G-rated viewing can be distressing

We find ourselves wondering, we do, about what Judge Bill Hastings will make of Tim Burton’s remake of the Disney classic Dumbo.

Before his move to the bench, Hastings’ working day was spent steeped in filth and depravity.

He was New Zealand’s chief censor.

And he had some strong views about that 1941 original.

A trailer for the new film, which isn’t due to surface until next year, is turning heads because, as commentators note, it doesn’t pull any emotional punches.

Notably the scene where the wee elephant’s mother reaches out to him with her trunk through the bars of a case.

Mother and child separated. Same with the original, until Timothy Q Mouse, the circus rodent with the accent of a New York gangster, intervenes on his behalf of the bereft and now cruelly bullied little elephant.

‘‘You all oughta be ashamed of yourselves . . . pickin’ on a poor little orphan like him . . .

Suppose you was torn away from your mother when you was just a baby . . . left out alone, in a cold, cruel, heartless woild? . . .

Aw, but what’s the use of talkin’ to you cold-hearted boids? Go ahead! Have your fun! Laugh at him! Kick him now that he’s down! Go on! We don’t care.’’

The film regularly makes lists of saddest children’s film scenes.

Hastings’ issue with the original film was that it was G-rated.

Same with Bambi whose mum is slain by hunters.

Had such calls been his to make (and they weren’t because endless revisionism wasn’t in his job description) they would all have been, leaving G-rated films to be every parents’ sanctuary, requiring no cautionary notes.

He’d have made the lot of them PG; the parental guidance recommended category.

It remains to be seen what censorship rating will be given the new Bambi but it’s worth noting that the Hastings view is still not in ascendancy.

Whether that’s at all troubling is a matter on which even reasonable parents may differ. But it’s something to be aware of.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification describes the big, benign, greenbackgrounded G sticker on films, DVDs and games as meaning what it says, suitable for general audience, and that it should have very low levels of things like frightening scenes.

But there’s a significant cautionary note: not all G level films are intended for family audiences.

It is always a good idea to look at reviews and plot information before taking children to any film, the office says.

This is true.

The upset in G films may typically lead to uplift (literally, you might say, in Dumbo’s case) but that doesn’t stop the potential for distress to be powerful and long-remembered.

The upshot, silly as it sounds, is that parental guidance isn’t just needed for PG films. G films requires some too.

Incidentally, classifications from long-ago don’t fade away over time.

Even in these days, where graphic sex is increasingly able to be legally viewed, if you have any old-format movies of say, nudists playing volleyball, there’s a chance these were banned back in the day. And they still are.

Whatever you can legally watch on your screens nowadays, if you thread those old film reals through a vintage projector and settle down, you may well be breaking the law.