Who the fuck takes their preschooler to an Andy Warhol exhibit curated by David Cronenberg?

I found it odd (picture a mother shielding her young daughter's eyes with one hand while holding one of those audio tour/magic wand gadgets with the other) , and I'm not usually a prude about sexual things being shown/explained to kids.

But I did have visions of indignant soccer moms a) ignoring the clearly worded disclaimer at the exhibit entrance and b) raising hell with the staff.

We take our two quite often to the Baltic Arts centre, and they quite often have stuff like things around.

It's a simple matter of
a) Checking the warnings
b) looking at the thing being warned about and deciding if they can see it or not.

eg. the Spencer Tunnick "nude bodies around Gateshead" video/art display was not a problem as far as we were concerned, but I did see some astonished folks around. The kids were quite unfussed.

I feel like the answer to #1 is sort of up to the parents -- only they can decide what's appropriate for their own children. But if the complaint is really about #2, then I can kind of understand the frustration: either let the kids look (and be prepared for questions), or don't bring them into the exhibit in the first place.

j/k luv u Andy

There's a guy-on-guy blowjob (albeit not very brightly lit), and some full frontal female nudity, so, yeah. The clip is an hour-long loop, so you can arguably check in and out of it as you look at other pieces in the exhibit.

But if the complaint is really about #2, then I can kind of understand the frustration: either let the kids look (and be prepared for questions), or don't bring them into the exhibit in the first place.

That's kind of where I was going with this, because I know that if I had been that little girl, I would've thought "this place doesn't seem that bad or scary, so what is that I'm not allowed to look at it?" Thank you for pointing out the source of my ambivalence/incredulity.

I wasn't exactly blown away by it either.

Nor were we. It was kinda like "18 bucks a pop for this, and the rest of the gallery has only a third of its stuff on display while they renovate? Feh."

how about we stop treating explicit sex like it's a bad thing?

doesn't seem like a big deal to me for a kid to see this. seriously.

Only if they want them to grow up to be peeping toms.

I don't think little kids should be exposed to stuff like that, but if they are, the worst thing for parents to do is OHMIGOD GET AWAY FROM IT NOW.

Yes, and then I respond to jaymc:

That's kind of where I was going with this, because I know that if I had been that little girl, I would've thought "this place doesn't seem that bad or scary, so what is that I'm not allowed to look at it?" Thank you for pointing out the source of my ambivalence/incredulity.

My issue here is not so much with the kids as it with the parents.

(Also, hstencil, I've explained the injoke behind my screen name elsewhere on these boards. Look it up if you care to. It doesn't bare repeating.)

several xpost

Freudian slip? Or just thinking of that Warhol loop?

xpost ok seriously I guess you're pretty determined to make the thread about that instead of what it was actually about, cool beans dude.

hstencil, is it OK to masturbate in front of a baby?

srsly, wtf is that?

I was wondering who would catch that!

I suspect that the mother in question didn't know what she was doing when she bought those tickets.

I dunno, the disclaimer at the ticket counter made it pretty clear. Not that people read signs anymore.

that seems to be the conservative line re: the foley scandal!

i don't think grainy art films with pornographic elements are even nearly equivalent to porn, at all.

Not that people read signs anymore.

that's definitely the problem here. people do not read signs, at all.

You call them pornographic elements but it's not equal to porn. I guess the money shot is your mitigating factor? Ball sucking? Fisting? The orgasm face? A Dirty Sanchez?

There's a guy-on-guy blowjob (albeit not very brightly lit), and some full frontal female nudity, so, yeah. The clip is an hour-long loop, so you can arguably check in and out of it as you look at other pieces in the exhibit.

i'm guessing you've never seen a warhol film, or a jack smith film, or...

xpost - someone too cheap to get a sitter?

xpost

I really don't get that.

Who the fuck takes their preschooler to the fucking art museum?

People with no couth.

*waits*

xposts

Well, that just speaks to small children's propensity to focus on insane details. I take them to the aquarium and they remember the pizza - doesn't mean they're not getting something out of a trip to the aquarium. And Ally's OTM, I could take them to Jurassic Park but a trip to the gift shop is going to trump any and every thing.

If you ask a 3 year old, "What was your favorite part of skydiving from a transluscent plane piloted by Elmo while holding hands with The Wiggles?" they'll inevitably answer, "We went to McDonalds for lunch that day!"

haha, understatement of the week; reminds of DeLillo's idea for child porn...

I totally think kids should be taken to museums, because especially now there are so many museums that cater to kids with special exhibits and activities. Also there's lots of specific children's museums. Of course, if the kid hates it and cries, I wouldn't force it. I think kids (and adults) should be exposed to as many things as possible. The coolest parents who bring their kids to my storytime allow the kids not to go if they don't want to. Some kids get up to the door and start screaming and crying and the parents shrug and are like, not this week, I guess. The other parents hold them down and force them to sit through storytime, which is, at the least, disrespectful of the others there. My parents never took me museums, sob, but I read a Judy Blume book where the girl went with her grandmother to the symphony, and it sounded fun.

