Just logged on to e if anyone else has mentioned this! I assume you're on itv +1. Couldn't believe what I saw and that nobody had mentioned it... Different times, I know, but still... Didn't they edit the film to take out guns etc.? Would've thought the kiddies playing with knives and puffing on fags might have been removed too.
shareKids were not coddled in the 80s the way they are today. Kids were perfectly capable of being left alone back then. (and today too, if given the chance.) Nobody would have considered her a bad mother for that, and it makes no sense to judge her by today's over-the-top standards.
She allowed her older son, who was close to getting his permit I believe, to drive in the driveway, which is legal. Nothing wrong with that.
The smoking, OK not good. But grabbing knives when there is a supposed threat outside? I guess they are just supposed to cower in fear? Again, kids were not raised back then to be such quivering globs of jello. Boys were taught that men protect women, and they were almost grown men, of course they would tell mom to stay put and they would go check it out.
You must be the change you seek in the world. -- Gandhi
She wasn't a bad mother. When I was 15, my Dad used to let me back the car down the driveway just like she does in this movie. I was allowed to be home alone since I was 12 which is only 2 years older than Elliot is supposed to be. And this was around 2005, over 20 years after this movie came out. Mary was actually an awesome mother for what she was going through with her divorce. She was sort of like a kid at heart and you could tell by how goofy she was acting on Halloween and how she laughs when Elliot says "Penis Breath".
shareShe actually told them to put the knives back. She's not a 'bad mother', she's just ineffectual. She'd just been divorced and had a struggle exerting authority. It's not an ideal situation but she was doing the best she could. To judger her as a 'bad mother' requires a special kind of *beep* lack of compassion.
shareIn TN a 10 year old can be left home alone. They just can't babysit another child. I had a serious problem with her leaving 4 year old Gertie home alone when she went to pick up Elliot.
shareI'm a single parent and I suppose she didn't really have a choice. I did notice a couple of things, but they don't make her a bad mother or anything like this. It's just the stress of raising 3 children on her own, have a job, etc. Besides, I was raised back in the eighties and it was different.
Our first intuitions are the true ones.
I had a serious problem with her leaving 4 year old Gertie home alone when she went to pick up Elliot.As you should have. Mary was neglectful in that context. share
I think she was a distracted mother. The scene in the kitchen when gerty was trying to show her E.T. she didn't even notice him...
shareNo, bad son. Mary was a single mother doing the best she could. Michael on the other hand was a disrespectful jerk.
shareSteve, she also did not force her kids to have a helmet when they rode bikes!!
And she left the girl home when she picked up Elliott at school !!!
Back then, if a kid rode their bike with a helmet, they would have been beaten up by the other kids for being a wuss....
Back then, there was none of this "play date" nonsense - if a kid wanted to visit a friend, they'd just tell their parent(s) that they were going to their friend's house, and that was it.
When I was a kid, we would explore the woods near our neighborhood, follow the river under the overpass of the Interstate, wind up in the rural junkyard; hammers in hand, we would smash up windows and windshields and hoods and doors - it was all good fun - unfortunately we were unaware that these junked cars were used for parts - we thought they were all going to the "crusher", and therefore smashing them with hammers could not possibly do any harm.
We would walk/bike to local gas stations and watch old Star Trek reruns in their waiting rooms while seeking shelter from the rain; we would play video games at the Holiday Inn; we would visit the local coffee shop and score free cokes and German Chocolate Cakes from the waitresses, who gave them to us because they thought us boys were cute.
We would follow the railroad tracks like the boys in Stand By Me, on an exploration trip with walkie-talkies (and my little brother lost one of the pair, which where mine).
We would ride our bikes, without helmets, around the neighborhood, rolling at high speeds down steep hills with our legs up on the handlebars....
We would explore the underground drainage system in our neighborhood, in near total darkness except for the background lights on our early LCD digital watches....oblivious to the danger of water moccasins that south Georgia was rife with.
We would rise early on a Saturday morning to ride our bikes several miles from home to a convenience stare that had different comics than the one that was closer to home (had to get those Silver Surfer reprints!).
We would wait until our parents were asleep on late Friday nights, and ride our bikes to the local Zippy Mart for sodas, comics, and candy.....then return home to watch the late-night CBS rerun of Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
It was a better time to be a kid.
I have never seen this until today. I'm in my 50's. I had a WTF moment when they were all smoking, LOL. Mom never seemed to notice.
