Imagine you are a child, 12 years old or so, with the maturity level of an adult. You are pretty good at making decisions, but your parents are not. Your parents are prone to making bad decisions that hurt the family, including you. When you try to explain to your parents that they are about to make a bad decision, they do not listen to you or believe you. To them, you are just a kid. So you watch as they make one bad decision after the other. You may be smarter than they are, but you are still under their power and authority. This situation is resemblant of many of the families we see on television.
When family movies and sitcoms first came out, back in the day, they were happy and well-functioning families. The father was the leader of the household. The mother was kind and a good provider for her children. The children benefitted from their parents’ wisdom. Some viewers even got jealous that the TV family looked so happy and perfect. Then came the dysfunctional families in the 1990s and 2000s, like Titus, Everybody Loves Raymond, Malcolm in the Middle, Married With Children, etc. These dysfunctional families were not only funny, but also did not make viewers jealous by being so happy and perfect.
In the 1980s and 1990s, there emerged movies and sitcoms where the children were smart and the adults were stupid. Who defeated the bad guys? The children did, because the adults did not know what was going on during the whole movie. Sometimes the bad guys were mythical-looking creatures that were not thought to exist, which was why only the children knew of their existence. For example, in the 1989 movie The Little Monsters, the bad guys were monsters that lived in a world that could only be accessed by crawling under someone’s bed. Adults would not believe that such creatures existed. Only children would believe that. So the children were the only ones who could defeat the bad guys because they were the only ones who were willing to believe that these creatures existed. The movie Hocus Pocus is another example. Three witches, who were executed 300 years ago, were brought back to life by the lighting of the black-flamed candle. Such an event would supposedly be hard for adults to believe actually happened, so the children had to save the day.
Sometimes, however, it was up to the children to conquer the bad guys because the adults really were just idiots, or at the very least their judgment could not be trusted. Take the Stranger Things TV series. Three boys find a girl named Eleven who escaped from a research laboratory where she was held prisoner. The boys did not tell their parents about Eleven because they figured that if they did, their parents would call the police and then the police would bring Eleven right back to the bad men that she was running from. The boys could not let that happen, so they hid Eleven in their basement. This scenario is an example of a situation where the children could not trust their parents to do the right thing. The children were convinced that only they knew what was right. If they got their parents involved, then the bad guys would get what they want.
The 2018 movie Mary Poppins Returns is another example of a movie where the children are smarter than the parent. The synopsis features some bad men at the bank pulling off a wicked scheme to deceive Mr. Banks and many other people into thinking that the payments on their houses were overdue, and that they had no choice but to turn over their houses to the bank. Who were the ones who found out what those bad men at the bank were really up to? The Banks children. Those bad men at the bank may be able to outsmart Mr. Banks, but they could not outsmart his children. Of course the children tried to explain to their easily deceived father that these men at the bank were up to no good, but he would not believe them. As in many other movies, it was up to the children to defeat the bad guys. At least this time the children had the help of Mary Poppins.
Still another example of a family with children smarter than the parents is the long-time The Simpsons TV series. Of course it is not too hard to be smarter than Homer Simpson, and let’s face it, the little girl, Lisa Simpson, is arguably genius intelligence. Not only is Lisa highly intelligent, she also is morally superior to her parents. She is the kind of girl that we would see participating in activism and always trying to make the world a better place. Though Bart Simpson is not known for being smart, he does seem to be cunning and crafty when he wants to be. While Bart and Lisa being smarter than their parents may be a part of what makes The Simpsons show so amusing, one could imagine how frustrating it would be for children to be under the authority and custody of parents who are less intelligent than you are.
Why are children so often smarter than adults on TV?
Note that the movies where children are smarter than the adults are most likely to be children’s movies where children are the main characters and where children are also the target audience. It is reasonable to figure that children can relate more to movies where children are the main characters. However, if the adults are smarter than the children like they are supposed to be in real life, then the adults would naturally play a bigger role in defeating the bad guys, in which case the children would not be the main characters anymore. Therefore, there are logistical reasons to make the adult characters into idiots. Alternatively, the bad guys could be mythical-looking creatures that only the children are willing to believe actually exist. Either way, the adults have to remain in la-la land the whole movie so that the children can be the main characters who defeat the bad guys.
While there are some explanations as to why children are smarter than adults in a number of movies and sitcoms, there can also be some bad unintended effects on viewers. Keep in mind that many of these movies are children’s movies with mainly children as the target audience, and when these children view one story after another where the children have to save the day because the adults are idiots, or at least cannot be trusted, there is a potential for our young viewers to mistakingly believe that this is representative of real life. Imagine that you are a parent and you have to keep proving to your children that they are not as mature as the TV children and you are smarter than the TV parents.
