Fairy Tales, Darkness, and the New “Snow White and the Huntsman” Trailer

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I think it’s sort of a rite of parenting passage to sit down with your children and an old kiddie classic book/film, only to discover that its themes are quite a bit more grown-up than you remember.

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It’s something that you struggle with even if you approach family entertainment from an academic perspective, or if you make a point of avoiding helicopter parenting; no matter how deep your intellectual/historical understanding of the material, I think it’s hard not to shy away from exposing your kids to dark/scary/complicated themes before they’re “ready.”

I struggle with this and I hate myself for it, partly because — like a lot of parents — we’ve leaned heavily on older titles with our kids, and I figure if parents didn’t worry that The Wizard of Oz was too dark for their little ones in 1900, or that Hansel and Gretel were going to give the kids screaming nightmares in the 1800s, then why am I flinching inwardly and editing out the nasty bits in 2012?

These are the things I thought about while watching the new trailer for Snow White and the Huntsman. Not necessarily because I think this is a movie full of thought-provoking subtext, but because I’d like to believe Huntsman was sparked by a desire to take fairy tales back to their bloody, violent roots — and even if it ends up being just another crappy action/adventure flick (which, let’s face it, it probably will be), that desire is sort of noble, and something that might even signal a shift away from today’s bubble-wrapped parenting philosophy.

Uh, not that I’m advocating taking your kids to see Snow White and the Huntsman, you understand. But let’s talk about our role as cultural gatekeepers for our kids. How much do you edit stuff when you’re reading books or watching films that contain troublesome themes? How much do you trust your children to handle?

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And do you feel like we’ve gone too far when it comes to sheltering our kids from the big bad world?

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First Look at the CW’s Dark Green “Arrow”

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We pretty much have to love Christopher Nolan — I think it’s the law or something — but he’s still a little bit of a butthole for giving rise to the still-growing wave of “dark and gritty” superhero projects that were unleashed following the massive success of Batman Begins. I mean, it’s still better than the aggressively hokey vibe that used to go along with anything comic-derived, but I wish Hollywood could learn to find a happy medium instead of blindly reaching into the “gritty” drawer whenever they want to make a quick buck off of a Marvel or DC property.

Oh, speaking of which, here comes the CW with its Green Arrow-inspired TV series, which is naturally titled Arrow so people don’t have to type as many characters into their DVR scheduler, and which executive producer David Nutter referred to as “darker and harder-edged” than his previous project, Smallville.

Oh boy. If you’re anywhere near my age, you remember Green Arrow as being one of the more unintentionally hilarious peripheral characters in the DC Universe — a guy with a blonde, oddly-shaped Van Dyke who had pretty good aim with a bow and quiver and liked to wear green.

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He was kind of the DC Universe’s version of Hawkeye, only I think maybe Green Arrow came first (and was twice as lame). I don’t know what’s been done with his character since the ’80s because it’s impossible to keep track of DC continuity, and reading a Wikipedia entry for even the most minor character is an exercise in brain-bending agony, but he apparently still shoots arrows instead of Uzis or magic bolts, which is comforting, I guess.

Anyway, the CW has released its first official still for Arrow, and…I don’t know, I think this might be an encouraging sign.

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The yellow Van Dyke is gone, anyway.

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What do you think?

Free Universal Connection Kit Equals Ultimate Nerd Dad Triumph

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When I was a kid, a nerd dad was something to be…well, maybe not ashamed of necessarily, but certainly discussed as rarely as possible, and taken out in public for biannual viewings if you could help it. Dads were supposed to own heavy metal tools and teach you how to use them only after you begged and proved you weren’t actually an idiot, and take you camping, and make you walk the dog. They were only supposed to care about your toys for as long as it took to scream obscenities after accidentally stepping on them. Aside from the occasional Pinewood Derby debacle, they were not supposed to get involved in dorky hobbies.

Things have changed, and the Free Universal Construction Kit offers paradigm-shifting proof.

What’s the Free Universal Construction Kit, you ask? Why, nothing more than “a matrix of nearly 80 adapter bricks that enable complete interoperability between ten popular children’s construction toys.” In other words, as Kottke put it, it’s a new invention that lets kids “connect their LEGO pieces to their Lincoln Logs to their K’Nex.” Which is pretty awesome, and certainly something I would have been interested in, but what’s really interesting is how you make it — by cranking the damn things out on a Makerbot 3D printer.

I ask you: What kind of dad has a 3D printer lying around the house? A nerd dad. And while I can’t say for sure that nerd dads outnumber the lawnmowing, nearly mute, Old Spice-scented dads of my youth, I think we’ve reached some sort of geek nirvana when using an $1800 open source printer to manufacture plastic widgets for interspecies toy mating is regarded as no big deal.

I’d write more, but my four-year-old son wants to play Egg Punch on my old iPad 1. Just watch this trailer and marvel at our brave new world.

The Free Universal Construction Kit from Adapterz on Vimeo.