Children Don't Die

In our movie going experiences we rarely see children killed. And what I mean by that is we really never see a child, say under the age of 16 mamed, slaughtered, sliced, diced or shot. Now, I'm not saying that we need see more of it, I'm just wondering...why.

It seems okay to kill adults. Men and women are off-ed all the time in movies, sometimes in the most gruesome of ways. And there are probably a few movies out there where a child has met a gruesome death, but it's rare.

Children are mostly portrayed as precocious, survivors that, if they do die, die in dramatic scenes that require a hankie. They never seem to get their heads lopped off, or shot through the chest with a shotgun, or punched Kung-Fu style in the throat. Yet we as an audience tend to accept the same torture if the character is old enough to vote.

In the real world, children are killed every day. So it's not an unrealistic thing to portray on film. In fact, I would say that a childs death in the real world is more common than an action hero, or serial killers way of dispensing victims in the movies, it's a little more...natural?

Why is it OK for us to like violence in movies when the victim is an adult, and not OK when the victim is a child?

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I have been formatted to fit this screen.

r66-The member who always asks WHY?

'Cause.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

....just thought of Jaws; the boy on the yellow raft; that scene was effective because it made us believe that the shark was real, nobody was safe.

Holden...such insight, such honesty, are you slummin'?

Because the horror of death is not so much that it happens, but that it sometimes happens before we're ready for it.

In other words, it feels entirely fair to me that life comes to an end. I'm okay with the idea that I'm going to die, so long as I get a chance to live first. When a child dies, it feels as if the "deal" has been broken.

Or, if you're feeling less philosophical, it's because children are vulnerable, and the whole thing is purely instinctual.

But Chris this is the movies! We can accept "A Galaxy, Far, Far Away" but the thought of a child meeting a gruesome demise is a turn-off--we won't spend our money?

Well, it is fictional, yes, but most of the time it's still realistic, and even when it isn't, it's really just a placeholder for things that are. No one believes in the Dark Lord Sauron or the existence of hobbits, but they do believe in good and evil, which is enough to help the audience respond to the characters. Similarly, even if a child's death onscreen is fictional, it's generally not so outlandish that it isn't something which has probably happened in real life. Isn't that how all movies produce emotional responses? By being similar to (or reminding us of) something real?

I think it's intellectually dishonest, myself, though I understand the emotion of it. But I put no greater worth on the life of a child than an adult. I hate when newscasts mention some tragedy where 'sixty-three people were killed...including five children' or whatever, as if that is somehow special and makes the situation more regrettable. How many people over the age of sixty were killed? How many Catholics? How many Chicago Bears fans? How many one-eyed Scandanavians women named Judy? A person's death, especially in an accident or because of an act of violence, is equally horrible and sad no matter the age, sex, race, nationality or religious affiliation.

As for why Hollywood is skittish about killing children or violence towards children on screen, it's because of that same bias, and the sentiment Yoda has put forth (in his first post). That to me smacks too much of original sin, which I put no stock in personally. On a purely emotional and abstract level, it's much more tragic for a person who has lived and knows how wonderful/horrible it can all be to die prematurely, as they have a real idea of exactly what they're missing. A child (most children anyway) has no such perspective.


Films over the years that have broken through this minor taboo and killed-off kiddies, from Fritz Lang's M to James Whale's Frankenstein to Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time in the West to Spielberg's Schindler's List to Lars Von Trier's Dogville, have done so memorably. But those are all first-rate filmmakers and great films. When it's done in a schlocky manner, as in Child's Play or Con Air, it leaves a bad taste for the simple reason that people have this bias built into their thinking, and in a crap little horror or action movie it unexpectedly forces such audience members to confront their hypocrisy, that they find dozens of fictional characters portrayed by adults being savagely killed is somehow entertainment yet a character portrayed by a child is over the line. Either enjoy the schlock for what it is and make no distinction whether it is say John Malkovich or Haley Joel Osment being burtalized on screen for "fun", or be made uncomfortable by both.

Or don't.


But yes, it is a double standard, r3port3r, and no matter how you rationalize it, when all is said and done it's just a double standard.

i wouldnt be affected at all if a child dies on screen because i know its fake but there are people who will get really angry at doing.
in dawn of the dead(1979) two child zombies get killed. does that count?

