This movie made my heart glad. It is filled with innocence, hope, and good cheer. It is also wickedly funny and exciting as hell. "E.T The Extra-Terrestrial" is a movie like "The Wizard of Oz," that you can grow up with and grow old with, and it won't let you down. It tells a story about friendship and love.
- Excerpt from Roger Ebert's review of "E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial"
Mr. Ebert's review of E.T. reflects exactly my emotional memories of watching the film the first time in 1982. Would it capture my children's 2013 imaginations as magically as it did mine 21 years ago?
This is a debate friends and I often have regarding our fond memories of movies such as "Star Wars" (Episode IV, not the Jar-Jar Binks atrocity), "Superman" (with Christopher Reeve), "The Wizard of Oz", and even "The Princess Bride".
Are these movies too scary? Are they too boring? Have movie effects become so technically proficient that a rubbery alien in a bicycle basket will seem laughable when seen through the eyes of my cynical children?
Only one way to find out.
Halfway through, it was clear two decades had done nothing to lessen the movie's impact on young viewers. My son was saucer-eyed and focused on the screen, my daughter expressed her excitement and trepidation in her usual manner: asking non-stop questions, and occasionally leaving the couch to hide behind my chair.
Then, "shit" happened.
Elliott had been hiding this little alien in his room which has been ransacked by an extra-terrestrial being eager to explore each textured surface, gadget, and plaything in this young boy's pied-a-terre.
As my mother was so often fond of saying of my boyhood room: the place was a disaster. Upon witnessing the disarray in Elliott's room (but not yet having met the cause of it all), Elliott's older brother exclaims:
"What is all this shit?!"
Uh-oh.
The T.V. just said shit, and my kids were there to hear it.
I was snapped out of my re-living-my-boyhood trance with terrible thoughts of my kids' childhood being spoiled by dirty cussing.
Shit. They'd heard "shit". Now they'll be saying "shit", and be telling me about all the things they think are shit. When they stub their toes, instead of saying "Ouch!", they're going to say "Shit!".
Later on, as the movie reaches its nefarious sub-climax, someone on screen says "Son of a bitch!"
Shit. Now my kids will be saying "bitch". Now they won't be complaining, they'll be bitching.
Shit.
Stupid movie.
E.T. (?)... Darth Vader and Yoda by stick_kim
Then, thankfully before I ruined the film's tearful ending for myself by drowning in my own parental hysteria, I got a grip.
21st century parents live in a strange, illogical duality.
More than any generation before us, we are students of parenting. We read books, and blogs, and medical sites, and take part in group discussions. From even before our first child is born, we worry about what music they're exposed to in the womb; what types of toxins are in the air; and whether the mobile hanging over the crib is too stimulating, or not stimulating enough.
Yet, we worry they will become irreversible corrupted by a little "shit" and a "son of a bitch" in E.T.
My son heard the "shit", and said nothing. Why? He's heard it before! Lo and behold, at 8-years-old, E.T. was not his first exposure to cussing. Grade 2 had taken care of that (as had two of his uncles, but that's another story).
My daughter heard it, too. She asked "What does 'shit' mean?"
I answered: "A very bad word for 'poo', I don't want to hear you saying it."
That was it. No one cared to discuss it anymore. After all, there was an alien in the closet.
We all grew up watching movies with nudity, violence, and swearing. I will grant they were more docile versions compared with what's available today, but, still I didn't cuss at my grand-parents after hearing the kid in E.T. say "shit".
Why? Because I had been taught differently by people who held more sway over my behavior than Steven Spielberg. Magically, despite what I was exposed to through media, I still learned what was innapropriate in public.
At some point, we have to trust ourselves, and trust our children.
When we were teaching my kids to swim, which overlapped with the period during which we trying to get them out of diapers overnight, my parents each expressed concerns that neither stage was happening quickly enough.
Their insinuations were: I was keeping them in a lifejacket longer than they should be, and that I should be waking them at midnight to go to the bathroom.
Finally, I defended my position by asking them the following question: "Will these kids be 18 years-old, wearing a lifejacket, and wetting their beds?"
No.
My wife and I are responsible for guiding them through the learn-to-swim and potty-training processes.
Will they be 'shit'-ting their way through second grade because of E.T.?
No. Because their sense of right and wrong, as well as the inappropriateness of potty-mouths, are our responsibilities, too.
If I don't want T.V. to be given credit for my children's litteracy and knowledge of the world; I shouldn't blame it for their misbehavior, either.
Not that they will be watching "Goodfellas" anytime soon...
