Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
117,086
edits
Not Allowed to Grow Up: Difference between revisions
m
missing word
No edit summary |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) m (missing word) |
||
Line 9:
In most cases, this was relatively benign — the lifespan of the programs and the aging of their younger stars rarely impacted each other. (And in shows where [[Dawson Casting]] was already in play, it only meant that characters who had started out looking too old for their alleged ages just got even older.) But when actual children of the appropriate ages were cast in a show that became a [[Long Runner]], the best-case result would be a disturbing cognitive dissonance when a child character acted substantially younger than he or she appeared.
And in the worst case, the two could intersect with tragic and destructive effects — for ''the performer''. The prime example of this would be Anissa Jones, "Buffy" on ''[[Family Affair]]'' ([[CBS]], 1966 to 1971), who was forced to play — and to ''be'' — an eight-year-old child all the way into her teens. Her death by drug overdose not long after the series ended was blamed on — and ultimately began the process of [[Discredited Trope|discrediting]] and [[Dead Horse Trope|killing]] — this trope. Most live-action shows since the early [[The Seventies|seventies]] have allowed their child characters to mature naturally (with the silver lining that it provided new story material for the characters as they grew into teenagers).
It may seem like grossly ignoring common sense to insist that young performers not grow up, and one could wonder why anyone would even consider it. One must think of the context, though. Earlier entertainment media — [[Newspaper Comics|comic strips]], [[Radio]], and [[Movies]] — relied on the same type of humor year after year, in which the children (if any) never aged. Early television writers failed (or actively ''refused'') to realize the need to adapt to physically maturing characters; even in radio, a person could do the same voice for years (witness [[Fanny Brice]] playing [[Baby Snooks]] for decades), or a new performer could be inserted with little problem. And then there was the innate conservatism one can always find in the production staff of a successful show -- "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". If a program is raking in ratings and bucks with an eight-year-old in a key role, few if any members of the writing staff are going to risk that by suggesting they be allowed a ninth birthday party. There was also no small amount of explicit [[Viewers are Morons]] in play, with serious claims that child characters growing up would somehow "confuse" viewers, who would clearly be unfamiliar with such unnatural behaviors.
| |||