Award-winning children’s author Ted Dewan is tackling the delicate subject of representations of violence in children’s tales head on. Dewan, backed by bestselling author Mark Haddon (whose wee boy has contributed illustrations to the book) explains that young boys, when drawing, often depict scenes of violence but that this isn’t an indicator of some barely repressed pathology in the child’s mental makeup – the kids, as he goes on, can differentiate between fantasy and reality, its the adults who have problems with it and such illustrations (the art in the book, One True Bear, comes from children themselves) do not mean that the children who draw it or who look at it have any desire to emulate the behaviour in the real world. An argument I’d have to say I go along with – I grew up on Tom’n'Jerry and Bugs Bunny cartoons, which some now think ‘too violent’ for children and yet I’ve rarely ever given someone a stick of TNT and pretended it was a cigar or hit someone on the head with an anvil (I’m not saying I haven’t been tempted over the years, mind you). I read Action and 2000 AD as a boy in the 70s and loved them, but strangely they didn’t compel me to cheer if someone is really attacked by a giant shark or to use a hi-ex on anyone. My friend’s wee boys love pirates but they are unlikely to run away to Somalia (like Cartman did in a recent South Park) to join up with real life sea raiders.
“When children watch Peter Pan we don’t expect them to jump out of the window. We underestimate their ability to filter. We don’t trust children to understand the difference between reality and play acting,” author Mark Haddon.
I find it interesting that Dewan is using a children’s book with artwork from boys to challenge the ‘monkey see, monkey do’ approach because almost any other modern medium trying to do so would be villified in the tabloids before it had a chance. Imagine if you used a comic, film or computer game to make the same point? “Ban devil comics/games/films!” would be the banner headline in the red top rags. And while I’m sure he will attract some criticism I think he has an advantage simply because of the cultural space books still have in our society compared to other media. Given the amount of times comics, films (remember the ‘video nasties’ scare of the early 80s), popular music and now computer games have been conveniently scape-goated as the main cause of violent behaviour among youth its refreshing to see someone trying to approach the subject in a sensible manner, informed by actually talking to the kids who read the fiction and make the drawings. (via the BBC)
Wed, May 27, 2009
Books