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KILL BILL II SPOILERS I'm here adressing to people who saw Kill Bill 2. I saw it a few days ago and a question keeps bugging me. You know the few last scenes, when Bill says all these horrors in front of the little girl... Would you be the mother or father of the little girl acting in the movie, would you agree to let her hear such things ? I think I wouldn't.
[ June 07, 2004, 11:21 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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I wonder about this in any movie, to be honest. I would have to see it again to find out if the little kid was in all the shots where the worst things were said. If you don't see the person speaking in the same frame as the young actress, then there is a chance that the child was not present for the worst of it. IIRC, the two scenes she was in the most all the dialogue was double entendres. The first big one was when Bill was "playing" with her as The Bride runs in. The second was the sandwich scene. I don't recall either of those being too bad.
Curious. I am sure there are laws and such about it.
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I was thinking about the scene where he tell The Bride about the gold fish the little girl killed.
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Haven't seen Part II yet so excuse some minor ignorance, though I have a pretty good idea of what Tarentino dialogue sounds like.
The decision doesn't seem like an obvious fold to me. Let's run some completely fake numbers. Say the salary for the part was $50,000. There's perhaps a 1% chance these scenes will be so scarring as to require $100,000 of therapy. Say another 2% chance that he will develop an incurable form of pottymouth that lowers his future earning potential by $300,000. We're still very much ahead of the game -- practically freerolling -- before starting to factor in advantages like furthering his career, working toward personal life goals, and increasing the future opportunity to hit on Natalie Portman.
Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999
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Oh, I'm glad to know it's financially feasible, Richard.
I think the kind of parents who would let their child be a part of something that awful on the grounds that it's "not that bad" need to seriously sort out their values system.
Posts: 99 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Well, to be supportive of decent parenting...
Sheltering a child from things doesn't make one a good (or bad) parent. It just means you have more to explain later. My daughter at 5 knows a lot of curse words (told not to use them, of course), parts of the human body she wants to ask about (in terms that make sense to a 5 year old, of course, this isn't bio 101) and she knows that the world has some scary things going on in it right now. She sees guns, war, and death on the headlines of the paper that she might pick up off our porch, in the homes of friends when she visits or even in discussion at school. Instead of sheltering her, she knows she can ask us anything and we will try to find an answer that gets her through things.
That said, if she was into theatre (which she is getting close to) and she had a chance to do a role in a great show, I would leap at that chance. Obviously I wouldn't put her in a position to be hurt but if the worst thing was some language that can be talked about, no big deal. I would be more worried about stuff that she was asked to do or have done to her.
For example, would parents be okay with their little ones to be in Medea? There was a nationally recogized tour of this classic piece of art that a friend worked on in Chicago. Medea kills her own two children to prevent them from being murdered. Two little children played these roles and while it was "artistic" sort of murder (it wasn't Evil Dead) it was still a passionate and horribly emotional scene. Much more difficult than hours of hearing (maybe, I am not convinced the daughter heard too much) Carradine say the same lines over and over.
There is also the son in "Macbeth" who gets killed, as well. These roles are happening all the time all over the country. How should these roles be handled?
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I have to say that most kids these days, once they're in school, know every offensive curse in the book, whether they use it or not.
I'd let the kid do the role, then just talk with them about the appropriateness of that kind of language later.
Posts: 2245 | Registered: Nov 1998
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I'm with fil and Troub. Furious denial of the world seems far less effective parenting than active comprehension of how the world works. So long as the child understands it's wrong to kill animals, understands that the characters played by Thurman and co. are fictional and utterly unrealistic or admirable (at least, admirable for their respective talents at murder), and actively works to be a moral person, I see no harm or foul in the kid's participation in the movie.
In fact, I have to say, I'd have far more respect for any given parent or child if the kid grows up to be a good person with full comprehension of the alternatives, more respect than I'd have for any parents or children who grow up knowing only vague, frightened rumors of other ways of life. It's that sort of idiocy which continues the existence of homophobia and racism.
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BTW, don't let my post be interpreted as an endorsement of taking kids to see adult-themed movies in a theater. The experience carries none of the advantages of a young film career. Even though you might have to add a babysitter to the cost/benefit analysis, the probability of having to repair strangulation injuries to the "adults" is too high.
Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999
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I actually don't think I would want my child (if I had one) to be an actor in any movie. It seems that almost all child actors have tons of problems.
Posts: 1901 | Registered: May 2004
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I haven't seen the movie, but I often wonder about this, particularly with movies in which kids smoke or in which theyt are oversexualized.
Last night, I was watching Law and Order: SVU, and I thought about this. The little girl in the episode did not have cancer, but I suspected it was more than possible that the actress playing her did. And so, when the character is being told that she doesn't really have cancer, that she will live after all, I wondered what effect this scene would have on the actress if she was in fact dying, and constantly contrasting the role with her reality.
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I get freaked out by oversexualized kids in the media. Particularly when it seems that the kids themselves are too young to actually have any of those feelings, and are just mimicking sexually provocative poses or expressions for the camera. There's this catalog with teenage girl clothes called Delia's that I get because I ordered stuff for my nieces off their Christmas lists from there. In it are often girls who look maybe 11 or 12 or 13 who are posing sort of like Victoria's Secret models and it totally creeps me out. Prostitots, indeed. Their expressions look even more fake than those of the VS models. They look downright uncomfortable, in fact. Am I weird for thinking this is extremely icky? Is there something we should do to protect these girls from themselves or from their stage moms or from the peddlars of clothes or all three? Other than not buying the clothes, I don't know if there is. It's not actually porn. It's just icky. Maybe this just means I'm finally getting old and fogiesh. Do you think?
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On the one hand, we've gotten extremely repressive about childhood innocence. There was an article in Time or Newsweek a few months ago where they elicited impressions from random people of pictures of naked kids running around. A surprising majority used the word "pornographic." Turns out, their sources were all taken from the covers of home & garden magazines, Sears catalogs, and similar from the 40s and 50s. Then there's the crowd (some of them posting here) who thinks we should be carting kids off to jail because they imitate the webcam scene from American Pie. The only conclusion is that society has developed an undercurrent of fear regarding any nudity that might be considered kiddie porn. Fear won't protect you, especially if you close your eyes:
And yet, the huge subculture I'll call "JonBenet parents" is thriving. You can force your child into whatever activities and poses you like, so long as they cover the important parts. I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but Delia's is nothing. A ton of money is being made on the Internet "nonude" circuit selling these pictures to "collectors." They're also "traded" like any other form of popular media via semi-private P2P, and they have their own Usenet newsgroup. It's not even that far underground; so long as you can't see nipple or vagsu, cops can't do anything. And if you think that's the full extent of what digitally-inclined parents are up to, once they learn the ropes from WebeWebeWeb under complete legal protection...well, you're wrong.
So you see why I think those upset at kids getting a nice check and career boost to watch Uma swing a sword and say a few four-letters under lots of supervision, are tilting at windmills.
Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999
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In the X2 commentary, (I'm pretty sure it must have been X2 because it was a girl) there was a child actor who was fining the cast and crew. This is the avatar used by Stryker Jr. in Cerebro 2, not at the school. I forget the amount but there was a swear jar. Just having a child "working" in an adult environment such as a movie set can expose them to salty talk.
The overall question of a child working, even if it is work that most adults would assume is fulfilling, is another question.
Posts: 383 | Registered: Nov 2003
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I don't care about nudity - as a matter of fact I would be less upset if my 4 years old daughter sees a man naked than if she hears some... Well, pervert things like the fish scene in Kill Bill II.
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