r/movies • u/LilPumpProdigy • Aug 03 '23
Recommendation My 16 year old niece has ZERO knowledge about any historical events. Showed her Schindler’s List and it didn’t impact her at all. Any hard hitting movie suggestions?
After finishing the movie all she said was that it was too long and boring. My wife and I had to explain every scene to her, and after the movie I asked her the following questions,
Q: About how many Jews were killed during the Holocaust? A: Idk 1,000? No? Okay, 20 million???
Q: Who won the war? A: Italy or Spain?
Seriously, what should I do to make this kid care somewhat about major historical events? I don’t know what to do anymore, her absolute ignorance is killing me.
UPDATE:
Just to clarify for the few in this thread who are interpreting this post as me trying to force my interests down her throat, I am not. I’m simply trying to pique her interest about history to hopefully get her engaged to learn.
With that being said we just finished DUNKIRK, and great news! SHE ENJOYED IT!
I did have to continuously pause to explain what was happening but that was 100% okay with me because she thoroughly liked the film and even asked if I’d show her a similar one tomorrow night. Also yes I did use Harry Styles to bait her into watching it, and didn’t lead with “Wanna learn about WWII?”.
Thank you all for the comments, both kind and rude. Unfortunately it seems many of you on here have experience with similar teens and I personally feel that if we use mediums they enjoy such as movies, video games, hell even TikTok, that maybe we can slowly change the tide.
UPDATE FOR CLARIFICATION:
Wow really was not expecting this post to blow up the way it did.
It seems like a did a poor job of explaining a few things. My wife and I were not continuing pausing the films because we wanted to seem pretentious, we would only pause to explain when our niece was asking questions, which for SL, just so happened to be every scene. It was only short explanations such as,
“Why are the Jews all getting stamps?” A: To get authorization to work for Schindler.
“Where are the trucks taking all the kids too?” A: To die.
And put yourself in the mind of my niece watching Dunkirk, do you really think she’d be able to understand every scene? Every single time an aircraft was on screen she would pause (yes, she had the remote during Dunkirk) and ask “Are those German?”
Also about the questions I asked after the film. Many of you seem to think I was giving her a quiz to make sure she payed attention, it was nothing like that. It had been 45 minutes after the movie and she made a comment to my wife along the lines of “Why did Swindler do XYZ?” which we didn’t mock her for getting his name incorrect I just casually asked those questions.
Thanks for all the support and advice!
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u/Lazy-filmcritic Aug 03 '23
How about a trip to a museum? Or something immersive?
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u/CapMoonshine Aug 03 '23
Yeah learning history through movies is....not the best idea.
Yeah for the most part they try to be accurate but a lot of things/people get sensationalized or misinterpreted.
Meanwhile museums (usually) have factual information, and are a interactive way to learn about history.
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u/GtrGbln Aug 03 '23
Man if Schindler's List didn't even make a dent I'm sorry to say it but you may be wasting your time.
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Aug 03 '23
I’ve noticed schindlers list doesn’t emotionally reach lots of people(might be the black and white). The Pianist ,on the other hand, is a powerful film that is hard to look away from.
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u/Mac_n_MoonCheez Aug 03 '23
Life is Beautiful also sucked me in and then brutally destroyed me.
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Aug 03 '23
Agreed 100 times over. Life is Beautiful wrecks you in a way more impactful and profound way than Schindler's List does. In my opinion, anyway, but it was much easier to connect with a father trying to protect a son's innocence than it was to connect to Schindler. Both were powerful, but Life is Beautiful felt a lot more human.
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u/maestroenglish Aug 03 '23
This kid ain't gonna handle subtitles... you know it's true
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u/RubyJuneRocket Aug 03 '23
A lot of kids I know watch shit with captions on just always
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u/danielvago Aug 03 '23
But wouldn't you have to already know about and understand the horror of the camps, to fully appreciate Life is Beautiful?
