That moment when your five-year old asks you what a Nazi salute means
I suppose I should've expected as much from Guillermo del Toro's remake of Pinocchio, but I was caught off-guard.
Last night, I settled down with my daughter, aged 5, to watch Guillermo del Toro’s new remake of Pinocchio and, because she’s watched the scene several times where the town priest and the local fascist officer make their respective hand gestures one after the other, I should’ve expected what was coming next: first, she turned to me and asked “what does this mean,” mimicking the sign of the cross. Before I could answer, she repeated the question, “and what does this mean?” — this time raising her hand in the air and stiffening her arm like she’d just seen the character onscreen do.
“Oh boy…” I answered, and then stammered something like “that’s going to take a lot of explaining.”
My guard was down because we were both completely comfortable — it was bedtime, I was indulging her for a little bit letting her watch the movie and, I confess, allowing the movie to do the work of tiring her out so that easing her into sleep would be easier. I myself was winding down after a particularly satisfying evening of parenting. I felt very accomplished — and ready to call it a night.
And this came right after she’d already asked for an explanation of World War I! For goodness sake, if someone can show me the roadmap for where one even begins to describe World War I to a five-year old, please do.
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Suffice it to say, I wasn’t ready for such gargantuan-scale questions — much less three at once! It was like a baseball pitcher throwing three pitches at you at once. What do you even swing at? And now suddenly I’m picturing a nightmare scenario in my head of getting a call from my daughter’s pre-K teacher with the news that she’d been Sieg-Heil’ing in class.
I was like “Gee, THANKS Guillermo!”
(UPDATE: Over breakfast two mornings later, I promised my daughter I’d explain the sign of the cross, the Nazi salute, and World War I to her later that night. And, to my credit, I did. With some time to reflect on those topics, they were easier to explain in a nutshell than I’d initially thought.)
Of course, it isn’t much of a shocker that del Toro would inflect the Pinocchio story with darker overtones of a repressive church working side by side with fascist elements. But the film isn’t heavy-handed in that regard (which, unfortunately, I can’t say for the Pinocchio character’s ear-piercing English accent, which is completely out-of-place with the film’s setting).
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed listening to the way del Toro framed the film in his recent interview on the CBC radio show Q, where he talked about using the classic fairy tale as a springboard to explore undertones of parental shortcomings, and how that era between World War I and WWII brought out a “ghostly, corrosive parental power” in certain people:
We wanted Geppetto to be full of edges. He’s a drunk, he’s a drunk, he’s not super-smart, he’s very concerned with how others look at him, and [in particular] how Pinocchio makes him look. He’s full of a lot of things that are baggage [that prevent him from being] a good father — or a real father. I thought this was the more interesting [approach to take]: instead of Pinocchio learning to be a ‘real boy,’ which is nonsense—every kid is a real kid—parents have a hard time becoming real parents. That was the story I wanted to pursue.
I would highly recommend the interview — and also that, as a parent, you try your best to ready yourself for curveballs there’s no way to quite be ready for, if that makes sense.
Take it away, Guillermo (FYI, this video contains SPOILERS):
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