what other childrens movie opens with a seven eyed sun god completely devoid of any kind of anthropomorphism
also damn, i really want to read the book again
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in reply to @spiders's post:
The Black Rabbit of Inlé will be who comes for me, I know it. That character is etched so strongly in my brain.
in reply to @belarius's post:
idk, i think it is actually okay to make kids movies that deal with darker subjects like watership down. kids are people too, and its important that they have fiction that allows them to engage with ideas like death and fascism the way watership down does. and like this is a story that the author made up specifically to entertain his kids on a car ride. it is children's media through and through.
im honestly extremely frusturated with the pathological tendency of american culture lately to try to hide any fiction that is darker in tone or has frightening imagery away from kids (see, the censorship/reissuing of scary stories to tell in the dark).
it feels hugely unhealthy, and stifling, and also like "children shouldnt have access to scary/dark/heavily political stories like watership down" is like a cultural buttress or foothold to "children shouldnt have access to queer or trans media", especially because for me, a kid scared of what was happening to my body, surrounded by the stiffling environment of a culty religion, scary art was, liberating? cathartic?
i had this deep discomfort with my body and my social role, and the beautiful, nightmarish body horror of steven gammel's art in scary stories to tell in the dark just resonated with child-me in some deep way that i did not fully understand at the time, but is now like, half of my experience of queerness today.
over all, we just really deeply resent the notion that kids cant handle darker subject matter, that if something has violence or fascism or scary moments in it, it cant be "for kids". kids are full people, with complex inner lives, deep emotions, fears about the world, and can in fact handle media like watership down.
It's absolutely fair to push back against the American instinct to shield children from everything, and I agree that children's media can and should introduce dark theme (I saw both The Dark Crystal and The Secret of Nimh when I was quite young and they were formative films for me). Even so, I also think there's an important distinction between "a film intended for children" and "a film that is OK for a child to see." And by that criterion, Watership Down (1978) is very plausibly the latter but very likely not the former. I realize I'm being a pedant in this.
Positioned in the undercurrent of late 70s/early 80s "adult animation", it feels much more like a film meant to stand alongside Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings (1978) and another adaptation of an Adams novel, The Plague Dogs (1982). These are more subdued fare compared to the absolute batshit excesses of Heavy Metal (1981) and Rock and Rule (1983), but even so, it's pretty clear that Adams wasn't writing for children (his novels are probably more accurately described as YA in modern parlance), and the adaptations of his films weren't intended for children.
Does that automatically mean these are bad films for children to watch? Not at all! It definitely varies by film, and while I wouldn't feel comfortable with a 4-year-old watching Watership Down, I wouldn't have any issue with, say, a 10- or 11-year-old watching it. I just try to limit my own use of the label "children's media" to media that considers children to be a primary demographic, with "all-ages media" and "YA media" being useful distinctions as well.
Fundamentally, kids are going to see movies that aren't for them, and that's fine and normal. A puritanical approach is counterproductive and stifling. But I still wouldn't label Watership Down a kid's movie any more than I would label Wizards (1977) a kid's movie, despite both being animated films that, at a glance, look "cartoony."
nah thats not pedantry, it actually makes sense. i didnt know that context about watership down (1978).
As an aside, the original Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is a fascinating case to me because Stephen Gammell's art is very unsettling but the books themselves walk this tightrope of being the right level of scary. It's kind of at this ideal level of horror for a young audience, and seems to have kicked off a whole movement of children's horror in the 90s (The Goosebumps books are ostensibly inspired by Tales From The Crypt but I feel like SStTitD has to have been an even more important precedent; Nicekodeon's Are You Afraid Of The Dark? also seems like it's copying SStTitD's homework). I've not seen that framed in terms of the queer youth experience before, and I bet a lot of people would benefit form hearing more about that impact.
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