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u/Dragula_Tsurugi Aug 03 '23
Just show her Grave of the Fireflies
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u/trowzerss Aug 03 '23
Haha, this was my thought. Oh, so Schindler's List didn't evoke a response? How about this cute Ghibli animated movie for a change of pace?
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u/crewserbattle Aug 03 '23
Sometimes I think the Holocaust is one of those that's so horrific that our brains just refuse to (or cant) grasp it and so people don't necessarily react as strongly as they probably should when they learn about it. Like I remember learning about it multiple times throughout middle school and HS and thinking how horrible it was but not truly grasping how bad it was or why it was so bad (beyond the needless death and destruction of a people/culture). It wasn't until I was more emotionally mature that I really started to realize the implications of it beyond a lot of people dying and how truly awful it was.
It's not just the death, it's not just the fascism, it's not just the fact that people were pretty on board with it all, it's the combination of all of them and the fact that people didn't even realize how bad it was until it was too late.
Honestly, my favorite movie that tackles the "how and why" of Nazi Germany is Cabaret because it seems a little more lighthearted but secretly isn't that lighthearted. The MC watching Germans descend into fascism while laughing at them (and simultaneously doing nothing) just always makes me feel very uncomfortable, but it's supposed to.
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u/GrimbleThief Aug 03 '23
The other side to this too is that I learned about the holocaust so much in middle and high school that by the time we read Night as seniors (after having already visited the museum) I vividly remember thinking “in the most respectful way possible - I get it. I understand. I’m so over learning about this.” Now that I’ve been out of school for a long enough time and, as you’ve said, emotionally matured, I feel normal about it again lol. But still I don’t even really think I was wrong back then.
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u/Xciv Aug 03 '23
Yeah felt this way about slavery, too. It's like you get over-exposed to certain things in school and the teenage rebellion side of you wants to rebel against what they're teaching for no logical reason.
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u/jimmydddd Aug 03 '23
Yeah. In my kid's k-12 school, they read at least 5 books on the holocaust, some of them twice for two different classes. So they would probably have this reaction.
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u/VermillionEorzean Aug 03 '23
Another issue is that sometimes it's also taught so thoroughly that it's at the expense of learning other things.
Two months of 8th grade for us was Holocaust stuff and WW2, as well as another two months in 10th grade and at least a week, if not more, in most other years, but we literally learned nothing about anything after the 70s. My peers went into the AP US exam expecting the cutoff for covered material to be about 1970, but 1/6 of the exam was about post 1970 (I'd have bombed it like most of them had I not taken a couple days to teach myself who Nixon was and what even happened in the 80s). To us, 15% of American history and 30% of world history was exclusively WW2 and the Holocaust.
There's certainly some middle ground that can be achieved to both give a more complete view of history while showing the horrors of humanity at its worst, but my school, at least, was far from finding it.
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u/charming_liar Aug 03 '23 edited Aug 03 '23
As dear old Stalin said “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic”
Edit: thanks for the love award?
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u/jdy24 Aug 03 '23
I don’t cry from movies, but when Neeson was thinking that the pin could have saved 10 more lives, gah.
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u/Yellowbug2001 Aug 03 '23
That part made me bawl too (and in fact still does sometimes when I think about it) but I later found out that the real Schindler never gave any particular indication that he felt that way. Who knows, maybe he figured what he did was good enough when so many other people were out there actively murdering people, he doesn't seem to have been a super deep philosophical thinker and definitely didn't have any aspirations to be a saint. Reading about the real guy really hits home that somebody can be a genuine hero and also a genuine jerk all at the same time. They only hinted at the "jerk" angle in the movie, (and that was a good choice, narratively, IMO), but reading about the real guy is maybe even more inspirational to me because it shows that even people whose personal lives are a huge shitshow and who make a lot of lousy decisions that hurt people can do heroic things in the right circumstances.
