I have never had much patience with the idea that children should be shielded from fictional violence. I would much rather my own children discover The Hunchback of Notre Dame as I did, in the thrilling sado-necrophiliac original, all shot through with cruelty, lust and madness, than via the lame jollity of the Disney version. Here I can appeal to the wisdom of great storytellers from the past, who spared children very little. Children take this stuff in their stride. They may even, as Bruno Bettelheim argued, be helped by it.
Sex is more worrisome.
As the doting father of little Nellie, who will grow to be a great beauty when we have paid the orthodontist's bills, I naturally spend a lot of time fretting about this. September 9th is, as it happens, the precise anniversary of Elvis Presley's first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show 44 years ago. The following January Sullivan had Elvis on for the third time, and it was then that he issued his famous order for the singer to be shown only from the waist up, in order that younger viewers might not be inflamed by the sight of his hip movements. We have travelled an awfully long way from Ed Sullivan to the MTV awards show. What is really surprising, though, is how little harm has been done.