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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

Why not just let them discover it for themselves like they would any other movie?

It's a famous movie about spaceships , aliens and lasers; I had parents with no interest in Sci Fi and I still saw it by the time I was 9, as well as playing all the old school SW video games (XWing, Rebel Assault , Tie Fighter).

What always surprised me is that the star wars films have a "U" rating here in the UK (which means suitable for everyone) rather than at least a PG (meaning suitable for older children with parental discretion) considering the amount of violence.

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You ask: Why not let them discover it for themselves?

In our social circles, many kids see Star Wars before age 5 and most have seen it by age 6. For many, that will be their first exposure to violence and evil. Depending on your values around violence (graphic or otherwise) and evil, you might want your kids to discuss and assimilate what they're seeing in a thoughtful manner.

Exactly. Star Wars was coming up at school literally every day. This was their first exposure to anything close to "evil" and certainly their longest exposure to guns/blasters. It's a War Movie, no question. Going from zero violence to two hours of violence without explanation is a lot for a little mind. I just chose to eek it out in bits and provide context.

The best part of this experiment/experience was that we ended up talking in aggregate for at least 3x longer than the length of the movie. A lot of good discussions came out of this that wouldn't have had we shown the movies all at once. Little people need time to absorb, consider, argue, dream and understand complex stuff.

It seems surprising that Star Wars was so many peoples first introduction to anything violent or "evil". I remember watching things like Ninja Turtles, He Man and even Loony Tunes cartoons which all contained violence and villains long before SW.

Funny that you mention Ninja Turtles as both boys watched the 90s live action version of TMNT and while there's a lot of ersatz kung fu neither of them thought of the bad guys as truly malevolent and weren't put off by the violence. I think it's the introduction of guns/blasters and swords that are demonstrated to do real damage where things get dodgey.

I think that fantasy violence is more tolerated by the censors. Generally that seems reasonable to me. Probably should be PG or above though.

A U rating in the UK means for over 4 year olds however. - http://www.bbfc.co.uk/classification/guidelines/u/

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