I was sat, innocently watching "A History of Violence", starring Aragorn and General Whatshisface from The Rock and something struck me.

*Small Spoilers*

A killer pulls a gun on a little girl. But the scene cuts away before you see anything, you just hear the gunshot and the kid stops snivelling. So presumably the bloke shot her. I doubt he missed on purpose just to stop her crying.

What is it about kids that's so sacrosanct? I've watched thousands of films, and seen people shot, stabbed, burned, beaten to death, tortured, maimed, raped, crushed, sliced in half, decapitated, gutted, electrocuted, drowned, torn to pieces, hanged, gelded, blinded, crippled, starved and so on and so forth, yet I can think of very few films where wittle chiwdren, bwess der wittle cotton socks, get killed and you get to see it. We know it's not glorifying or perpetuating harming a child any more than ny other film glorifies or perpetuates violence.

Or is that it? Do we not admit that films glorify violence, but simply acknowledge it deep down?

Where exactly do you draw the line? Take a film like Battle Royale, where teenagers are forced to kill each other (cracking film, by the way, go and see it). Not stocked on DVD in a lot of big retailers in the US, and as far as I know it didn't get a theatrical release over there. Why? Because violence perpetrated by schoolchildren in America is as big a no-no over there as paedophilia is here in the UK.

But BR serves as a good example. The characters there are 15 or so, I think. So why is it ok for us to see 15 year olds shooting it out (forget aout Japan being famous for being extreme for now)? They are, by legal definition here in the UK, children. So we can see that (uncut, thank you BBFC) but it's not ok to show anyone prepubescent getting blown away because...?

Is it just appearances? Do we not give a fuck as long as they don't look like children? Why is it ok to kill people of every age, race and creed in any way the imagination can think up, but not children? Are children somehow protected from on high? I don't watch telly and I don't participate in calling everyone who passes by a schoolyard a kiddy fiddler, but I know kids are just as vulnerable to accidents as adults. Children, just like every other age of humans, die all the time.

In short, I feel there is considerable anti-adult prejudice in the media today. I do not enjoy being discriminated against.

As a species, we are genetically programmed to look after our own children and even to try to protect somebody else's children from danger.

This means that we regard a criminal offence against a child as more shocking than when the same offence is committed against an adult. Just compare the media attention to the Soham murders to the indifferent coverage to that known British spy who got murdered by the IRA a couple of weeks back, even though it proves the true level of committment Gerry Adams and his cronies have for the peace process.

It also means that a film director who cheerfully depicts hundreds of adults being brutally murdered in his film will hesitate to show this happening to a child because the adults in the audience are genetically programmed to find this more shocking.

To expand on your point, I hate the way that the media doesn't give a stuff about the appalling plight of the Third World, but when Kylie Minogue was diagnosed with cancer, that was a different matter. As her cancer was caught at an early stage and she is lucky enough to be a rich citizen of a developed country, it wasn't as if she was in any danger. Yet the media expected me to be more concerned about her than Africa because she is a household name, and the average African isn't.

Mmm. They usually defualt to that burning/blood-spattered teddy bear bollocks when it comes to the deaths of children. Still, it'd be a great way to establish a character as a bastard, I think. From a purely cinematic perspective, it has occasionally been used to excellent effect (Schindler's List).