shareExactly! I was allowed to be left home alone when I was around 7 or 8. I did have a 6 year old brother, but he RARELY really 'looked after me'... so to speak. And I was the first one home from school (bus stop). I had a key to the house... and each time I lost my key my dad went NUTS. My best friend lived next door. We had an... open sewer we called 'the ditch'...and for the most part it really was simply running rain water... and we traveled up and down that thing for MILES... back and forth. We had a forest behind his house the local kids called the 'valley'. My friend and I climbed the best climbing trees and we each 'claimed' one. We could see most of the valley from up there, and my house. We rode out bikes (without helmets) which was HEAVEN! I cannot STAND to ride a bike WITH a helmet... you can't feel the wind in your hair (or what's left of it.. :P ). THAT is freedom. Heck we rode to the local gas station for a drink, played 1942 or Ghost n Goblins (whatever they had at Zippy Mart...) and the private pool my mom paid for to me a member of... now I remember even FURTHER back than that when there was an OLD closed pool just half a block down from my own house. It STANK... why? Because people would throw their pets into it, or dead pets into it... my friend and I would get inside the fence on rare occasion just to go see it... it STANK, and we were under 10, but smart enough to NOT get inside the pool (or you could NOT climb out!) It was covered and now a house is on that land... We knew our neighborhood VERY well. Selling stuff door to door was NOT a scary event, they knew us all. Some closed the door in my face, many people would buy stuff from me every year... and even in my grand parent's neighborhood a few miles away. We had out bikes accidents... I nicked my legs, scruffed up my hands and knees and elbows another time, my friend broke his arm on 'Dead Man's Hill'...a very steep hill where a man died in a tornado trying to save his dog back in 1973... I drove all OVER that neighborhood. In 1980 or as a kid you bike was your LIFE. Yeah, we had the Atari 2600, but the games were atrocious and didn't keep you for very long... and had NOTHING on the arcades had back then... I remember HATING the Atari PacMan version... sitcoms STILL use that horrendous sound for video games on occasion even to THIS day! Ugh... rant over. But having the house to your self, a key to the house (not even a pre-teen), and learning to watch your immediate surrounding and being aware of your environment... these kids now-a-days just do NOT have a clue. And my 7 year old still makes these baby crap sounds, act like he has ants in his pants... and rarely goes outside...barely keep his room clean (hardly ever playing IN it to boot), and is starting to not respect us, just because our way is not HIS way... I just want to lay into him sometimes, but my 'wifey' makes SURE I don't. Ugh... I MISS the 70's and 80's... back when other people stayed OUT of other people's business. I tried warning my Dad back around 1990 - 1991 about what was going on in the country around us in the news BACK THEN..., he didn't believe me then... and then his eyes were opened a bit too late. And now we have 'happy safe zones' and 'play date' crap, scared of our neighbors, of anyone, trusting no body, not wanting to help anyone, Schools not trusting their students (why I left education) what kind of life is this!? We are going into a BACKWARD spiral caused my an influx of ...hate to say it, but 'bad, lewd and perverted culture'. I'm not saying we did NOT have people/stuff like that back then, we did. But it wasn't near put on a pedestal, along with open cursing like we do today. It ALL merges together. It's not that hard to see what's going on, and we're sitting around on our hands not wanting to 'rock the boat'. Hoping what's left of our country just doesn't sink to the bottom of the metaphysical ocean.
STYX (The Best of Times): "when people lock their doors and hide inside, rumor has it, it's the end of paradise..."
3rd generation American from a long line of Gottscheers... it was Drandul, dude!
I will admit... back then... teen kids smoking wasn't uncommon. Heck, there used to be cigarette machines everywhere including places like Denny's and Shoney's and Waffle House. They were around $1.30 a pack. About anyone could buy them. It wasn't until around the mid 80's did they start posing an age law on cigarettes. Heck my grandfather started smoking when he was 11 from what I heard. My Great-grandfather on my other side... he bought the tobacco and rolled his own. Smoking 'over the pond' was normally for simply 'keeping warm', instead of a Hollywood image America seemed to create in the 20's - 60's.
And going through my genealogy seems like many of my ancestors lived a LOT longer than we do now... like 80 - 90 years old. Now we're dying of strange cancers before we're 70... smoking the cause? Maybe for a few, but I don't think so...
Plus back in the 70's & 80's condoms were kept 'behind' the counter in most places. Now you go to a (pick any undesirable) gas station and they have them right on the counter by the register! Nothing like explaining what the heck THOSE are to a 5 year old who's seeing a face full of packages of condoms! Lovely era we live in now...
3rd generation American from a long line of Gottscheers... it was Drandul, dude!
So, tell us, why did your generation decide to become such crappy over-protective parents? You guys have no one to blame but yourselves.
share+1. We didn't smoke, though.
shareShe wasn't a bad mother. She just seemed overwhelmed/over-worked to me. But I knew watching this again last night that some Trump supporting mouth-breather had already made this thread and sure enough, yup.
Anyone here mentions Hotel California dies before the first line clears his lips.
I'm guessing most of the people that are shocked and horrified by this stuff are under the age of 30? Anyways, they were different times back then. I was born in 1972, so grew up in the era where teachers and parents could belt the s*hit out of you as punishment. Nobody thought anything of it, and no I'm not mentally scarred by it either. It was just what happens when you mess up. I understand why times have changed to a certain degree but I think we've really gone overboard with the over protection of children. I'm noticing we're bringing up kids who enter adulthood completely clueless about the ways of the world and their coping mechanisms just aren't as robust anymore.
shareI'm guessing most of the people that are shocked and horrified by this stuff are under the age of 30Not likely. share