Tentacle What?! Do You Know What Your Kid is Reading?
One of the myriad complaints I’ve read about this Heroes for Hire cover is how it violates Marvel’s own rating system, which has determined the comic is appropriate for kids ages 9 and up. All I know about this comic is the cover. I don’t know what’s going on inside the book, and that content may very well be appropriate for ages 9 and up, particularly since kids don’t interpret and understand things the same way adults do. Shouldn’t parents be reviewing this stuff before their kids get it anyway?
Until last week, it never occurred to me to put those words “tentacle” and “rape” together, and it seems reasonable that it wouldn’t occur to a kid, either. Well, then I read this statement:
Wow. Kids know about tentacle porn, parents know their kids know about tentacle porn, but I can’t teach The Color Purple to 11th graders without getting a permission slip from my students’ parents, and that book won the Pulitzer Prize.
The thing is, most kids aren’t going to see “tentacle rape” in the H4H cover because they don’t have the cognitive ability to interpret those images as something other than what they are. Kids have to be taught how to do that and typically don’t do it independently until the later years of high school, if then. That’s just how cognitive development works.
I’m going to get Piagetian here (in general terms that means “get teacher-y”) for a minute. Kids between the ages of 7 and 11 (sometimes 12) are in a cognitive development stage called Concrete Operational. They’re starting to think logically, but only about physical objects. Abstract reasoning or symbolic interpretation is beyond them at this point. They don’t get that tentacles can be interpreted as sexual things. To a Concrete Operational kid, a tentacle is a tentacle, and it’s unlikely that he will see anything in the H4H cover other than girls being threatened by a tentacle monster.
Unless, of course, he’s being led to a different conclusion by an outside party, which he still probably won’t understand the same way an adult would.
Interpreting those tentacles in a sexual manner requires two things: prior knowledge and Formal Operations. In the Formal Operational stage (roughly age 12 to adulthood), kids start developing the ability to think abstractly and interpret symbolic meaning, but it doesn’t just happen. Kids are very literal and have to be taught to identify and interpret abstract symbolism, which is usually something their 9th grade English teacher will take on (yes, of course your kid is a genius and far more advanced than that).
Only about 35% of adults successfully progress through the Formal Operational stage. 65% don’t move that far out of the Concrete Operational stage.
In the Formal Operational stage, kids still need prior knowledge to make those leaps in reasoning. The kid who does read sexual connotations into those tentacles has probably already been exposed to that sort of content – he has prior knowledge of it. In which case, why are mom and dad letting their kid be exposed to tentacle porn?
Something else to consider is that just because Marvel says the comic is appropriate for ages 9 and up, that doesn’t mean that parents are excused from their responsibility to pay attention to what their kid is reading (or watching or looking at on the internet or doing in their room with the door locked – it’s too damn quiet in there). The rating very clearly says “Appropriate for most readers, parents are advised they may want to read before or with younger children.”
I hear “kids know more nowadays” and “kids grow up earlier” all the time and it pisses me off to no end because it just isn’t true. Hundreds of teenagers have passed through my classroom and they are just as immature and clueless as we were as teenagers, if not more so because they do have more access to stuff and are expected to grow up earlier, but they don’t have any greater cognitive capacity to do so. They’re still kids and they still need someone to protect them. It’s not Marvel’s responsibility to protect the children. Its a parent’s responsibility to do so until the child can protect herself.
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Conversation on this topic with my husband over IM:
Me: Cover for a Marvel title called “Heroes for Hire” which is on stands: http://www.pinkraygun.com/wp-content/uploads/Articles/HFH13-.jpg
Husband: that’s very japanese of them.
Me: *nod* That’s supposed to be The Brood. Everyone else is going “Uh, yeah right.
Husband: apparently the brood have gotten more japanese also.
Me: So people complained to the editor that it looked like tentacle porn, and he goes “people are reading too much” “they’re the Brood, they have tentacles” “the concept came from a female artist” “the book overall is about strong lead female protagonists”
Husband: that’s not the full quote. it’s “the book overall is about strong lead female protagonists getting raped by the brood” apparently, strong lead female protagonists draw their power from the amound of sun that is absorbed by their cleavage too. “well’ i could put some armor plating over my lungs and heart, or i could fight the alien tentacle monsters in a sexy low cut spandex top…hmm….which is more practical…
Tentacle porn…wow. What’ll they think of next. Anyway, while I will usually fall in to the line of “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” I’ve got to agree with you here, especially with the whole bondage and phallic column they’re chained to.
And the fact that parents don’t take enough responsibility for what their children are reading to me is so frustrating. I’ve seen what happens at my LCS. I’ve seen parents literally drop their kids off on as if it’s a daycare and then turn around and verbally lash the owner after they see their kids are reading something as above. And they were the ones that came in and bought it for them!! It’s high time that parents started taking responsibility for their children. Don’t get me started on the whole “Free Comic Book Day” thing. Sheesh.
I totally agree with this.
I’m so sick of parents just blaming the media for “corrupting” their kids cause they don’t want to take responsibility for being bad parents.
It’s the same with blaming violent youth crimes on “those damn video games” or movies.
It’s ridiculous. If children are more affected by the media than their parents, there is a bigger problem than what’s on t.v.
I read the LJ link where the girl mentions that it looks like spooge is on the left girls boobs. Looks more like saliva to me; also, did anyone notice the tentacles are covered in that same sort of saliva/slime?
I do agree, it’s hard to tell that those girls are ass-kicking super heroines, and I probably would think of it as an adult comic (Professional perv here.) But a querty for those people who think you need concealing armor to kick ass: Why soak up the damage with armor when you can avoid it by not wearing armor? A tank might need a lot to take it down, but it’s pretty damn easy to hit a tank!
Anyways, just my two cents. I like this site ya got goin’, though I’m not too thrilled about the whole Feminist webring (But only because I’ve only met one feminist in my life, and she was a femnazi. No matter what I did, it was wrong with her…so that one experience has left a bitter taste in my mouth, ya dig?)
Erk, sorry for the rambling. I do that. A lot.
I’ve learned that there are many levels of feminists and I tend to fall in with the “I believe in equal rights, but I don’t freak out and scream about men’s magazines” camp.
I even appreciate doors being held open for me. It’s just a nice thing to do.
And all armour does is constrict movement!