We are watching it with my kid (12 years old, grade 7). We recently received an email from the principal of his school that it is inappropriate for kids, games like it are banned on the playground etc. etc.
So kid’s games are banned on the playground? Red light Green light?
My take is that if a kid is going to watch a show with violence I’d prefer it be ‘real’. No sanitized graceful bloodless deaths with no meaningful consequences for the ‘good guys’. People who kill people for whatever reason have to deal with the moral and emotional after effects (not laughing over a beer later that day in the denouement). And watch it with the kid, and talk to him about what it means and implies.
I feel the same way about sex in movies or tv. Our culture is perversely ok with John Wick slaughtering people by the dozens while not at all ok with nudity or sex. It is absurd. If a move has some sex that isn’t gratuitous or rape I have no problem with my kids seeing it. I draw the line at rape - it is rarely worth actually filming and almost every time I’ve been exposed to it in a film it has felt gratuitous and exploitive (looking at you Game of Thrones and Sopranos).
As a kid, I obsessively watched the dubbed versions of these on the Late Late Show and Dialing for Dollars, and I think that early exposure led to a greater appreciation of the originals as an adult.
I would so much prefer schools take this as an opportunity teach children not to mindlessly imitate things on TV rather than have a freakout over a TV Show and use it as an excuse to further police-statify children’s experience of the Internet.
Are American school kids prejudiced against languages other than English? Many of them.
Are American school kids put off by doing the additional cognitive work of reading while watching TV? Many of them.
Are American school kids coddled by culture that usually caters to them specifically? Yes.
A few times during the show when they announced the next game, I expected it to be dodgeball. Not sure if that’s not as popular with kids in Asia, or if the writers thought choosing that game would be too obvious.
I remember schools banning nunchaku after a few unfortunate incidents involving young Bruce Lee fans. Good times…for those of us who avoided hitting ourselves in the head.
One night my then 6 year old daughter was acting particularly hellacious and got sent to her room early.
About 10 minutes later she comes bursting out, a t shirt over her head like a bank robber and a toy police car, wailing siren and all, in her hand and yells, “WELCOME TO THE PURGE!!!”
Kids are awesome, they’re the only ones that get it.
My 6 year old daughter asked to watch Squid Games. She didn’t know about the violence, she just played the games on Roblox. I declined to allow her to watch.
Related, a friend of mine told her 11 year old daughter she couldn’t watch it. So the daughter looked up spoilers and send every single one to her mother.
I know nothing about the show. But the uniforms look pretty cool. Im going to hazard a guess and say that’s probably the real reason kids are wearing them.
Group costumes have become increasingly popular especially with teenagers. Last year it was all about “Among Us” costumes. This year Squid Games is a good fit at the right time
My 14-year old daughter watched a couple of episodes with subtitles, although I don’t think she got passed more than about E3 or E4. I figure if I could watch history documentaries about the actual horrors of human history at 14 (and I did) she can handle some over-the-top splatter gore.