Some older people complain that children are more disrespectful today than they used to be. I wonder if one of the factors making children increasingly disrespectful is the TV family. As I discussed in the television blog post, people are greatly affected by what they see on television. In a way, people view TV characters as a model of how they should be. Children are even more impressionable, and when these movies targeted to children audiences show the child characters having to take matters into their own hands while the adults are either in la-la land or cannot be trusted, the young viewers are receiving the message that adults are incompetent and are hence not necessarily worthy of respect.
The rebellious teenager stereotype
Television promotes a lot of stereotypes, one of which is the rebellious teenager stereotype. Teenage television characters frequently have a big unfriendly KEEP OUT sign on their bedroom doors. They roll their eyes. They complain frequently. They get overly dramatic. However, when we look at how irresponsible the parents are and the bad decisions the parents make that hurt the family while the children know what is right, we see that the world of TV is a world where teenagers actually have a good reason to be rebellious.
It is one thing for parents to make bad decisions sometimes. It happens. It is another thing if the parents are prone to doing the wrong thing while the children know what the right thing to do is all along. Recall the television blog post that discusses how in a number of movies (e.g. Problem Child 2, It Takes Two), a single parent is about to marry the wrong person while the children know whom their parent should marry the entire time. Not only that, the single parent will not even believe the children when they try to explain to him that this woman he is about to marry is not a good person.
In a number of movies, the parent is too incompetent to protect the children from bad people. Not only this, but also the parent sometimes forcibly exposes the children to bad people by marrying them and making them into the children’s step parents. Though the children are smarter than the parents in these TV families, they are still under the authority of these idiots, and they suffer from it. Furthermore, the idiot adults do not take these intellectually superior and mature children seriously when these children try to explain to the adults that they are about to make the wrong decision. To the adult, the children are “just kids” and do not know any better. While it is true that children often do not know what is good for them in real life, in the land of TV that is not so. In the land of TV, it is often (though not always) the parent that does not know what is good for him/her and it is the children who know what is best.
Take the TV series Haters Back Off, featuring a teenage girl who is trying to build a famous online presence with her singing ability, which is practically non-existent. Her uncle and mother are preoccupied with trying to help her to fulfill her dreams while her younger sister, Emily, has to pay the electric bill. One day at breakfast, Emily says to the family “you notice that the lights actually turned on today? That is because I paid the electric bill”. Obviously she is the most mature and most reasonable person in the household, and she is the younger of the two children. My impression is that we viewers are supposed to laugh as this silly dysfunctional family makes the younger child have to take on some adult responsibilities because the adults are too absentminded. If you empathize with Emily, however, you may not find it to be funny.
If I were a child with the maturity level of an adult, and I had parents who were too mentally incompetent to take on adult responsibilities, and if I had to take on some of those responsibilities while an audience in the background is laughing at the whole thing, I would be angry. Yet when a teenager in the TV family gets angry, we are supposed to believe he/she is angry because he/she is a teenager and teenagers are supposed to be rebellious and “hard to deal with”. Like the female stereotypes I discussed in this blog post, the rebellious teenager stereotype also can be harmful. It produces a justification for invalidating the negative emotions of teenagers, and neglects the fact that negative emotions are often warranted and should be respected and taken seriously.
While movies and sitcoms often show children being smarter than the adults, what they do not show is the detrimental effects on the children. In real life, if a child were smarter than his/her parents, and had to watch his/her parents make one bad decision after the other, that child would have a good reason to get angry and frustrated. When bad guys come along, and the parents are too incompetent to protect the child from the bad guys, and make the child have to take matters into his/her own hands when it comes to defeating the bad guys, that child would have good reason to get angry and maybe even rebellious. When these idiot parents don’t even listen to the child when the child has something intelligent to say, and continue making bad decisions that hurt the family, including the child, then the child especially has good reason to be angry.
Summary
Television shows toxic behaviors a lot of the time without showing the harmful effects of those toxic behaviors. For example, television will frequently show characters engaging in sexual promiscuity and having sexual relations within hours of meeting each other. What television will not show are the diseases that are spread, and the emotional harm that occurs. Similarly, television will frequently show child characters being smarter, wiser and more mature than they are in real life, while the adults are not always so smart. It may seem amusing, but in real life it is a destructive family dynamic.