I just saw the movie David from Angel Studios. Angel put out my favorite movie, Cabrini. I saw that about 8 times. I was confident that Angel would have good content… but animation?? Honestly, I thought it might be a little lame due to the delivery style. Not so. The animation in David gave the creators the freedom to make some of the characters larger-than-life which accentuated their role in the movie. Not to give it away, but Goliath was something else, so were the Amalekites.
Speaking of the Amalekites…several days prior to seeing the movie, I heard a host on a radio program praising the movie and relating that the Amalekites could be fiercesome and scary for some kids. He mentioned coaching his young child through a couple scenes, reminding her who wins in the end. Great parenting! Indeed, the Amalekites were memorable. Depending on the age of the child, the Amalekites might leave a large impression. I am still thinking through my impressions of the Amalekites.
When my children were younger I always grappled with Charlotte’s thoughts in Volume 5 on fairy tales and scary scenes and stories. Here is the section of Chapter 17 in Volume 3 for you to ponder.
We temper Life too much for Children.—I am not sure that we let life and its circumstances have free play about children. We temper the wind too much to the lambs; pain and sin, want and suffering, disease and death—we shield them from the knowledge of these at all hazards. I do not say that we should wantonly expose the tender souls to distress, but that we should recognise that life has a ministry for them also; and that Nature provides them with a subtle screen, like that of its odour to a violet, from damaging shocks. Some of us will not even let children read fairy tales because these bring the ugly facts of life too suddenly before them. It is worth while to consider Wordsworth’s experience on this point. Indeed I do not think we make enough use of two such priceless boons to parents and teachers as the educational autobiographies we possess of the two great philosophers, Wordsworth and Ruskin.
Fairy Lore a Screen and Shelter.— The former tells us how, no sooner had he gone to school at Hawkshead, than the body of a suicide was recovered from Esthwaite Lake; a ghastly tale, but full of comfort as showing how children are protected from shock. The little boy was there and saw it all:—
“Yet no soul-debasing fear,
Young as I was, a child not nine years old,
Possessed me, for my inner eye had seen
Such sights before, among the shining streams
Of fairyland, the forests of romance:
Their spirit hallowed the sad spectacle
With decoration of ideal grace;
A dignity, a smoothness, like the works
Of Grecian art, and purest poesy.”
It is delightful to know, on the evidence of a child who went through it, that a terrible scene was separated from him by an atmosphere of poetry—a curtain woven of fairy lore by his etherealizing [render ethereal, spirit like, fluid] imagination.
But we may run no needless risks, and must keep a quiet, matter-of-fact tone in speaking of fire, shipwreck, or any terror. There are children to whom the thought of Joseph in the pit is a nightmare; and many of us elders are unable to endure a ghastly tale in a newspaper or novel. All I would urge is a natural treatment of children, and that they be allowed their fair share of life, such as it is; prudence and not panic should rule our conduct towards them.
I definitely fell on the side of bypassing fairy tales and avoiding scary stories especially early in my parenting and homeschooling years. I had some children who were, as Charlotte mentions, the type who would be bothered by scenes such as Joseph in the pit. I had to get rid of a book that contained the cookie monster (probably not a bad idea anyway) because it upset one child even affecting sleep that night. I have another child who had a bad experience with Beowulf. I read this aloud to my kids when my oldest was 12 and the affected child was 5. It seems that the finale fight with the dragon has had a lasting impact. And still today, now and then, that story comes up with a bitter tone in the child’s voice. I really haven’t pinpointed the problem or scene….probably something to discuss someday. It definitely made an impact. So these actual situations, coupled with a desire to shield them and bring only the goodness of life to their early years moved me to the camp of limited fairy tales and stories with evil characters.
As we watched David and the Amalekites lurking in the shadows, dark and foreboding, harkening of demonic oppression, I wondered how my children would react and how other children in the theater would respond. Time will tell I suppose.
Like some of my children I must be impressionable to images of monsters and evil. I tried to watch Lord of the Rings once, a long time ago. The black horsemen…not my thing. But I wonder, maybe if I had watched it through, when the black riders came riding through my life, who knows, maybe I would have been more prepared and less caught off guard. Maybe I would have been ready for the fight with evil. And first, even accepting that there was evil to fight. Head in the sand, tiptoe-through-tulips-only didn’t materialize as reality. There is evil and it is near and real.
So, Maybe.
As these children watch the scenes of evil in its hiding blackness and trampling arrogance, I hope that they will take those images and know that they too will have Amalekites to fight. Surely the forces of evil are swirling all around us in an emboldened and heightened state. Our children need to know there is evil, that it hides and lurks, that it will devour them any chance it gets. They also need to know that like David, their God is with them, will fight for them, and ultimately the battle is His.
Probably this preparation is what Charlotte was after. Whether the fairy tales they read have mild trickery such as in Riding Hood or the Three Little Pigs or the fierce black images of Lord of the Rings and Amalekites, education is about preparation. Preparation encompasses atmosphere, discipline, and life quite well. In this world, more than ever, we must prepare our children for their battle, one story at a time.
Let children have tales of the imagination, scenes laid in other lands and other times; heroic adventures, hairbreadth escapes, delicious fairy tales, even where it is all impossible, and they know it, and yet they believe. —Volume 1 Pt 4 Ch 4 p.152
A child gets moral notions from the fairy-tales he delights in, as do his elders from tale and verse. ― Volume 4 Bk2 p.10
We elders are hardly aware of the ingenuousness of the young mind, of the ignorance and simplicity of youth; and, at the same time, we fail to realise the reverence in which young people hold us just for our experience’ sake. They say pert, clever, and flippant things, and we take it for granted that they are up to everything,—are, in fact, more men and women of the world than we simple elders; so we produce our little share of worldly wisdom,—they must not think us quite simpletons,—and they are far more taken in than we suppose. They seize upon every scrap of talk which shows familiarity with the ways of the world—the rather wicked world, be it said—and from these construct a whole which is, in truth, widely different form our simple experience.” —Volume 5 p.371-372
The other, is what we may call essential Truth, or the Truth of Art; that is, ideas or certain things of common life will present themselves to the thinker as fables or stories, illustrating some of the happenings of life. Essential truth is an everlasting truth that lasts for all time.
This sort of fiction is of enormous value to us, whether we find it in poetry or romance. It teaches us morals and manners; what to do in given circumstances; what will happen if we behave in a certain way. It shows how, what seems a little venial [against the rules but forgiveable,pardonable] fault is often followed by dreadful consequences, and our eyes are opened to see that it is not little or venial, but is a deep-seated fault of character; some selfishness, shallowness, or deceitfulness upon which a man or woman makes shipwreck. We cannot learn these things except through what is called fiction, or from the bitter experience of life, from the penalties of which our writers of fiction do their best to spare us. — Volume 4 p.160