Disturbing stuff
Dec. 2nd, 2007 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muurankerRecent SixApart stuff has prompted this post.
I have just set my 'content' to "safe for babes", which it is, in the sense in which SixApart mean it. But not in my mind. Because I write about Stuff that Happens, and I know from my childhood that this Stuff can be very disturbing.
I can think of just three things which I saw/read as a child which really disturbed me.
The first was a definitely before-the-watershed BBC programme about the history of the treatment of mental illness. It spoke of the use of insulin. My poor parents had to peel me off the ceiling after they confirmed to me that this was _real_ (for those of you who don't know about this: the treatment involved injecting non-diabetics with insulin, so that they had massive hypoglycaemic episodes - in other words, take the diabetic kid's worst nightmare, and let her know that the grown ups in white coats made that nightmare worse than the consequence of disability and _deliberately_ subjected people to it, in the ?Mistaken belief that stuff which would drive the sane mad, would also effect the reverse. It's rather like shock therapy. And I've heard survivors of that explain that as horrific as these therapies are, the illness is worse. I'm glad I was an adult before I heard those testimonies.
The second was Ian Serraillier's The Silver Sword. Again, it provoked a strong feeling of personal violation.
The third was a book which I wish I could identify. It involved the killing of a rabbit, and a chase across heathland, and would have been published in 1972, at the latest. The main character(s) were children, so it can't have been Watership Down. I can't remember what upset me, but I can remember that I cried myself to sleep, and felt unable to tell my parents why I was crying.
I also remember being saddened, but not disturbed, by Ishi last of his tribe and something similar with a female heroine, set on the coast of British Colombia (or Alasak, or Washington?), in which a girl ends up as the final and only speaker of her language.
I have just set my 'content' to "safe for babes", which it is, in the sense in which SixApart mean it. But not in my mind. Because I write about Stuff that Happens, and I know from my childhood that this Stuff can be very disturbing.
I can think of just three things which I saw/read as a child which really disturbed me.
The first was a definitely before-the-watershed BBC programme about the history of the treatment of mental illness. It spoke of the use of insulin. My poor parents had to peel me off the ceiling after they confirmed to me that this was _real_ (for those of you who don't know about this: the treatment involved injecting non-diabetics with insulin, so that they had massive hypoglycaemic episodes - in other words, take the diabetic kid's worst nightmare, and let her know that the grown ups in white coats made that nightmare worse than the consequence of disability and _deliberately_ subjected people to it, in the ?Mistaken belief that stuff which would drive the sane mad, would also effect the reverse. It's rather like shock therapy. And I've heard survivors of that explain that as horrific as these therapies are, the illness is worse. I'm glad I was an adult before I heard those testimonies.
The second was Ian Serraillier's The Silver Sword. Again, it provoked a strong feeling of personal violation.
The third was a book which I wish I could identify. It involved the killing of a rabbit, and a chase across heathland, and would have been published in 1972, at the latest. The main character(s) were children, so it can't have been Watership Down. I can't remember what upset me, but I can remember that I cried myself to sleep, and felt unable to tell my parents why I was crying.
I also remember being saddened, but not disturbed, by Ishi last of his tribe and something similar with a female heroine, set on the coast of British Colombia (or Alasak, or Washington?), in which a girl ends up as the final and only speaker of her language.
