A Bolt from the Blue

Last night we sat down, my wife, daughter, and I, and watched the Disney cartoon movie Bolt. It had arrived yesterday (it should have arrived sooner, no thanks to the United States Postal Service, but we'll save that issue for a later rant) as part of a movie club Abby has joined, and it made for a neat Monday evening treat to watch a family friendly movie as a family.

I liked it. It was classic and sentimental, with no real crudeness that I can remember. You know, crudeness, which seems to appear even in children's films these days? Why a show or movie aimed at seven year olds has to have bathroom humor even of the weakest strain is beyond me; it certainly can't make our kids more cosmopolitan or mature.

Yet that too is a rant for another day. What I want to talk about now is how we should never allow ourselves to get away from enjoying things aimed at the young. The Wind in the Willows may have been aimed at a younger audience, but I still find passages in it almost magical. Dumbo can bring a tear to the eye, and there are chills for me to this day when Aslan is resurrected and the stone table cracks. In short, we know, as C. S. Lewis points out so correctly, that youth is sentimental. And the proper amount of sentimentality is exactly what we should strive for in our own consideration of the people and things around us.

It is a quality which, it seems to me anyway, is most often found in our children's tales. I see it occasionally in stories aimed at general audiences: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books, and In Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara. The movie Rudy evokes the right spirit quite well too. Tim Burton's Big Fish is also quaint in a delightful way. Almost anything by Frank Capra should delight the truly open mind.

An interesting contrast can be illustrated in the fact that Silence of the Lambs, a revolting film on several levels and most of those levels cinematic rather than moral (I know the conclusions that some of my readers will jump towards but I assure you that, seen objectively, the movie fails in more ways than simple crudity) won best picture of 1991 over the truly marvelous and well spun Disney cartoon film Beauty and the Beast. If you would kindly set aside any shallow qualms about the folks at Disney adapting the story to its own purposes, I have to believe that part of reason for that travesty is that too many adults feel they can't possibly appear to like a kid's fairy tale ahead of something more 'stark' and 'gritty' and, that awful and arrogant word, 'modern'. We adults have risen above that level of sappiness.

If we have, that is truly sad. Sadder still, only the sentimental among us will recognize that.

Yet rather than end on that note, I will offer you the highest advice that I believe I can: read good children's books and watch good children's movies without shame. You will be a better adult for it. You might (horror of horrors!) find them better than even the best adult stories.