Movies, books, music, and television these days are chock full of sex, violence, and adult situations. Children, being the impressionable little trolls that they are, soak up the obscene like prepubescent sponges. So then do we blame the media for how insufferable our children are, or do we chalk it up to nature when some kid body-slams his sister through a table?

I’m positive that kids in the 1930s were doing imitations of their foul-mouthed alcoholic fathers just as the current generation is imitating the foul-mouthed cast of South Park. Children like to push the limits; pushing the limits is part of the process of escaping the juvenile mindset and entering adulthood.

When this issue of media-appropriateness presents itself, it generally takes one of two forms: One, that the media are irresponsibly marketing adult entertainment to the youth; or two, that parents are at fault for not keeping tabs on their children’s leisure activities. But guess what, sunshine: I’m not taking either of those soapboxes. Let’s not get clichéd just yet. I’m placing my soapbox far in left field, because my beef isn’t with Howard Stern or Vince McMahon— it’s with Walt Disney.

If a parent props their children in front of a television and has them watch marathons of Nip/Tuck or Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, at least the children are getting an exaggerated view of how things work in the real world. Nip/Tuck emphasizes the superficiality and selfishness of our culture. It’s sensationalized, but there’s some nifty subtext there. If it weren’t for the blood, sex, and language, it’d be educational. Law & Order: SVU is an even better example, because it reinforces good morality. Watching heroic detectives pursue rapists and child pornographers echoes good ethics while presenting the world as it is: full of people, naughty and nice, some of whom are rapists and child pornographers.

Am I saying a parent should use such programs to educate their children on the ways and woes of the world? Even father-extraordinaire Al Bundy would scoff at such a notion! My point is, however, that at least these adult-themed shows provide a world similar to the one their audiences exist in. The same can’t be said for much of the so-called “children’s programming” on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. For me, it’s worse to trick children into believing we live in a magical world where good always triumphs over evil than to show them films like Million Dollar Baby that present right and wrong as accurately gray.

When I was growing up, I got half of the Disney worldview and half of what we’ll call the Wes Craven worldview. My father’s parents had a big Disney movie collection; they were religious, conservative, and idealistic. I enjoyed these movies, but not as much as I enjoyed watching films like A Nightmare on Elm Street with my maternal grandmother. This grandmother chain-smoked, swore like a sailor, and loved on-screen violence. They were complete opposites.

In Cinderella, I watched the downtrodden Cinderella achieve much-deserved freedom from her wicked step-family. In Robocop, I watched Officer Alex Murphy get blown to bits and later lament his existence as a ghastly law-enforcement cyborg. I enjoyed both types of film, but their conflicting messages confused me. Was my world a magical kingdom, or did I live in futuristic Detroit?

Over time I made some sense of it all. What I eventually came to realize was that Cinderella deserved happiness, but could have never achieved it: there are no such things as magic or talking rats. In Robocop, Murphy’s resurrection as a machine is improbable, but founded in science, not magic. Murphy’s plight is more believable than Cinderella’s, because Murphy’s crisis has no solution. All Cinderella wanted was a replacement for her absent father, and she found him in the prince. Murphy had to suck it up and learn to live as a robotic freak, because hey, that’s life.

Children shouldn’t be watching Robocop or A Nightmare on Elm Street, but are The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast sending a better message? Both extremes are detrimental to impressionable minds. The violence and nihilism of an action or horror film is youngster-inappropriate, but the clean-cut Disney worldview is only preparing its young audience for a rude awakening. Things don’t always work out, good things rarely come to those who wait, and if things do come to you and work out, it’s only because of dumb, blind luck.

But on the bright side, we don’t all end up like Hilary Swank’s character in Million Dollar Baby. See? There can be optimism even in the darkest of places, even without Walt and his talking mice.

Charles Smith is a native scamp of Southwest Virginia who consumes a lot of movies and TV.