Wreck It Ralph

While not an outright scary movie, Wreck It Ralph could be troublesome to younger viewers. Younger viewers are more likely to be scared by grotesque mutations, such as that of King Candy even he turned into a half bug half man monster. Older children can realize that this is a cartoon and can separate it from reality, but younger kids don't have that separation. Watching the giant bugs devourer humans is another aspect of this movie that could be scary for younger viewers. However, these fears are nothing too traumatic and shouldn't cause long term fears. It's important to recognize the difference in fear responses among youth. While this movie may affect the youngest demographic of children, any kids age seven or older shouldn't have any problems viewing it. Wreck It Ralph also depicts scenes of cartoon violence. This is no surprise as a large portion of current television and movies has cartoon violence in it. Much of the violence is light hearted and humorous. For example when Calhoun, from Hero's Duty, and Felix were trapped in quicksand, she slapped him enough for the laughing Laffy Taffy to descend and save them. Also in this case there were no consequences to the violence because Felix could easily fix himself. While it doesn't seem like anything major, these depictions of violence could play a role in the greater problem of children learning scripts of how to act. With proper reinforcement of the realities of violence, the cartoon violence could be counteracted. Along with violence this movie did contain some bullying, however it also shows characters overcoming their bullies. Ralph thought he had to win a medal to prove he wasn't a bad guy. In the end it was his good nature that helped him, and his bullies realized he was actually a good guy. For those children struggling with bullies, this is a good story of someone overcoming.
Also, aside from bullying, another potential problem that can arise from watching "Wreck it Ralph" is understanding character development that takes place in the movie. "Wreck it Ralph" has some complex character growth that young children will have a hard time grasping. Ralph, is not content with his life and wants to change. Throughout the course of the movie, viewers see him struggle with his identity and how he learns to accept it. For children, this is a challenge to understand because they do not have the cognitive abilities such as empathy and emotional understanding to put their shoes in the characters perspective. The "Bad Guy Affirmation" plays a large role in the development of his character. As it is said in the beginning and the end, the audience should see how the producer wanted to teach everyone a lesson in how to accept themselves for who they are.
Throughout this quirky animated movie we see many emotional avenues and we can only imagine how children interpret these type of complex feelings. This type of diverse emotional atmosphere can be confusing for children and will often they will react differently to it. The main emotions in the movie are happiness and sadness which are the most basic of emotions and are understood by ages five and up. These emotions are the emotions that are the most common for young children and we them explicitly in the movie Wreck-it-Ralph. In the textbook Children, Adolescents and the Media it states that, “...content analysis revealed that children’s favorite programs often featured portrayals of empathy, altruism, and an exploration of feelings” (Palmer, 1988) The immediate empathy felt in the beginning for the main character Ralph is understood as the right feeling for a child and they connect to this character not as a villain, but as an underdog of sorts. This type of emotional development and lesson is so important because it is a necessary skill for children to possess empathy and understanding. A young child would not respond to this unrealistic character as much as they would a person in their life. To aid emotional understanding children five and above create schemas to understand emotion and place the characters in a box that will explain the emotional situation. In this movie the viewer is rooting for Ralph to become the hero while also feeling empathy for him and Vanellope who are the underdogs. The mood switches on Ralph when he destroys Vanellope’s racing car. Even though the viewer knows Ralph does this out of fear, we still have sadness for Vanellope and anger towards Ralph. We saw as a group how important emotions are to the movies children watch as it makes them equipped to deal with real life situations that entail emotional understanding.