We put on Honey, I Shrunk the Kids the other night at Zoes boyfriends request (and then they finished their pizza and ran outside, but thats neither here nor there) and it occurred to me that that movie, which came out when I was a kid, is a straight-up time capsule in terms of parenting. In that movie, two familys children go missing. The father of one set - a teenage girl and a boy of Id guess around 10 or 11 - is the first we see discover this problem. His reaction is mild annoyance because he walks in with stuff in his arms and the phone is ringing and no ones picking up. His wife returns shortly after and asks where the kids are. Their father doesnt know. She seems more perturbed by the (truly horrendous) state of her kitchen than by her kids being missing. She speculates that they must have gone to the mall. Their neighbors, meanwhile, are chiefly annoyed that their teenage and slightly-younger-than-teenage sons are absent while theyre trying to get ready to leave on a fishing trip. The two mothers have a brief talk but its only mildly worried - Have you seen my kids? No, have you seen mine? Theyre worried, but its mild. Eventually, one mom sets out for the mall to see if she can find them and instructs her husband to stay home if they should call, at which point he realizes he shrunk them. But the whole first part is so *normal*. Like, there is probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for the kids whereabouts and well find them eventually. Can you imagine a movie being made like that today? (And before you tell me that times have changed, let me assure you, I know. They have. Crime rates are WAY lower now than they were in 1989, when this movie came out.)
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 19:16:01 +0000
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