To find Matilda hard to watch?

[susiesuelou]

I know it's just a work of fiction for kids and that it all comes good in the end for Matilda, but I've been watching it this morning whilst toddler DD naps and it's struck me just how horrible it is (the start especially). Particularly the part where she begs to be allowed books to read and the Dad holds her head and forces her to watch TV instead. Not being acknowledged by her mum when she comes in from school and wants to tell her about her day. 🥹

And don't get me started on the abusive practices of Miss Trunchbull! Particularly force feeding chocolate cake to that boy! I actually skipped through that part.

I've watched it before but never really watched it, if that makes sense. And it's just left an uncomfortable feeling.

AIBU? Am I too sensitive? I know the answer is probably yes, as it's just a film after all. But has anyone else had similar discomfort watching it?

Yanbu. So much ‘kids tv’ has very nasty stuff in it, my son is 10 but he gets upset by this kind of thing.

TV/film is made by insensitive types and aimed at insensitive types and if you are highly sensitive (in the sense described here hsperson.com) then there’s a lot to avoid.

Alternatively the poster was right but didn't quite know how to express it. But let me just point out to you, since you've been living under a rock, that various Universities have begun "cancelling" books from their curriculums and giving trigger warnings for books such as Oliver Twist. They are right in that there is a cultural shift in terms of literature sensitivity.

Don’t forget Worzel Gummage - his sentence for throwing a potato at the Crownman was to be burned alive.

Worzel Gummidge scared me shitless as a child! Not so much Worzel himself but the Crowman and Aunt Sally. I didn't understand who they were and the whole thing seemed to be about some kind of deep and terrifying magic under everyday life (I didn't think of it in those terms but that's why I was scared of it).

Children's literature is a strange thing – it's meant to be entertaining and fun but the most memorable and successful examples are always dark in some way and deal with fear, abuse, sadness or monsters. You can often sense a lot about the author through the literature, this is very true of Dahl. Also Sendak, Rowling, and the (IMO genius) writer Arnold Lobel.

Please show me where universities have been 'cancelling' books from their curriculums, or explain what you think is wrong with a content warning for any book?

I have taught English Lit at one of the universities that is regularly slated in ignorant articles making up nonsense about 'cancel culture'. We've never 'cancelled' anything, but people love to froth. A colleague of mine had packed lecture halls for his lectures on Shakespeare at the exact time some idiot wrote a Torygraph piece claiming students were trying to ban certain authors. Some people seem genuinely unable to understand that Shakespeare would have been only too delighted to think Titus Andronicus would stimulate visceral reactions.

It's the same thing here. Why on earth does anyone think that discussing books is the same thing as banning them?

I’m also a university lecturer in a literature department, and no one at any of he institutions I’ve taught at is ‘cancelling books’. I teach a module on banned books.

The new film version is brilliant but incredibly scary and sad in parts.
I’m still haunted by the part in The Witches where children are trapped inside paintings forever. Roald Dahl certainly had a wild and disturbing imagination.

@keeprunning55 I took my 7 year old to see it, there is nothing even vaguely scary.

The new film version is brilliant but incredibly scary and sad in parts.

Interesting as I didn’t perceive it as scary. I can hear my 4 year old attempting the songs in the bath just now. She’s watched the new musical film at least 5 times already which is a bit shameful from a screen time perspective but she just loves it. I’m to call her Matilda now apparently. I suppose the worst thing that happens is essentially Miss Trunchbull committing a double murder which I agree sounds really bad, but DD understood that Miss Trunchbull is very bad and gets her comeuppance in the end and also that the whole thing is only a story. Or maybe I’m a terrible parent.

Agree The Witches was scary but I think that’s partly why I loved it as a child and still do. Still gives me a chill down my spine - more the memory of the fear I felt as a child - which I enjoy.

Interesting - I read Jemima to dc yesterday!

As I mentioned up thread, Matilda, for me, is remarkably similar to Carrie!

i find it hard to watch as the actress playing matilda’s mother was dying during filming and they just kept her working :/

I'm sure she's still alive.

@MaryJean87 the actress whose mother died while filming was Mara Wilson in the 90s Matilda film - not the actress of this new version.
Mara Wilson has spoken about her filming experiences and her mother many times over the years.

That was the older Matilda movie and yes Mara Wilson, I think her name was, her mother died from cancer just after she'd finished filming. There's quite a sweet story about someone pinching the film and taking it to show her as she wasn't going to be able to make the premier (I think she died before it was shown)

I don't think from what I've seen she was made to keep working, but more it was a distraction from what was going on at home.

The mother of the actress playing Matilda did die during filming (the film is dedicated to her). I'm pretty sure this is what the poster meant here.

There's this thing called google.

I found Matilda to be uplifting! She’s so feisty and brave and doesn’t take the shit the adults give her lying down. She stands up for her friends and what’s right, and the awful adults get what’s coming to them in the end, and Matilda finds happiness.

Don’t watch the new one. I found it very uncomfortable. The old one I could just about deal with because well it’s Danny Devito so hard to take his meanness seriously. Went to see the musical version in the cinema. I could hardly look. I do work in a safeguarding role though so might be a bit more sensitive

Actually just been to se it and loved it, despite everything I said earlier!!
Far better than the books, from a sensitivity to nastiness perspective!

Not just me then! The girl trapped in the painting getting older... I was terrified

I also work in safeguarding. That's not the reason you could not look. People who know Matilda are aware of what goes on. Matilda grows despite her parents.

@Sometimeswinning sorry bit slow today. What do you mean that’s not the reason?

Take it up with the times. I can't do anything other than share objective information.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/censorship-on-campus-universities-scrap-challenging-books-to-protect-students-dp50d9fsd

I'm not going to get into arguments from incredulity, I simply came on to defend the person who was being ridiculed for suggesting that there was a cultural shift in the way books are treated.

Apparently it wasn't even a tangential argument to suggest books were being cancelled which it clearly was. Anything else which doesn't this specific point is a strawman.

Ah, I see: you mean, you don't know, and now you are a bit embarrassed someone asked you to explain yourself.

No I just can't be bothered getting into arguments from incredulity as well as your strawman.

I've posted the times link now any way which shows anyone coming to a conclusion that books are being 'cancelled' are not to be ridiculed just because you have domain specific knowledge. Hopefully that puts an end to this discussion.

'The times link'? You mean ... a link to the sort of newspaper article I mentioned in my post?

If you have any genuine evidence of books being 'cancelled,' feel free to share it. We can all wait.