Hello My Imaginary Friends,
We’ve been watching Falcon and the Winter Soldier. No spoilers, I promise. My daughter is having a really hard time following it, which is interesting on its own, considering she had no issues with WandaVision.
Her biggest problem, besides the sheer quantity of military, political, and racism language; is figuring out who the bad characters are.
Television, books, and movies normally have very well defined good and bad characters. She understands the twist baddie, but this show’s characters are all so ambiguously bad that it’s hard to tell.
Even the main characters do some bad and dumb things.
I’ve been trying to explain to her that in real life, bad or good isn’t what you are, but what you do. We’ll get to how it can be hard to tell the difference later, but right now she needs to understand that its not an innate state of being. No one is Good and no one is Bad. We are defined by our actions.
It’s important to me that my kids understand the difference both for themselves and for others. Because once you decide people are one way or another you put them in a box and start to paint their actions based off of your preconceptions. It leads to hero worship and accepting bad things because someone is good.
It’s a hard concept, but we have a lifetime to discuss it.
Stay safe, and be kind,
Éric
