Family films, an accident or personal injury risk?

Researchers say Hollywood blockbusters are bad example for kids

According to a report published by the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Hollywood blockbuster films undermine accident prevention advice by encouraging bad habits and dangerous activities.

The researchers, led by Dr Jon Eric Tongren examined scenes from several movies that were aimed at children.  Examples of unsafe and unrealistic behaviour included scenes from the 2008 movie Elf; in which the main character, played by Will Ferrell, is run over by a car whilst crossing the street, only to get back up moments later without a scratch on him and the film You Mine and Ours, released in 2005; where the characters’ parents are not wearing life jackets during a boating trip.

Accident scenes unrealistic and show no personal injury risk

In the 67 movies released between 2003 and 2007 that the researchers watched, there were 958 scenes described as ‘involving potential injury-prevention practices’.  In over half of these scenes, the characters at risk from personal injury were children.  22 of these accident scenes involved some form of crash, or saw the characters fall from height, but only 3 saw the characters receive an injury after the crash or their fall.

A real accident risk?

Are films such a bad example for children?  It is difficult to say how much people are influenced by what they see in a Hollywood movie, indeed there have been many studies looking at whether we imitate what we see on screen.  It is important to remember that many of the films aimed at children have elements of fantasy and obvious unreality in them, which would never happen in the real world anyway.  Films such as the Harry Potter franchise are unlikely to leave many children with the impression that they can actually fly on a magic broomstick, for example.

Where films are portraying supposedly realistic risk taking behaviour as being attractive to children, it might be a different matter.  Even with the best of intentions, purposely removing scenes that might be thought of as encouraging children towards dangerous behaviour does seem an extreme step.

After all, if a preventable accident occurs and someone is injured due to the negligence of a third party, blaming the injured person’s behaviour on something that they saw in a film isn’t going to go very far.  It is far more likely that their injury was as a result of an action the third party took, or they negligently failed to take.

This story was featured in the Daily Telegraph newspaper on 22 January this year.

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