That popular politeness, "Not in front of the children" -- employed to protect offspring from knowledge of family deaths and divorces -- can now be applied to children's entertainment.
Superficially, last week in the UK looked like an early showbiz Christmas for kids: Little Britain, cult playground viewing, is back on our screens, while the fourth Harry Potter film opened last Friday. But, viewed from a greater height, these new terms for Little Britain's Vicky Pollard and Hermione Granger herald a crisis over the issue of what younger audiences should see.
Little Britain, on DVD or video, is certificated for over-15s and BBC1 transmission begins after the 9pm watershed (when adult material may be shown), but surveys and the shrill repetition of the show's Matt Lucas and David Walliams' catchphrases in playgrounds offer overwhelming evidence of a significant fan base between the ages of four and 10.
And while the three previous films about the boy wizard have been rated PG (Parental Guidance), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire has received a 12A certificate in the UK because of fears about some scenes. This decision will lead to many tears, because a generation of under-10s already has the Potter-movie habit, and expulsion from the club will feel like an especially bad example of parents being, in the current short-pants slang, random and, indeed, stressy.
The difficulty in the Potter case is that the decisions made by parents really will be random in the old sense as well. With Little Britain, the television and DVD regulators operate like an old theatrical lord chamberlain and simply say: no under-15s. But the 12A classification leaves the question of who gets to see the Quidditch World Cup to the discretion of parents -- under-12s can go, but some probably shouldn't. So no blaming it on the government; this is where we earn our parental overdrafts.
Last week's coincidence of borderline material in television and film, however, simply brings to a peak one of the stories of the year in culture. After a long spell of small burglaries, this is the year when the grown-ups finally stormed the playroom and stole children's entertainment for their own purposes.
The returning Doctor Who, though undoubtedly one of the TV triumphs of the past 12 months, was frequently adult in tone and theme, its screenings moved further and further past teatime and its DVDs steered towards teenagers. Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, although classified 12A, featured scenes of peril that feel nearer an 18-year-old certification, and I still wake at night with sweaty regret at having taken a sensitive 10-year-old to see it.
This rise of children's entertainment that children ideally wouldn't see is largely due to a shift in attitudes. While Victorians and Edwardians used euphemism, whimsy and other swaddling to keep their offspring younger than they were, babies of the late second Elizabethan era are raised older than their calendar age. Childcare manuals encourage parents to speak to babies and toddlers as if they are work colleagues. The rise of viral advertising also means the young are ever more likely to know what's supposed to be kept from them.
This effect has been exacerbated because the artistic mission of almost every artist these days is to get scarier, a reflection of the stressy and random world in which we live. Each successive Harry Potter director, at his coronation press conference, declares his aim is to "make it darker."
And with J.K. Rowling, this is a declared part of the project: the Potters are the only major children's series in which the characters get older in each book. That's fine for readers who joined the series, on page or screen, when they were eight or 10, but those who came in younger are being accelerated towards adolescent atmospheres.
Little Britain is a different case, aiming for viewers who are British rather than little but accidentally grabbing the latter because a few characters are kindergarten slapstick, with catchphrases ("ergh-ergh-erggggh") that even the tiniest can parrot.
But, as the new series makes clear, Little Britain isn't designed to be received in the very youngest school class, the punchlines frequently involving fellatio, erections, incontinence and men wrestling in naked transvestite fat suits.
Some liberals will insist that children are brilliantly sophisticated filters who get the gags they get and ignore the others without damage. But I wouldn't take the risk. The film censors, in introducing the 12A level, signalled a move from a nanny state towards a parent state. Little Britain and the new Potter film throw down the mitten. It's time to use a phrase we secretly hoped had been censored from parenthood: "No, you can't." Prepare for tears.
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