Thursday, we happily sat down to watch another episode of Survivor. Commercial break. Papou runs to his room. And then, with no warning whatsoever, after a mellow car commercial and prior to a scrumptious pizza commercial, they aired the trailer of the horror movie “Silent Hill”. With no warning whatsoever: thirty seconds of horror, of monsters so horrible it left even a hardened adult like me shaken. All I could do was quickly lower the volume to stiffle the agonizing screams and thank God that Papou was not with me.

I was shocked and then angry, with the intense anger of powerlessness. Sure, I can write a letter or two, but I’ve no illusions that I can change the current trend of raising the bar of what’s acceptable to an insane level.

The scales fell from my hardened, blasé eyes when I suddenly realized that my son is not odd. He’s normal! He SHOULD be apprehensive at being unwillingly exposed to all the horror, and violence, and sadness the movies and television dish out like junk food. It’s society and all the other little kids who take that in without blinking that are distorted. From now on, not only will I do my very best to filter what my son sees, but I will also be proud of him for needing that. It means he is still intact.

Other exemples of what I’m talking about?

• 5 and 6 year-olds sitting in the theater to watch “Jurassic Parc”
• During a matinee presentation of “Finding Nemo”, the trailer of “Pirates of the Caribeans” presented to an audience full of toddlers
• The great Spielberg thinking it acceptable to include an unbearable scene of torture in “A.I”
• A 3 year-old girl I know who saw all three movies of “The Lord of the Rings”
• A classical children tale like “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” made into a movie so intense and sometimes scary that it’s not fit for younger audiences
  

ENOUGH ALREADY!