Words: Wendy Ide

You might have noticed that there has been a bit of controversy recently over the BBFC certificate given to Paddington. The big screen outing for the amiable, accident-prone bear from Darkest Peru was awarded a PG rather than the expected U certificate. The British Board of Film Classification cited, among other things, the film’s sexual content, a reference that was subsequently downgraded to the more innocuous term ‘innuendo’. In fact, the incident is about as benign as you can get: Mr Brown (Hugh Bonneville), disguised in drag as a tea-lady attracts the attentions of an amorous Geographer. It’s a natural succession from British tradition of the pantomime dame; the kind of thing that kids countrywide will be exposed to over the Christmas season every night in theatres.

Of course, distracted by the idea of national treasure Paddington co-opted into some kind of furry fetish circle, the newspapers have rather missed the point. The reason that Parental Guidance is advised is not because of some Paddington perve sub plot. It’s far more likely to be due to the fact that the film is really quite scary.

Writer and director Paul King has injected a little more peril than might have been expected, given that Paddington’s adventures so far have largely involved marmalade-based mishaps. He introduces Nicole Kidman, svelte in the pelts of numerous endangered species, as Millicent, a renegade taxidermist with a personal grudge against small Peruvian bears with a taste for orange conserves.

Millicent has made it her life’s mission to stuff and mount a bear just like Paddington, and she’s not about to let the opportunity slip through her manicured talons. And she gets to within an whisker of doing so. There’s a shot of an unconscious Paddington, strapped to a gurney, while Kidman lovingly strokes her glinting arsenal of scalpels, which is genuinely terrifying. My four-year-old son didn’t know whether to cover his eyes or plug his ears to block out the tension. Next to him, his six-year-old friend was wriggling and whimpering with agonies of suspense. It was like a primary school version of the Saw movies. It’s a scene that pushed my son to the brink of his tolerance for tension – and that’s exactly why he loved the film with a passion that other, more vanilla, kids flicks fail to generate.

Although the BBFC is perhaps right to draw people’s attention to the fact that our beloved bear is threatened by all kinds of nasty, stabby surgical implements, I suspect they have over-estimated the lasting damage the scene will have on the collective kiddy psyche. It’s scary, sure. But it’s scary in a safe, contained environment. It’s a fear that is defeated by good old British pluck and enterprise, plus – hooray – Julie Walters, absolutely shit-faced on gin. And, ultimately, one of the main points of art is to test boundaries and introduce difficult ideas that are easier to process in the arena of the cinema, the gallery, the book or whatever, than they are in a straight up, real-life confrontation. The trick, with art aimed at children, is to scare them without traumatising them. And, crucially, to allow the child to feel like they have processed and overcome the fear, by themselves. After all, how are children meant to deal with fear if they have no experience of it?

Not only is it good to scare children, it’s arguable that films that are entirely without peril and stories in which good and bad are sharply delineated do our children a massive disservice. Kids will encounter some pretty dark stuff in the world around them. And more importantly, they will find it within themselves. What kind of a message do they take from a story in which happy endings are reserved only for the very good and true?

Maurice Sendak, the author of Where The Wild Things Are touched upon this in 1964, when he accepted the American Library Association’s Caldecott Medal. “[It’s] an awful fact of childhood… The fact of [a child’s] vulnerability to fear, anger, hate, frustration—all the emotions that are an ordinary part of their lives and that they can only perceive as dangerous, ungovernable forces. To master these forces, children turn to fantasy: that imaginary world where disturbing emotional situations are solved to their satisfaction.”

 

Take the Toy Story series. Perhaps no other films have been so successful at introducing difficult themes in a palatable way for kids. In the first film, a new addition to the toy family leaves favourite son Woody racked with jealousy – what older sibling wouldn’t identify with this on some level? But we also get to follow Woody’s journey to overcome his hurt and to do the right thing. The second film essentially deals with death and mortality versus immortality, albeit through the filter of toys being placed in a museum rather than getting played with. The third looks at the fall out from relationship breakdown, with a bit of holocaust imagery thrown in for good measure. The climax, with the toys about to be consigned to the furnace, is genuinely frightening. Does it scare kids? Damn right it does. But it’s precisely because the Toy Story films take us on a challenging journey that it’s one that children will return to time and again. And I rather suspect that the same will be true of Paddington.

@wendyide