Ha ha, I've had to stand there with my hand over the electric eye with mine!

And to chime in on everyone else's point -

taking yr kids to something so they can experience it = classic
taking yr kids to something so you can experience it = dud

Details?

That's awesome.

-- Euai Kapaui (tracerhan...), October 17th, 2006. (tracerhand)

this is EXACTLY the opposite of what i think. i think kids should discover sexuality separate from their parents.

additionally, i sort of think its awesome for kids to discover most things (music, movies, etc) separate from their parents, but i just say that cause my parents never listened to punk rock, and im jealous of people whose parents did.

xpost Maria, totally parents should not base their entire lives around their kids. Hell mine started leaving me alone by myself for short periods at like age 8.

I agree with this, but think 89% is too high. Fifty-fifty maybe.

also, had i kids, i'd take them to the local science museum for the new featured exhibit, Star Wars.

it hardly needs to be said that this is otm
your experience is obv going to be different when you're with the kids - and it could even be a better experience! but i see a lot of parents not willing to take that logical leap, for whatever reason.
- xpost, but yeah, having one's own interests is totally important for kids to see too, totally, m!

does it work to, like, tire a kid out by going to the park beforehand (as long as you have a stroller)? because wandering around an art gallery with a sleeping kid seems like a nice idea and when i've seen such a thing it's always warmed my heart. but yeah, then kid wakes up.

we went to the museum of anthropology (at ubc) a lot when i was a kid, which is like art gallery x totem poles and crazy freaky wooden masks. i remember being into the art and exhibits but i think just being in a different kind of quiet place with a very specific kind of light also had a big impact on me. (also, we always did a lot of walking around before and after.)

"Who the fuck takes their preschooler to a Scorsese movie?" There were at least three pre-schoolers in the audience. One began crying early on and one of the parents left. Another cried out once during the final gun battle. The third behaved himself, but since when did it become appropriate to take little kids (preschoolers here) to a Violent Movie?

Fucking parents.

xpost

killer.

and, xpost, it makes sense that kids love noize.

...at the coffee shop the other day, a mother (who clearly did not spend much time with her son) forced him up from the table and made him stare at the only-decent paintings on the wall. "see son? that's art. you have to stand for a while and look at it." she then proceeded to shuffle him along the wall of the cafe and look at each painting in sequence for about 20 seconds apiece. totally unbelievable.

Okay, we've established kids shouldn't be exposed to Warhol orgy loops, but this and The Departed thing is far more disturbing to me. Fucking selfish child abusers. One of my favorite movies is Audition but I'm not gonna sit the kids down for that anytime soon.

x-post re: the noize thing - yeah kids love noize and I could see them having a great time at a Lightning Bolt or Magik Markers show (if it were outside - let them get to high school before we destroy their hearing). Wolf Eyes, uh, maybe not.

Whenever I put on the Bad Brains my 5 year old starts leaping around the kitchen and doing knee-spins.

Like why bring your preschooler to a modern art museum in DC when you can walk ten feet and go to the America museum that has a Muppets exhibit for god's sake.

I don't see why you shouldn't do both. Kids can get modern art. My girlfriend and I take her 5-year-old to all the galleries we visit and she always finds something (or someone) interesting to amuse herself with.

In terms of movies, we don't take her out to see adult stuff often, although sometimes if we're watching a film at home we'll let her watch it with us. Last night we watched Total Recall and she self-censored it (covering her face) during the sexy and violent bits. (although by the end she was laughing along with us at the totally over-the-top violence) We also watched Herzog's Nosferatu the other night and she handled it pretty well.

I can sympathise with the referenced mother in the first post. I think it's fair enough to want to take your kid to a Warhol exhibition whilst still maintaining your right to shield them from anything too intense. You'd be a dick if you complain about it to the curators afterwards, though.

They were older kids though, and Mapplethorpe's stuff is pretty blatant.

http://www2.propichosting.com/Images/421611138/17.jpg

megalolz

The horror film story is one of the worst things I've ever heard.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/155652580X.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

I don't hate kids, but I have a very dim view of parents.

No

Is it the act of breeding you find contemptible?

Just because you can doesn't mean that you should.

Your own parents?

I think they did a good job of raising me and my siblings.

Or are you talking about the ones you notice when out and about?

The parents/child-rearers/whathaveyou who are going a good job are the ones that you don't notice.

Except when you meet a kid that is extraordinarily bright, interesting/interested, and happy. In that case I notice good parenting at work.