Death by disobedience: cautionary tales of our childhood

Why you should always listen to your parents

I was a pretty sensible four year old, from what I recall. No running off with strangers in busy shopping centres. No crossing the road without looking both ways. I avoided electricity pylons and dark bodies of water with hooded figures lurking on the shore. But this was not enough for my dad, who took it upon himself one day to show me a clip from a historical drama about, ‘Why you should always listen to your parents.’ He plonked me in front of the TV and played the grainy recording of a boy, only a bit older than me, who was told in no uncertain terms not to ride a horse without an adult present. The little bugger went and did it anyway. Predictably, he was thrown off.

“And that is why,” my dad said, pressing stop, “you must always listen to me and Mum.”

This was insulting to my four-year-old intelligence. I already had a well-developed notion of how deeply unserious my parents were.

“Can I watch the rest of it?” I asked, knowing this would irk my dad.

“No.”

“What happens next?”

“Oh, the boy dies, and the mother goes mad with grief and tries to kill herself.”

“That sounds good!”

“No.” He ejected the tape.

He had a much less liberal attitude towards adult material than my mum, who nurtured my interest in horror films rated 15 or above from an early age. On one memorable occasion, she pretended to be Freddy Krueger, aided by a pair of garden sheers, but that’s another Substack post.

Did this attempt at a Public Information Film work? Well, I never did sneak off to go horse-riding, but that was largely due to my dad’s warnings about the spinal injuries I might sustain and the damage a horse would do if it kicked me in the head with its back legs. (Side note: ironically, I’ve spent the past few years living in Newmarket, the horse racing capital of East Anglia). I always wondered which film or TV show inspired my dad to make his grand announcement.

Imagine my surprise this week when, upon watching Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 historical drama, Barry Lyndon, I saw the eponymous anti-hero telling his young son that he mustn’t ride his horse alone.

The shot of young Brian’s fall matched the version in my memory, but this time, I had the context of the rest of the film in which to understand it. My crafty father! He’d cherry-picked the moment of the child’s disobedience to illustrate his authoritarian moral lesson, when it was clear from the scenes leading up to the accident that the roguish gambler, Redmond Barry (aka Barry Lyndon), had overindulged his offspring. Barry was unequipped to cope with the social codes expected of him in aristocratic circles. My foolish father, missing the point of the film! He might as well have shown me a clip of Jack Torrence frozen at the end of The Shining and said, “And that’s what happens if you go out without a coat.”

I waited with gleeful anticipation for the censored scenes of the mother’s descent into madness. But reader, I was moved. Brian’s deathbed scene—his parents weeping, his plea that they be kind to each other after he’s gone—is upsetting. Ryan O’Neal and Marisa Berensen are utterly convincing as the grieving mother and father. I could see why my dad wanted to show me this cautionary tale: he wasn’t worried for me, but for him. How would he survive if anything happened to his only child?

Therein lies the difficulty of teaching children about the consequences of their actions. They don’t have sufficient emotional capacity to understand that harm is not individual, but social. If a child is hurt, the effects ripple out far and wide. I’d always interpreted Public Information Films as attempts to frighten children into good behaviour. Take Apaches (1977), a Final Destination-style saga of children dying off one by one on a farm that definitely hasn’t passed a health and safety assessment. There are some disturbing shots involving tractors and heavy equipment. But one of the most harrowing scenes comes at the end, after all the children have died. At the wake, the adults eat a silent lunch of cold meat and cheese, while the child narrator wishes he could have attended the ‘party’ as well. The grimness of a life drained of colour and full of formalities, of carrying on after the worst kind of loss, is more frightening to me as an adult than the nasty accidents would have been to me as a child.

So, are cautionary tales wasted on the young? I’d be interested to know if Public Information Films, fables and fairytales, or even uncontextualized clips from a Kubrick film have had a long-lasting impact on you, and what you avoid as a result. Me, I suppose I’ll have to find a way of illustrating to my puppy the horror of an increase in annual pet insurance.