[ SECRET POST #2820 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2820 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 045 secrets from Secret Submission Post #403.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[blitzwing]

reciting a plotline isn't the same as understanding it in context and being able to abstract a meaning from it

What does that even mean? If I can tell you, "Tom and his friends hid from a robber gang, and while they were in the caves they found a ghost." then please tell me how I could not know what that means. To be able to explain that it happened I had to have understood what was happening. Not just "the big blue shape moved around a lot, back and forth and then disappeared."

[(Anonymous)]

It's much simpler than its fans are willing to admit.

[blitzwing]

I like my fare simpler, actually. Now The Lorax, *that* was a good, simple movie.

[blitzwing]

A short attention span isn't the same thing as "unable to understand anything beyond bright moving colors and shapes". I mean my god, if children were unable to understand anything beyond *that*, they wouldn't be able to follow any rules at all and would essentially be on the level of nonverbal animals--but they're not. You can talk to a child and have them actually understand ideas, so long as they're not too complex. Children that young can read and write, solve puzzles (if you give them a timeline puzzle for instance, they can sort cause and effect--i.e put puzzle cards of a stove burner catching fire on a curtain, a fire starting, and firefighters arriving in proper chronological order).

It's ridiculous to act as if they have the intelligence and sensory-processing abilities of a rather unintelligent dog.

[(Anonymous)]

+1000

[blitzwing]

"not able to get what's going on beyond stuff moving on a screen" implies a complete lack of understanding of the storyline.

You are aware that you're speaking to a group of mostly over-educated nerds right? Most of us have taken Intro to Psych as well and Piaget isn't a magic word for us or anything new. What Mayim said goes beyond just "they don't get the deeper meaning/subtle points stuff and are only following the basic, surface storyline". She outright said that they were just being entertained by bright stuff moving around rather than the storyline; like animals would be.


"why are Nala and Simba arguing?"

If I recall it was because Simba didn't have the stones to go fight Scar and save the pride. That one is made really explicitly clear though; Nala says all the reasons why she's angry, and is blatantly telling him to sack up; Simba makes his arguments as well. That's the thing, kids' movies *are* simple, they do spell things out clearly. And kids can answer questions like "Why are your parents fighting?" accurately quite often--from watching their parents argue. That's the same brain that's watching arguments that Simba and Nala have. Why would one fly over their heads but not the other, if neither are especially complex?

Let's examine ole Piaget again:

children can only solve problems that apply to concrete events or objects

Okay, and where does this confirm what Mayim was saying? Most kids' movies deal with pretty concrete events and plots. "We have to save our library from being shut down!!!" stuff, not "I feel like life has no meaning; why do we exist?" stuff.

Frozen is a more thematically complex one than the Lion King or The Lorax (imo); (after all, the themes flew right over Mayim's head) but even without grasping the overall de-emphasizing of romantic love in favor of showing the importance of familial love, and deconstructing the heroic prince theme, kids can still follow the actions and plot twists and be entertained and understand what's going on in the direct, surface storyline. Your pal Piaget's words support that.

That goes far beyond what Mayim asserted they were doing--"being entertained by pretty colors and shapes" which implies a level of understanding so low that meaning isn't attached by the children to those "shapes and colors" at all.

You can agree with Mayim's words on children of that age's development or you can agree with Piaget's statements on it; but the two are contradictory so agreeing with them both makes no sense.

[making_excuses]

Imma just jump in hella late, to say I agree with you, I think what you mean is something like this right? And using myself as a example:

I could follow plots as a kid, I understood that my mother was sick and I started reading at 5, but looking back I didn't understand all the nuances and reasonings behind it, nor did I completely understand how sick my mother is and the whys and hows. A lot of what I read went straight over my head (as in The Earth Childrens series, which I could tell you the plot I remember from reading it at a really young age, but rereading it. I realized I missed a lot).

So a 7 year old will manage to follow a plot or an argument, but their world is more or less black and white and the greys that comes with ages aren't fully formed yet, so a character is bad or a character is good, and the whys behind a good or a bad character isn't explored or thought of except if they are told about it in the film.

[blitzwing]

what I think the real problem is here is that you and the OP are interpreting her (pretty colloquial) sentence in a way that I'm not. you're hearing dumb animals following a bouncy ball and I'm hearing an incomplete understanding of the parts of a story that aren't a sequence of events and really broad, telegraphed characterization *at the age of 6*.

That would be because her phrasing is really odd and specific. It's not "They just like watching Anna and Elsa do cool stuff" or "they like all the magic"--it's not even "they're just watching the *characters* move around". It specifically degrades those things to the level of shapes and colors without any meanings or associations by the watcher. Maybe it's not what Mayim meant but that's how it clearly comes across to a lot of people. In which case her word choice was shitty and kudos to you for reading the real meaning in it that's not readily apparent to most and which her word choice belies.

(understanding why your parents do what they do is complicated enough that people die without knowing why - a 6-year-old's interpretation is not going to take into account the factors behind an argument because all they can do is know that it's scary and sad, not "daddy's mad because mommy took the last $40 out of the joint checking account to buy booze" - this is what makes child abuse/witnessed DV so traumatic, because they lack any resources to handle it, so I completely disagree with you there)

Disagree on what basis? I watched my parents fight every day, and while there might have been underlying stressors I didn't pick up on, just listening to their argument made it blatantly clear what they were arguing about--"Bitch what's this sock doing on the floor? This place is a fucking pigstye" isn't exactly subtle. To imply that a 6-year old can't infer meaning from that and can only understand "scawy loud voices" is nothing short of ridiculous--and once again, reduces children of that age to uncomprehending animals. A child in the argument you mentioned would hear something like "You took our last fucking $40? You goddamned bitch!" and would know exactly what the argument was over. Unless they don't comprehend speech, which we know children of that age typically do.


I probably don't know the Lion King as well as you do, but that whole theme of a broader responsibility to your pride and facing up to what you're supposed to do because of something that happened to your dad, not to mention why Nala would care about any of it, does not sound like something that a 6-year-old would be able to independently express to me if I asked. and that's normal and healthy. they're probably excited to see Simba and Nala talking and then Nala wants Simba to go home and beat Scar and his friends are coming!

Huh, well I never noticed that theme of broader responsibility even as an adult--and there's nothing wrong with that. Themes like that are supposed to be subtle, and really only apparent if you're taking the time to analyze them from a literary/cinematic critical standpoint. That doesn't mean you have to be a genius to pick up on them, but you don't need to pick up on them to enjoy the movie.

And children can enjoy Nala and Simba beating Scar; you agree on that, I agree on that, and Piaget agrees on that. Mayim Bialik, by her words, does not.

I don't know if you care at all about my thought process here, but there it is. we disagree on this pretty strongly so I'm not imagining there's a real point to continuing the argument, but I hope my viewpoint at least makes sense. I was glad to hear yours, even if my tone is coming across more sardonic than I want it to be.

That's fine, we disagree on what Mayim meant by her words, although I don't think we disagree all that much on the development stage of children that age [debated ability to understand parent arguments withstanding]. It's always nice to have a higher-level discussion on F!S; can't remember the last time I did.

[(Anonymous)]

From an audio drama LP I had as a kid, I remember "I will rake her. I will rake her as never a murd has been raked before."
Now, I'm german, and "to avenge" sounds just like "to rake" in my language. I just figured raking people was something people did, because I didn't know the word for, or the concept of revenge, and that a "murd" must be something that one calls a younger sister, or something.
To be fair, I think I was about four or five, but here's one good example how you can remember, and still not understand.