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"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theater admission and the babysitter were worth it."
- Alfred Hitchcock

I think we believe subconsciously that an adult should have avoided the bad situation, and having got into it, they should have the wit and strength to get themselves out of it (even if they don't, people often make this sort of judgement of others as an assurance to themselves that this scary thing won't happen to them). We don't extend those judgements to children.

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All deaths are a tragedy, indeed, but it seems odd to me to declare that no death is better or worse than any other death. Surely we can agree, for example, that the death of an upstanding, generally moral individual is more of a tragedy than the death of a violent criminal, or a murderous dictator. And if we're willing to make qualitative judgements based on what someone does with their life, I don't think it's much of a stretch to take into account how much life that person had left, as well.

Life does not occur in a vaccuum. How much of your life you have lived, and how you have lived it, factors into these kinds of things, and reasonably so. I'm not suggesting we assign point values to everyone's existence, but if what your saying is taken to its logical conclusion, you'd draw no distinction between carefree toddlers and 90-year-olds on their deathbed. It's absurd on its face.

hmmm...
So it isn't as sad when a bad person dies?

But... if the purpose of a person's life is to find the good path, and they don't.. isn't that sadder than if a person dies who never had time to screw up their life?

I think, for the most part, killing a child on screen always reeks of malicious intent, as if the child was killed not for plot or character development, but simply for the sake of striking that harsh nerve with the audience. Whether the audience actively thinks about it or not, I think your average viewer will assume that the child's death was avoidable and having it happen was a direct assault on your emotions. I think the problem arrises as to why children aren't killed more often is because it seems cheap (and in most cases it is). Most viewers (and by extension most producers) feel that something could be done differently to extract the same emotions. Killing a child is just a shortcut to that spot and I think alot of people don't want to be taken on that shortcut as it just doesn't feel necessary.

I don't think it is necessairly the quality or duration of life, it just doesn't seem normal. One reason for this is that movies, most movies, are made for adults. They feature adults as the main characters, when you bring a kid into it and kill them off, you've brought in someone outside of the realm the film characters and the audience share and it will almost always seem forced. Killing a child will just make a person feel exploited. People feel robbed because they didn't pay good money to see kids brought in and killed. Most of the time they want to see a story that they can relate to or that interests them, bringing a child into it and killing them off is just alien.

That isn't always the case as a child's inclusion into a movie can obviously be integral to the plot, but if it isn't expected it is just exploitive.

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Horror's Not Dead
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Depends on how religious you want to get, I suppose. If there's nothing beyond, then no. I presumed we were talking from a secular standpoint, where we can only measure the impact of the person's death from their perspective or ours, not, say, God's.

I think you can make the case that we've already decided that certain deaths are more or less tragic right from the get-go when we proclaim that some behavior is "good" or "bad." Would there be any point in saying this if we also said, then, that there was no difference between the cessation of those activities through death?

I'm not disputing this point. I'm just saying there are philosophies in which a "good" death is one in which a "good" person dies. I'm not sure God (if she exists ) is in as big a hurry to punish "bad" behaviour as we're taught to believe. The cringe-factor associated with the death of a child is more common than the notion of the justice of the judeo-christian God. Does that make any sense?

No.

heh...
ok
The point was made that we feel sorrier seeing an innocent child die because a child hasn't done anything to anyone. They're innocent. And we don't want to see an innocent person die. But we don't mind seeing a person die who isn't innocent. We don't mind seeing a bad guy die. In fact, we tend to be pretty happy to see a bad person die.

I'm saying that that isn't necessarily universal, though. I'm saying there are philosophies in which it is worse to see a bad person die, because they have not fulfilled the purpose of their life. They died before they found the good in themselves.

So the philosophy behind being glad to see a bad guy die isn't universal. But Holden is the only person in this quadrant of the galaxy who doesn't think it's sadder to see a child die. (hahaha) So I'm saying that there's something else going on that makes it worse to see a child die than just that they were innocent. Because not everybody thinks it's a bad thing for an innocent person to die. Some people think it saves them from going on to commit horrible mistakes. Or that it means they never would have committed horrible mistakes, God knows that, and has therefore arranged an early exit for them.

