I'm Having a Thought Here

One thing that really bothered me when I would watch movies was when at the end of a "Coming of Age" film, the scene would go something like this:

Parent: "I'm sorry for being a parent and not letting you do whatever you want."
Child: "That's okay, I forgive you because we just spent approximately the last 90 minutes seeing that you are completely unreasonable in your expectations and now you know exactly why you were wrong."
PARENT and CHILD hug and possibly walk down the beach arm in arm as the sun sets.

It always bugged me to death. That's a very blanket statement. It ALWAYS bugged me to death.

Until the other night, that is. I was watching a movie. It was a "Coming of Age" movie and had the typical ending. Except, to my amazement, the child was right!

I said to myself, "Wait! That can't be. I had this blanket statement and everything!"

So I examined my verdict very carefully. And I came to he same conclusion.

The father in the movie was excessively pushing his daughter to be the youngest female national soccer team member. He coached her from EARLY morning until LATE evening. He had her join the college team he coached to get more experience. Now she didn't fight him. She just tried to do other things. She loved photography and dancing and just having friends. Again, her attitude was never horrible or rebellious, she just started realizing she wanted to do other things besides soccer. Her father was pushing her so hard to fulfill HIS dream, he literally made her sick. At the end of the movie, the girl told her father that she wanted to take a break from soccer and focus on some other things in school. He saw what she was saying and agreed and apologized for pushing her to make his dream come true.

And as I thought about it again, I realized he was right to apologize. God has given each person their own gifts. I believe that as a parent, I will be responsible for helping my child find the gifts that God has given them. To force our child to have the talents God has given us can cause resentment and "provoke children to wrath".

So, this whole shocking event made me think about some other "Coming of Age" movies where I had dismissed the children as just being brats. And I found another shocking conclusion. Most of the movies had this same theme of parents pushing their children into what they, the parents, think they should be, not what God has given them. Now, hardly any of the movies had children that handled it the right way. Their responses to their parents were, for the most part, rude and condescending and not God (or parent) honoring.

So either, this is truly a problem that young people are dealing with or it's a convenient conflict to write about.

Either way, I really believe that in order to write a screenplay or watch a movie that avoids this attitude you have to examine the motives behind each person in the script, that they have a godly attitude.

I'm writing a screenplay right now that could be classified as a "Coming of Age". This whole thing made me re-examined my characters and make sure they were not crossing the new line I had found.

So, while this isn't a movie review per-say, it was a good reminder to me to watch movies and look beyond just the first, second, and even third layers to see the true heart of the characters.

What do yo think?

Tiffany