Editorial: A statement

 This is just a brief statement.

Recently on Twitter, The Guardian made the hot take that Shrek was not a good movie. Someone else went further and made the statement that most kids movies were terrible, even naming things like Up and Wall-E.

This is the type of view that I am fighting.

I predominately look at animated movies because of the stigma that is attached to animation, but I now realize that this stigma goes beyond animation, it goes beyond film, it goes beyond art itself. This is a stigma attached to children.

This stigma is that children do not see or understand quality, they see marketable characters, pretty colours and toilet humour. Yes, these things do appeal to kids, not to every kid, but to lots of kids. To deny that is to deny that people still watch The Simpsons or Family Guy, we may not like to admit it, but it is true. That being said, children can see past marketability, pretty colours and toilet humour. Kids can see depth, kids can see nuance, kids CAN SEE QUALITY.

If I can use myself as an example, I was about twelve years old when The King's Speech came out, might have watched it at thirteen. The King's Speech is not a kids film, it is a historical drama about the British monarch King George VI during a time of trial for him. I first watched it at thirteen at the youngest, and it is one of my favourite movies of all time, and I knew it back then as well.

I was also incredibly young when I first watched "First Blood", "Terminator 2" and "Tombstone" three more of my favourite movies. Quality films, and if I were a dumb kid that didn't see past "entertainment value" First Blood would have bored me to tears, Terminator 2 would have bored me to tears, and I could not take my eyes off that move at first.

The biggest insult there is, is to equate being a kid to being stupid. Kids are a lot smarter than most adults, because kids are naturally curious, willing to ask any question. Adults love to stamp that curiosity out of their head, putting them in an unstimulating environment that is rife with bullying and terrible people that forces them into an outdated system that values them on their ability to regurgitate information rather than learn information.

I want to make it clear; Anyone, and I do mean ANYONE, that disregards kids films or any other media geared towards kids, has no respect for kids or the media they claim to love. Movies made for kids are still movies, video games made for kids are still video games.

I want this stigma to stop. I do believe that kids media should be respected, but beyond that, kids need to be better respected. The idea that kids will accept shoddy quality because their kids is wrong. The notion that you can put little effort into a kids movie is equally wrong.

My goal with this blog is to make animation a more respected medium, and I want it known that while animation doesn't just mean kids movies, the two do go hand in hand often.

That is all I have to say about that.