Yoda is right, for anyone who believes that bad people deserve to die for being bad. I'm just saying that that can't be the only thing that bothers people about seeing a child die, because not everyone thinks it's great to see a bad person die.

Killing off a child brutally in movies is for shock value. No healthy adult wants to see children brutally killed. This is why you see these types of things mainly in horror films; where shock value is the key to a good gory film. Suspense or drama movies that have children that die, brutally or not, is sad. They don't touch on the "ewwwwness" like they do in horror flicks. They make the audience feel anything other than "ewww". If they did this, the movie would then be called a horror movie. Imagine if they were contantly making movies where children are constantly dying, don't you think it would be sickening, not to mention contraversial in the media. Personally, I think there are some movies where it is so strange that killing a child would fit in it...I lost my point I had in the beginning...but seriously, like Yoda was getting at, I will add to that...A child represents innocence, and seeing, let alone hearing of a childs death is shocking. A child really can do no harm, and when it is murdered, that is sickening and very very sad. When it dies accidently it is also sad because this child never got a chance to see what life can bring him/her. He/She never got a chance to experiment, to enjoy the things we as adults enjoy, to feel strong emotions, to feel what it is like to be responsible. (I know children feel strong emotions, but I mean the way an adolescent feels or an adult feels....in other words understanding where the emotion is coming from)

Personally, seeing children die or get killed off in movies doesn't really bother me or affect me, because I know that it's fake, but like most people, I can't imagine too many scenarios where it would be necessary to gruesomely kill a child or children in a movie.

One instance of a gruesome child murder that I can think of from a movie is one of the nightmare sequences from "An American Werewolf in London". Technically you don't see the children get killed, but there's no doubt that it happens, and it's an F'D up scene!! I still get kinda' shocked when I watch that scene, but only because of how reckless and gruesome it is.

I don't know what this says about me, but for the record, I get more emotional watching a dog get killed or die in a movie than I do over children. Maybe it's cause I live in New York and I come across like, 35 annoying kids a day, or maybe it's because I'm a dog person. You Make the Call!!!

I don't care if a kid gets killed in a movie. The visuals of seeing a child die burden the same feeling of seeing an adult die. Death is death, it is when it is placed in context that defines whether it is good or bad (or appropriate or not). Whether it appears or not in a film isn't the issue, motive as to why it was in there in the first place is what makes or breaks it.

For example, in the Anime series Berserk there is a moment when the hero, Gats, sneaks into a castle and kills its lord. As he is standing there watching the man die he sees a person enter the room out of the corner of his eye. Like the badass that he is, his instant reaction is to kill the person. You seem him dash across the room and you watch as the sword goes into the person. Then it cuts to a side shot of a boy (the lord's son) pinned against the wall. The animators do a pretty damn good job of showing the life slip away from the boy. People could take offense to the fact that someone drew a boy getting run through (and by an incredibly large sword I might add), but the death of the boy and the reaction that the audience automatically feels is stacked onto the expression on Gats' face. He obviously wouldn't have slammed the boy against a wall if he had known it wasa boy. He is ashamed and in shock. He stands there, staring at the boy with his freeking huge sword in his stomach.

It is actually one of the most powerful moments in all 25 episodes, because it is one of the rare moments Gats (who is built as an unflinching killing machine) actually shows emotion. It works perfectly because it is aware of the extra emotion that cames with killing a child and it was necessary to the plot.

Anyways, for the people who think kids only get killed in horror movies or that their deaths in horror movies are terribly gory, I'm interested in knowing what horror movies you're talking about...I hate it when people treat the genre like it is a bad word, without really being able to back it up. Maybe I'm just drawing a blank right now, but I can't think of any horror movies where a child is killed in any manner of a gory demise.

I am not against horror movies, in fact I am a huge lover of horror movies. I also did not say that children only get killed in horror movies. Movies that I am thinking of are on the top of my head...A Nightmare on Elm Street; Sleepaway Camp (the first one); Jeepers Creepers 2; Friday the 13th; Pet Semetary; Bless The Child; IT.