I think I've missed this 'write responsibly one' *goes to check metafandom. My mother was an English Lit teacher and she let me read absolutely whatever I wanted. Sometimes, I'd pick up a book that she wasn't sure about, and she'd say that if might be a little bit too grown-up for me. Sometimes I read it anyway and sometimes I didn't, but it was definitely up to me. Heh, random point, my sister and I started reading/writing explicit fanfic when she was 14/15 and I was 16/17. Also, an adult fic writer I know wrote explicit power play/non-con...which one of her 14-year-old fans printed out and passed round the class at school!!! The writer was appalled, which is how I heard about it.
I agree with your point about visual versus textual too. Random anecdote - i watched a TV adaptation of 'The Silver Chair' when I was 5/6/7 or so. Mum had been trying to explain to me for a while that what happens on the telly isn't actually the literal truth, and they people are actors. I watched the lady turn into a snake and get stabbed through the neck. I looked thoughtful and said "that lady was an actress, wasn't she?" and Mum said yes, thinking "thank God we've got that straight!" I followed it with "But she's dead now," because to me it made a strange sort of sense that you might want the role so much you wouldn't mind dying (I think there's a very good argument that little children don't understand death because they can't imagine a world without them in it). Mum had to explain. So I really do think that the way that violent films and TV programmes glorify violence and make extreme violence the logical response to any problem could actually be having a detrimental effect on people (and that's before we get started on video games), especially young teens and kids.
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Date: 2007-06-10 04:40 pm (UTC)I agree with your point about visual versus textual too. Random anecdote - i watched a TV adaptation of 'The Silver Chair' when I was 5/6/7 or so. Mum had been trying to explain to me for a while that what happens on the telly isn't actually the literal truth, and they people are actors. I watched the lady turn into a snake and get stabbed through the neck. I looked thoughtful and said "that lady was an actress, wasn't she?" and Mum said yes, thinking "thank God we've got that straight!" I followed it with "But she's dead now," because to me it made a strange sort of sense that you might want the role so much you wouldn't mind dying (I think there's a very good argument that little children don't understand death because they can't imagine a world without them in it). Mum had to explain. So I really do think that the way that violent films and TV programmes glorify violence and make extreme violence the logical response to any problem could actually be having a detrimental effect on people (and that's before we get started on video games), especially young teens and kids.