First Blood, Or How a Child Stopped Feeling and Learned to Love R-Rated Movies
My dad didn’t understand kids and the way he introduced me to movies says a lot about that. I’ll take a look at some of the stuff I saw as a child and reflect on what’s what.
Spoiler warnings ahoy, and probably a lot of trigger warnings for a lot of stuff relating to how you shouldn’t treat a child.
The Unknown Soldier (Edvin Laine, 1955; Rauni Mollberg 1985)
I hated war movies. I hated how loud they were, how people shot each other, how men screamed and wept and died.
My dad watched the Finnish movie Tuntematon sotilas (Unknown Soldier, 1955) regularly. It’s based on the novel by the same name which for all intents and purposes is Finland’s national epic. Its characters, their names and their flaws, the things they say get quoted more often than our actual national epic The Kalevala.
I wanted to be in my room. But I couldn’t escape what sounded like was real terror blasting from a tv set at full volume.
Maybe this is one of the reasons I said no to conscription.
But what sort of people don’t understand that a child should not hear and see stuff like that?
And why did it take me more than 30 years to realize that I wasn’t weak for not liking it, not enjoying people killing other people and hearing what it sounds like when people die in misery?
Ice Hockey
Okay, this wasn’t a movie. My dad and his friends watched ice hockey. Lots of shouting, calling the other team by names, yelling out “let’s play hockey!” at the start of the game, sudden explosions of drunken sound when their team scored.
It wasn’t a movie and nobody died but I remember getting so scared by a sudden outburst of victory that I started crying. I was maybe four years old, and I have a hazy recollection of my mom coming to comfort me. But despite that, in this memory I feel alone and terrified. Like I’m surrounded by danger and I can’t escape.
First Blood
Rated R, watched it with my dad when I was six. Or seven.
Why would an adult show a child a movie about a Vietnam veteran with PTSD who stitches his own open wound, lays a wooden spike trap that impales a National Guard’s stomach, cries out in misery because of the shit his life is and how war is hell?
Me not going to the Army is starting to make a whole lot of sense.
Apart from those, I remember how piercing the sound of the motorbike was that Rambo rode on.
“They drew First Blood, not me!” mumbles Stallone.
From what I recall — I last saw the movie about ten years ago — it’s a powerful movie and Stallone’s performance is heartfelt; his breakdown at the end feels like a real person’s breakdown instead of carefully acted Oscar bait.
Damien: Omen II
The first Omen was banned in Finland in the 1980s so I only saw the sequels. I’m pretty sure I watched it alone but with my parents’ permission — or neglect. What’s the difference? Whatever it was, it shouldn’t come as a surprise at this point. I rewatched this one several times, but never liked the third one. The first one was pretty entertaining when I saw it at a later age.
It’s about a small child who starts to realize he’s Satan himself. Or something. He has terrible powers and he finds the mark of the beast on him. I remember him going through his hair with his fingers and a closeup of something there. He cries out “Why God?! Why?” A terrible thing for a small child to say.
The movie introduced me to The Book of Revelation. I still haven’t read it, apart from the part about the number of the beast.
The Godfather
One of my dad’s favorite movies which I probably saw around the age of 10. Several times. I don’t remember being particularly shocked by it, but I think I saw parts of it here and there before I saw the full movie. I remember feeling sad because Sonny died — not because of who he was, but because a main character with a face and an actor I knew by name was brutally gunned down. I remember thinking I was somewhat inferior as a man for feeling like this. I remember the bullet through the eye at the end. The Moe Greene special, as they called it in The Sopranos some years later.
I finally saw it in full at around 10, or maybe a little later. It was slow but I liked it. Or maybe I liked it because I wanted to like what my dad liked. And I always liked the music. I probably didn’t realize that Sonny was an asshole. I felt pity when he was shot down.
I wonder what went through my dad’s head when he thought it’s a good idea to watch something as cold-blooded and explicitly violent as The Godfather during daytime when your kid was home. Then again, I saw some irl stuff, too, that a child shouldn’t witness, so I guess it makes sense.
I haven’t watched this film since I saw the first two parts at a double feature at the national movie archive almost twenty years ago. They’re probably good and I should watch them again. Because some movies you only really get as an adult. The next one is a perfect example.
