Quote Originally Posted by mattbcl View Post
Blade, I'd like to think that I grew up with the Internet in much the same way as you did, with sincerity and innocence on my side, but I'm not certain I can say that truthfully. I think that makes you a magnificent exception to a series of general results. But I don't think Bear and Magmar are "playing a card" on this subject, so much as lending a voice to the concern that in general, face-to-face interaction is being marginalized and there's potential for your average wired-in human being to lose sight of what a healthy life of social interaction ought to include.

Moving on to a slight tangent for this subject, this weekend I found myself saying aloud, "It's very tragic and heartbreaking that young children were involved in the shooting... but what on earth are parents doing bringing kids that age into a midnight premiere for what's clearly to be a violent movie?" I was not saying it to blame the parents for getting their kids shot at; I was simply attempting to question the wisdom of parents who seemed to think children below the double digits were ready to see this sort of thing. Not even just the 6-year-old, but there was a 4-month-old in there, too - is it really a good idea to bring in a baby who's liable to scream and cry in the midst of the viewing? That child would be scared to death by the gunfire, the shouting... not to mention the spontaneous need to feed. Do parents who do this somehow think any of those scenarios would not in some way interrupt the viewing experience of those around them? I don't want to hear a crying baby when I'm watching a movie...

Then I stumbled across this article this morning, and it made me wonder if I was perhaps coming down on them a bit too hard. On the other hand, it's inspired me to wonder - when will I be ready for MY kids to see movies like TDKR? Obviously I can't control the behavior of other parents, but I can at least be in control of my own actions when I eventually become one, and if it's going to come down to nothing less than a personal judgment call... I don't want my kids anywhere near it until I can rest assured they understand the difference between fantasy and reality.

Thoughts on this?
I agree with you, on multiple points. But I'm going to touch on the bringing a child to a midnight showing one.

This one I feel mixed on. The couple says they brought their kids to the movie because they have to live their life, and while some would question which movie they brought them to, or the fact that it was a midnight showing, I have to agree that for some people there isn't much of a choice. They are an unmarried couple with two children, and I would hazard a guess one income considering the fact that the recent addition is only 4 months old. Childcare is expensive, and not everyone has family willing to babysit, or any family at all, and its often hard for parents of young children to have time to be a couple and not just partners in parenting. If he's working all day, she's taking care of the kids, then when he gets home he helps take care of the kids etc, they probably don't get much time to be anything but parents, let alone spend some time with each other.

They said that they brought the kids hoping they would sleep through the movie so that for once in probably a long time they could see what it feels like to date each other again. Its really easy to sit back and be judgmental but we are not living their lives, and someone on the outside of our lives looking in could equally judge anything we do if we were suddenly in the spotlight.

That being said, the thing that bothers me the most about that couple was the fact that the man not only put his baby down and busted himself out of the theatre, leaving both his kids and his girlfriend still inside during the shooting, but he got in his car and left them there. While I understand everyone fight or flight response is different, and putting aside the fact that he left his girlfriend since I don't know how stable their relationship was beforehand, he left his KIDS in there. I'm having a hard time understanding that since usually the bond between a father and his kids is one where he would lay down his life for them. I'm trying really hard not to judge him since I was never in that sort of situation and I don't know how I would react for sure, but if I were his girlfriend I would be thinking long and hard about going through with marrying him after that. I don't know if personally I would trust him since he would have already shown how he handles an emergency.