Two and a half snouts for Sherlock Holmes

(:)(:)(: for Sherlock Holmes in theaters everywhere. The first hour of this movie made me physically ill. The context is important, I was with a mixed group of adults and kids, some of whom were younger than 13. We were out on a holiday walk in Palm Springs, arrived at a multiplex and made a split second decision that some adults and many kids would see Sherlock Holmes. Bill and I wanted to see Up in the Air which wasn't starting for an hour, so I convinced Bill that we should watch the first hour of Sherlock Holmes and then move over. Big mistake.

Probably if I had seen it just with Bill, or perhaps my almost 15 year old, I would have been fine. But seeing it with children 13, 12, 10 and 8 tormented me on their behalf. I am increasingly appalled by what the PG-13 rating deems appropriate. I swear it's way worse than anything my parents banned me from in an R rating in the 70's (Exorcist, Jaws, French Connection, you name it, I wasn't allowed to see it).

This film opens with a series of incredibly stylized close-up attacks by Watson and Holmes as they move to interrupt macabre occult killing (and implied rape) in a ghastly hall with a young woman chained and writhing on a table. How these images could be appropriate for a 13 year old, let alone an 8 year old is beyond me. Yes, I understand PG-13 is warning parents to use caution about showing it to under 13 year olds, but so many people let their under 13s see these kinds of movies these days that you're almost made to feel prudish if you don't.

Don't get me wrong, the production values are obviously high. I could watch Robert Downey Jr. fold napkins for 2 and half hours and be fascinated (Jude Law, maybe 1/2 hour). The dialogue was snappy and entertaining, and the costume, scenery, and overall dark Victorian world of the film deserve multiple oscar nominations.

It's just that the whole idea of taking a complex detective story and turning it into a highly violent action-adventure buddy film is noxious. And the violence is just gratuitous.

I've decided I've had enough of it and I'm not seeing any more action adventure PG-13 films made today without extreme pre-vetting.

P.S. Comparing notes afterwords, my children say I saw a completely different movie than they did. They weren't traumatized. They didn't find the initial scene disturbing (until I translated it for them, in retrospect with my help they do!), and they just had a blast watching H&W run around London killing people. This past weekend, District 9 was playing in our common house and my son banned me from watching it with him. He accurately observed, "my being there would ruin your experience and your being there would ruin my experience."

Increased Violence in Children's Lit?

Three snouts up for Seeing Redd, book two in The Looking Glass Wars trilogy by Frank Beddor.

Astute readers will remember that I gave The Looking Glass Wars, book 1 in the trilogy, 5 snouts up instead of a measly three (read by post). In fairness, Seeing Redd shows the same depth of imagination and gift for storytelling that Beddor evidenced in his first book.

Actually, I docked the book two snouts because upon reflection I became appalled by the violence. Both books are filled with fighting--ingenious weaponry imagined by the powerful battling "warrior queens," extraordinary methods of defending against these horrors such as hoards of murderous "glass eyes" with showers of flying razors provide the main drama of the story.

And I'm just sick of it. I doubt if Frank Beddor was as cynical as I am, but I can picture some studio executive rubbing his hands together (yes, it is being made into a major motion picture), "it's got everything, the girls will love the queens and the imagination, the parents will love the quirky take on Alice in Wonderland and everyone will love the mass murder!"

Is it my imagination or has children's literature taken a particularly violent turn lately? The Harry Potter series (which I loved) gets more and more gory and violent. The Wonderland award-winning series is brutal and, although I haven't read it yet, it seems that The Golden Compass series which is about to be released on film contains its fair share of fighting.

Is this all necessary to capture children's imaginations? Is it all being driven by Hollywood and a thirst for the inevitable jump to the silver screen? Even children's classics like the Chronicles of Narnia seem to have been made more violent as they move to movies--I don't recall nearly so much emphasis on a battle or war between Aslan and the Ice Queen as the movie focuses on.

Astute readers of children's literature will no doubt point out the gruesome events in the original fairy tales of old and site Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment where I dimly recall that he posits the pivotal psychological importance of bringing children's worst fears out in the open to the page.

But these worst fears used to be: losing ones parent (ala Bambi or Lion King), an evil stepmother, or being lost in the forest. Now they're watching the Dark Lord murder your friend, cut off someone's body parts and then sic his snake on you or watching scores of "card soldiers" mowed down by flying knives.

I, for one, don't think it is necessary or appropriate. I have come to the conclusion that at best violence in children's literature is a lazy way for writers to introduce drama and court commercial success and at worst, it fills a generation of children's minds with countless horrors and gives them the impression that the best place to apply their creativity is in coming up with interesting ways to kill people.

I know its possible to write and read exciting imaginative books that hold kids' attention without all this violence. Seeing Redd and The Looking Glass Wars ain't it.