The Wild Bunch
Probably not all kids know who Sam Peckinpah was by the time they’re about ten years old. But I probably saw this around the time I was 12.
Again, one of those movies that I said I liked because my dad said it was good. I remember not getting it at all. Some old guys shoot people, go somewhere, get drunk, talk, get drunk, sing, talk, fool around with women, smile like idiots, play some music, talk, then everyone dies in an epic shootout.
I watched this again three years ago, when I was 36, and now it stands out as the prime example of my dad really not understanding children. The Wild Bunch is an excellent movie about old guys reflecting on the life lived. Or something like that. A touching movie for someone with some perspective on life, with experience about growing old and looking back on the life lived. Who knows what regret is.
My father not understanding this speaks volumes to me. I feel like he liked me, but he never understood — or even liked? — children. He wanted to raise a good man. He often said how proud he was of me. He even apologized after making mistakes. Yes, he usually repeated those mistakes soon after. But those apologies feel heartfelt even now. I guess his way of apologizing taught me the virtue of doing so, but also gave me the idea of apologies being a sob story, a way of asking for pity and understanding from the one you wronged.
The Wild Bunch is a movie about life, but it’s not something like Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books which have a wise narrator who shares their wisdom to the old and young alike. I wonder what my dad was thinking. Was he incapable of seeing that not everyone sees life like he does? Did he think that just by watching this movie, his son would understand its profundity?
The Wild Bunch wasn’t even traumatic to me. Or maybe it wasn’t traumatic anymore because of what I was used to watching. I do feel like I closed something off at a young age in order to not remember what dying sounds and looks like when I tried to fall asleep. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I still can’t visualize anything. I don’t want to vividly relive every terror and every death and every gross detail.
Some people say it’s good to see stuff like this. That it makes you hard, toughens you up, which is a good thing because life isn’t easy. They say that watching violent, shocking, frightening stuff as a kid did them no harm. But the more I’ve processed these things, the more I’ve tried not to be afraid of everything, the more I’ve come to realize that I never really learned how to handle these things. I only knew how to run away from them, or how to distance myself so much that nothing ever felt like anything. Not movie violence, not real violence I was the victim of, not being left alone, not witnessing my parents having sex time and again, not being constantly ridiculed. Life just didn’t feel like anything.
My body stopped existing. It was nothing but a source of pain that a brilliant mind like mine could overcome, should overcome, would overcome, if I only tried hard enough and abstained from everything that others said made life enjoyable. It didn’t feel pleasure or comfort or relaxation. To me, those things only meant slightly less pain — never anything positive.
That’s a way to survive, but it’s not a way to live. I never learned to deal with pain and hardships — I only learned to run away or pretend it wasn’t there. But that’s not how you deal with things, how you learn nuance, how you learn anything. How you grow and mature into an adult who can face difficulties and not panic.
After I’d processed some of this stuff and had two children, I went to see the first Avengers and remember being shocked when the aliens attacked New York. I remember thinking, “This is a healthy feeling. I should feel sad when imaginary people die.”
Basic Instinct
My dad wasn’t there when I watched it but he had rented it. Or maybe he had recorded it from the movie channel. He said I should watch it, it’s good.
I knew it had lots of sex. Maybe I’d seen the trailer, or more likely I’d read the review about it. Maybe some articles. I read movie critiques back then and probably thought more highly of the critics’ views than dad who always hated them.
I asked, incredulous — amazing, really, that I still had something like this left at the age of 12 or 13 — if I should.
He said yeah, yeah, it’s a good movie, you should watch it.
I remember going back and forth a bit.
But I did watch naked Sharon Stone fucking Michael Douglas’s brains out and lots of bloody murder with an ice pick. I didn’t catch the infamous leg spread scene. Maybe it was censored — back then, Finland had something called a video law that forbade the worst violence and the most explicit sex on video — or maybe I just didn’t look closely enough. Actually I didn’t see it the next time, either, because around that time my eyesight had gone worse and I watched it without glasses. It was in the DVD era when I finally realized what everyone was on about in that scene.
I remember being saddened by Gus’s death. In my memories, he felt like a real human being, with a sad and sympathetic face.
He deserved better than being brutally murdered with an ice pick.
