Culture you inbibed as a kid that you find inappropriate for kids these days:

[Iwasjustabouttosaythat]

Posted the following on the normal chat board but I was wondering how the discussion might differ if it were over here:

Yesterday 01:33 Iwasjustabouttosaythat

DS (4yo) is loving the idea of time machines. I said to him and DP, "oh, we should watch Back to the Future together!" DP starts grimacing and saying not for a few years yet and giving me the "let's talk about that later" look. Only after discussing it later did I remember that the plot is (SPOILER ALERT) I need to go back in time to save my mother from being date-raped at the prom. Wow.

Then there's that delightful scene in License to Drive where the Coreys are taking sexual photos of a young Heather Graham while she's passed out from alcohol. Hilarious! confused

The Beatles are my favourite band but there's a lot of lyrics in there I don't want my kids hearing. The oft cited Run For Your Life is just one of many examples.

Is anyone else a bit shocked at the stuff we used to watch? I mean mostly in regard to sexism/sexual violence but all discussion welcome.

Oleannas

I find Grease so cringeworthy that I can’t watch it anymore and my kids certainly haven’t seen it.

The main story seems to be that you need to fundamentally change who you are as a person to be accepted by your peers and to bag your man. Awful film with catchy songs.

No, OP it was the cartoon disney version, many moons ago.

My now adult daughters are not convinced about the latest version.

I remember reading the Ladybird books of these and being appalled at a young age (late sixties) that women had to endure an ugly man in order to get 'true love'.

even though I loved Cinderella's dresses

I've started rereading the Sweet Valley High books. Ok, they were never exactly Shakespeare but the amount of slut-shaming, fat-shaming and attempted date rape is shocking. Every time a guy comes on too strong it seems to be the girl's fault for dressing too sexily or leading him on.

I find Grease so cringeworthy that I can’t watch it anymore and my kids certainly haven’t seen it
I absolutely hated Grease when I was a teenager- for just so many reasons. Now I have a soft spot for it because it reminds me of what it was like being a teenager (except I wasn't a teenager in the 1950s and we didn't all look 35.) But it is very problematic - there's no way in hell I'd let a child watch it.

Rocky Horror - I used to love it, even went to see it on stage.
But 20 odd years later, sat with my 15 year old DD, I had to switch it off. Frank is no misunderstood hero, he’s a rapist and a murderer.

The Quiet Man - oh dear.

I just completely misread 'at a young age (late sixties)'.

Oops.

My parents let me watch so much sexually rather inappropriate stuff. All the sex went over my head though. Victor Victoria where today is essentially paying for sex. Bridget jones "full frontal". Lots of blame runner type sex scenes where man pretty much forces himself on woman who is not keen. Pretty woman. Woosh was the sound of entire film plots going over my head.

Woosh was the sound of entire film plots going over my head.

I think that is something that adults often forget when they worry about what they can and can't show their children. I used to watch 'A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum' loads when I was a kid. it is my second favourite movie of all time, but to this day I can watch it and catch a joke and suddenly have this dawning realisation of 'blimey, that's a bit rude.'
I've been watching it since my earliest infancy, I was at university before I realised that the house of courtesans were being sold off as sex slaves (they talk about buying a 'wife' -so child friendly!) or that when Marcus Licus said 'don't touch the merchandise on the way out it shows every mark' he was talking about the women!

I got the romance, I got the pratfalls - I just really didn't get the sex jokes. And it's 90% sex jokes!

I'm another one who hated Grease as a teenager when it first came out. I think because I was the spoddy geeky girl - and was relatively at home in my own skin (insofar as a teenager can be) as the spoddy geeky girl. So it was infuriating to have this film telling me I had to dress in skin tight leather with a poodle perm to be accepted. (I also think watching it in retrospect that there's the ingredients of a brilliant, if totally non-feminist film in there, but that ONJ and JT had no sexual chemistry together at all.)

Also hate, loathe and detest beauty and the beast and always have done. It's basically like a patriarchy version of an Al Quaeda training manual - "love your man enough and he will change." BULLSHIT! (And you still see that on so many relationship threads on here - there was one recently where someone wanted advice on how to live with a smelly slob who crapped on the toilet seat and expected her to clean it up - but wouldn't countenance leaving him because "she loved him". Bangs head against wall in frustration.)

Wish you were here- 80s British film, not for kids at all!

If that's the case then why is it always the woman who is in distress, needing a man to save her?

Not true. Icantreachthepretzels has been eloquent about Beauty and the Beast.

