Shrek and my sensitive daughter
Regular readers of this blog, and anyone who’s known me for more than about five minutes, know that I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to anything remotely horror-related. In many ways, I’m fearless: I’ll jump out of a plane, drive in Manhattan, speak in front of large groups of strangers. But show me a trailer for a scary movie or remind me of a scene from “Poltergeist” and I’m pretty much guaranteed no sleep for the next few nights.
I’ve been this way since I was young and I always worried that I might pass it on to my own kid. Those worries, it seems, were well founded.
Signe refuses to watch certain Disney movies because they are, she claims, “Too scary!” (Snow White.) Others, she’ll watch but she asks me to turn off before the shit hits the fan. (Little Mermaid.) Most of the time, she can bear an entire movie, but she gets clingy and extra whiney during the intense moments. (Mulan.)
So the other day, we introduced her to “Shrek.” It’s light-hearted and mostly funny with minimal scary villains or crazy action scenes. A slam dunk, right? She loved the first movie (except for the part where Fiona takes off with Lord Farquaad, which prompted her to say, “No! That’s their Fiona!” over and over again), so we let her watch the second one.
(If you haven’t seen “Shrek 2” and don’t want spoilers, quit reading now because I can’t tell the rest of my story without revealing some telling moments from the end of the film.)
About the time the heroes hit up the Muffin Man to bake a giant gingerbread man, a.k.a “Big Gingy” (and, yes, I know he’s called Mongo in the movie), Signe started getting a little concerned. By the time they are storming the castle, she was on my lap and gripping my hair. And then they injured Big Gingy to the point that his arms are ripped off and he falls into the moat backwards. Well. We did all we could to convince her that he was just going for a swim, but she reads nuance better than I give her credit for, because she wasn’t buying it.
But it wasn’t until the next morning that I started to really question whether I’m doing her a disservice by letting her watch this stuff. Upon hearing her wake and walking into her room, I cringed when she said to me, “The man broke Big Gingy’s arms off.”
Fuck. Had she been thinking about it all night? Was she dreaming about it? Is she as big a wuss about movies as I am? Is this why she’s been such a bear lately? I’m making her watch scary movies and she’s not sleeping well?
The problem is that she refuses to watch anything benign anymore. I can’t beg her enough to watch Sesame Street or Yo Gabba Gabba. Once in a while, I can entice her with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. But mostly, she wants the good stuff, the stuff that scares her. And I’m hard pressed to figure out how NOT to be the worst mother in the world. Probably, I should refuse her requests for any TV for a while, but, as my good friend Alisa put it, “Sometimes, you just gotta take a shower.” And TV makes that possible.