On the Netflix platter this week was Hotel Rwanda. I was remiss not to see it in the theaters, but I didn't b/c I knew it would hurt my heart. I didn't realize ahead of time that the director used nuance over slasher tactics when filming; in the last decade I've become pretty sensitive to gore. B/c it was rated PG-13 and J's seen those before, I decided to let him watch it with me for the historical and educational values.
Besides, I had to see it b/c I think Don Cheadle is one sexy mofo.
J was very interested, but got scared. At one point, he crawled around behind my back to peer over to watch. Like I've never seen him before, J was afraid to go to bed afterward. Unlike most kids, he is oblivious to violent images usually. He doesn't emulate the violence, it rolls off. Although I don't like that he plays/watches at his dad's, he can see someone getting shot or run over on Grand Theft Auto and not think it is the norm for life. He does not generalize. He has a huge conscience about such, but in part I always thought it was b/c he didn't internalize it. However, Hotel Rwanda internalized itself in him. He kept asking if it was real, not understanding the difference between news footage, news-like footage, and movie re-creation.
He did sleep better than he anticipated, but he said he woke up a number of times. Although he wanted to sleep with me, I made him sleep in his own bed, b/c I wanted to watch the special features and documentaries before getting the DVD back in the mail today. I could tell him the next morning how the story ended and that it was brighter for both the people and the country. I could tell him that the duration was only about 100 days, that a million people died during that time, that it happened 3 years before he was born, the people involved revisited the sites two years ago, and the movie came out last year. Facts like this seemed to help.
He, however, had so many questions -
*how could people do this to one another?
*what was the real reason for it? (b/c some arbitrary skin color/height/nose width issue imposed by the Belgians wisely made no sense to him)
*where else has genocide happened?
*why didn't the world react?
*how does this relate to our civil war?
*was our civil war over slavery?
Jeez, he's good for 8 years old.
4 comments:
He is so sweet. I read your long list of past posts and the ones you wrote about J had me in tears by the end. J and Alex could be brothers with some of the things you have written about him.
I linked to you in my latest post on my blog.
You are my new hero!
Shanna,
You give me shivers. Thanks so much. I'll go read your reference now.
Thanks again.
My son, Alex, asks questions like that whenever people talk about the war right now in iraq. he has a cousin, whom he refers to as uncle, who's stationed over there at the moment. He happened to overhear me one night, when he was supposed to be asleep, as I was telling my mother about how Jeremy's (cousin/uncle) unit was hit a few weeks back. How he knew the term unit, I have no clue, but he came running out of his room in a panic to ask about Jeremy. When I had assured him that Jeremy was ok, he started asking me about Jeremy's battle buddy, who was not as lucky. (He suffered severe burns to his face, throat and lungs) Alex kept asking over and over about the injuries, if there had been anyone else hurt and why we were over there in the first place. He couldn't grasp WHY we were at war, which I didn't expect him to. he ended up sleeping in my room that night.
It is awful for a child to have a concept of and the anxiety associated with war. My son has asked me so many times about his great uncles - 4 siblings who were in WWII together, were in the BIG FAMOUS battles, and all came home largely uninjured. He also asks about my grandfather's and his own father's military career, why there is a N vs S Korea, why Russia is now different, etc. For several years, he said he wanted to be an Army Man when he grows up. He hasn't said it lately, though, thank goodness. He has a thing for the vehicles, submarines, and planes, stuff he likes to draw. I could not handle it if he did go military. Over my dead body will he attend a military school or start an ROTC program. Of course, he could always enlist, then. Scary. I will readily admit to not being very patriotic. Being a military wife for so long largely stole that from me instead of reinforcing it.
Post a Comment