Shea and I have been showing the kids a lot of our favourite movies from when we were growing up – “Dirty Dancing” to “Adventures in Babysitting” to “Airplane!” – movies that both of us remember being allowed to watch by our parents at relatively young ages with no censorship or restrictions (*maybe* I’d be told to cover my eyes if a sex scene came on.)
One of the most fascinating things is realising how different these movies may seem in our current age, both because societal mores have changed but also now that we’re the parents and our own nervousness about the kids hearing/learning something unexpected from these movies (more along the lines of concerns about the racism and sexism than the sex or violence usually.) And to be fair, Sasha heard about a pretty intense PG-13 movie about residential schools at school that we watched as a family last night. Once we got into it, we had moments of thinking it might not be appropriate for someone her age but after checking in, we kept watching as honestly, I think it’s more about the conversations than the content in situations like that.
Even one of the most beloved, highest-grossing films of all-time, E.T., is not immune from being updated for modern times as the Anniversary Edition took out references to terrorism, scenes of guards holding guns, and the insult “penis breath”.
Steven Spielberg later said he regretted some of the changes he made due to criticism from advocacy groups when the film was originally released:
The director has since said he regrets the changes. “Not because of fan outrage,” he told Sean O’Neal of The AV Club website, “but … I was overly sensitive to some of the criticism ‘E.T.’ got from parent groups when it was first released in ’82, having to do with Eliott saying ‘penis breath’ or the guns.”
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