Movies Kids Like: Current Trends in Juvenile Taste in Cinema (1982)

Movies Kids Like:Current Trends in Juvenile Taste in Cinema Douglas Street (bio) As I sat with my wife in the darkness of our local moviehouse awaiting the start of Walt Disney's 1950 classic, Cinderella, I was aware that of those children among us, few if any appeared to be of school age. Where were the elementary children, those six-to-ten-year olds who, Throughout the heyday of the Disney Studios, traditionally flocked to the cinema for such wholesome fare? I leaned over and asked my wife, an elementary teacher of ten years' experience. "Most likely they're at home, watching Halloween II on Home Box Office," was her casual reply. Children's viewing preferences have, it seems, changed. To be sure, the Disneyesque family entertainment is still viable, still popular, and still commercially profitable—such projects as the hit Black Stallion and the soon to be released animated Rats of NIMH being cases in point—yet the overwhelming majority of those releases capturing both the juvenile attention and the juvenile dollar are today but coincidentally related to those puerile predecessors. If informal evidence (collected among a multi-racial samply of lower-middle to upper-middle class central Texas children, and reinforced by unscientific queries into the prevailing preferences among similar groups in other geographical regions) may provide a workable overview of current juvenile film interest, then today's six-to-ten set prefers two kinds of films: highly visual, action-packed, superhero-inspired fantasy adventures like Star Wars and Superman, and the graphic, suspense-filled, terror-inducing blood films most aptly labeled by critics as "teen screams." Each type is capable of inducing repeated viewings among its young admirers (I no longer find it uncommon to encounter eight-year-olds who have sat through both Superman and Halloween several times). Why are these genres, neither made specifically for the child audience, garnering such an audience? Their popularity suggests some unexpected and perhaps disquieting insights into trends in juvenile cinematic interest. That high adventure, fantasy spectaculars like Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman, and Raiders of the Lost Ark send children scurrying to the box-office should come as little surprise to adults weaned on Robin Hood, Flash Gordon, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, and Treasure Island. George Lucas, primum mobile behind Star Wars, Empire, and Raiders, has on numerous occasions publicly acknowledged his debt to these vintage pieces and other Saturday matinee fare. What children find attractive in Lucas' films are the same elements that have by and large always made this genre attractive; in these current offerings, though, it could be argued that their dosage has been increased. There has never been a time when the high adventure fantasy has been out of vogue. Since the silent spectacle of The Thief of Bagdad and Fred Niblo's Ben Hur, Hollywood has interspliced truth, fantasy, and wonder to produce a universal cinematic product. The films in current circulation, and those already in the cloning chambers, are a new generation of the original offspring, with the heightened technological twists and feats available to the motion picture magicians of the 1980's. When one looks at a Star Wars, Superman, or Raiders of the Lost Ark searching for those elements appealing to the mass juvenile audience, one is struck initially by their archaism. The concerns in these films of the 1980's are those which have motivated the retelling of our traditional fairytales and cautionary stories throughout the centuries. They are formulaic in the true sense: particularly in the most popular of these films, the same characteristics emerge repeatedly. The plots, for example, all exhibit a tendency toward the linear; although periodically one gets a "meanwhile back at the ranch" sequence, there is little if any [End Page 12] flashback or multi-plot scripting. Linear plots are to be found in Superman, in Stars Wars and its sequel The Empire Strikes Back, and in Raiders of the Lost Ark (the most complex of the group). The viewer is moved easily from point "A" to point "B" to point "C," with each point adding another block to the viewer's foundation for comprehension of plot and character development...