The young women in the Nordic version, East of the Sun, West of the Moon is as feisty as you could hope for and she rescues the prince.

In The Snow Queen it is Gerda, assisted along the way by wise women, a princess and a robber girl (the head of a band of robbers) who rescues hapless Kay. And the Snow Queen isn't punished for kidnapping him.

Gretel and Hansel worked well as an equal team and at the end Gretel rescues Hansel.

Even Rapunzel, once she got out of the tower managed, perfectly well as a single mother of twins comes to the rescue of the blinded prince.

We are working our way through Disney films I loved as a child and a shockingly large number have something pretty racist in them. I'm actually quite surprised that some of the films haven't been edited to take the awful bits out by now - for example, in Aristocats there is one character who is extremely problematic, but they are only on screen for about three minutes if you wanted to redraw and you'd only have to lose about ten seconds to massively improve the situation.

Sevendown, yes I agree, I'm not sure what wish you were here was classified, but I didn't need to watch it back then!

Thomas the tank engine is horrendous.
I am not allowing my child to watchit any longer. So much 'teaching them a lesson' morality.. No talking to others, sharing perspectives and developing empathy and understanding. No, x has done wrong, I know best, and will teach a lesson. Not to mention the lack of female characters, the authoritarianism and snobbishness. There is absolutely no need for it, although it was beautifully modelled and filmed. What a waste. Ivor the Engine is loads better.

Just all the childrens stories...I look at them now and the ones that aren't full of raging misogyny and gender stereotyping are all about how adults don't listen to and blame children who are then forced into to doing things to save the day that they really shouldn't be doing....

Thistly, I agree about old Thomas but it's so much better since it's been taken over by Mattel. Lots more female characters too (aka more toys to sell).

Short answer: Most cultural output from the past.

Looking back, one particular source of is how my friends, as young teens, seemed caught up in the romance of Pretty Woman. Pretty Woman!!! OMFG.

Sevendown Wish you were here is 15 so not a kids film anyway. I loved that film, Emily Lloyd was brilliant in it.

Tiegrr I have about 200 Sweet Valley High books in the attic. Do you reckon I'm too old to re-read them in my 40's? !

DIsney has been changing plots to make them more acceptable to “modern” sensibilities for over fifty years now. That’s why the princess doesn’t sleep for a hundred years in Disney Sleeping Beauty.

My go to example of things that’s were accepted without question is lovely cuddly Flanders and Swann. To write one song about how hilarious date rape is might be carelessness. To write two looks premeditated. Have some Madeira M’Dear has lyrical wit on its side and at least the hilarious rapist is portrayed as a bad guy, but Tonga is an absolute shocker.

@metalmum Go for it! I'm in my 30s. Turn it into a game though - have a drink every time the twins perfect size six figure is mentioned, or the four minutes between them, or every time Mr Collins shows up to 'chaperon' somewhere inappropriately

Oh almost forgot
Rita, Sue and Bob too! My parents genuinely thought as Black Lace were in it it was ok for their teens to watch.

tiegrr go on then, you've convinced me. I imagine my teenager will be looking at me like 😐 I saved them all thinking one day she might read them....but I doubt it. Not sure about the drink thing though, I'd be on the floor! I used to love Elizabeth and Todd, I remember crying when he moved!

I just read all the flower in the attic books again.

Lots of rape. Always the girl’s fault for the way she acts or dresses. Even when it’s her brother .

Then after the rape the guy always says sorry and the girl always falls in love with him.

In one book she gets the shit beaten out of her by her husband and it’s her fault for not loving him enough.

What the actual fuck?

bummy I loved the first one, didn't enjoy the second as much, got halfway through the third and gave in. All 5 are now languishing in a charity shop somewhere.

Chris is so creepy in all the flowers in the attic books! the way he rapes her because she kissed her step father, but she belongs to him (Chris) and then the way he hangs around when she's with Paul (admittedly a dirty old man) and one time (though it might be just after Julian has beaten the shit out of her) she's in bed, and someone is there with her, and it's only when she puts her hand is his hair that she realises it's her brother not her husband. She later says that, when there are complications during one of her births, he pressures her into getting sterilised -she wouldn't have done it if he hadn't have been there, and he got her to do it so they could be together. And when she finally marries Paul, Chris (a doctor) advises that they're probably OK to have sex (even though there's something wrong with Paul's heart) and they do - and Paul dies. So then Chris takes Cathy away to California, where nobody knows them, and pretends that they are a married couple.

I never liked Cathy - but Chris is a terrible human being!