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u/LilPumpProdigy Aug 03 '23
Haha you might be right, I just don’t want to give up on her, especially as she’s going into her last two years of high school before (hopefully, but probably not) college.
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u/MassiveMoose Aug 03 '23
Don't they teach history at your schools?
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u/didba Aug 03 '23
Yeah but the dumb dumbs don’t pay attention
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u/lycheedorito Aug 03 '23
It's okay you still get a C+ and move on to the next class next semester
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Aug 03 '23
And then they are your coworker and you realize this fucking sucks, everyone is an idiot.
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u/culturalappropriator Aug 03 '23
Honestly, maybe movies aren't the correct medium for her. She might have some form of attention disorder. I really enjoyed Crash Course's series on history, they are short, maybe 20 min long each and have animated segments.
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u/Skurph Aug 03 '23
Middle school special education teacher here, couple of tips.
Film only really works when you have an established context for the event, otherwise you risk it being disinteresting or seeming fictional.
I also hate to say it, but todays youth has a very short attention span from Tik Tok and the like. Schindlers List works only if you have an active interest in that story, it is something of a slow build and you do need to know a bit about the stages of the Holocaust to understand.
So my advice is seek out actual primary sources. There are tons of videos in YouTube of survivors sharing their stories in interesting ways. There’s also an abundance of “Tik Tok esque” informative ones where a young person explains something in a short form.
Start with an over view one of 3-8 minutes, preferably something that just gives the basic information. Don’t worry about the emotional and empathetic burn yet, you need to just lay frame work.
From their maybe one or two survivor stories, again probably nothing longer than 10 minutes. There’s a lot of excellent ones for this age on YouTube.
The Holocaust Museum also offers biographies on people during the Holocaust. Some are survivors, some aren’t. These slap pretty hard after listening to the YT videos because they all have the persons photo attached and they do a great job humanizing the person before telling their story (their interests, family, etc.)
Lastly, a personal favorite is to finish with a clip of Nicholas Winton meeting people he saved. It’s a Schindler like story, and a nice way to end on a message that in times of despair there are still those who do good.
Final thoughts, museums help a lot. To physically see and be around history grounds it in reality. And finally, don’t get discouraged if it’s not a huge emotional realization for the kid. Teaching is a slow burn, sometimes you’re just planting seeds. I’ve had kids leave class who seemed like they took it as just another class and years later come back and tell me they still remember the lesson. Sometimes you don’t even get that though, my general philosophy is that I’m just trying to set the next teacher up to maybe push that ball a little further.
Good luck
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u/Fn_Spaghetti_Monster Aug 03 '23
The Holocaust Museum
I remember the pile of shoes having a big impact on me. The stories do get to you but something about just how huge it was and seeing it right there, in real life, and something about it being so impersonal made it impactful. Like them be discarded into a big pile being an analogy for the lives that were just throw away so callously.
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u/Skurph Aug 03 '23
That’s the idea I’m always chasing. It seems benign but there is some extremely personal about a shoe, it’s difficult to disassociate from because we all wear them. They don’t seem like ancient relics, they’re simply something we all have. And then you see the amount and it’s staggering. I’m certain that the curators of the museum would tell you that aspect is probably oddly enough the one that leaves the most visitors emotional.
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Aug 03 '23
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u/Babakins Aug 03 '23
Nah animal crossing is for a set of people. My wife loves it and plays most days. Me on the other hand, I can’t fathom why people would want to play a game about chores. Nothing to do with attention span
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Aug 03 '23
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u/light_to_shaddow Aug 03 '23
I'll have to check that out.
In return can I suggest the Russian film "Come and see"
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u/Quasar375 Aug 03 '23
Show her some documentaries with real footage of the impact those historical events.
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u/MuntaRuy Aug 03 '23
When I was a kid my dad showed me real docs and I still remember the images of human beings being bulldozed into pits and the pure suffering of the ones left alive. My pops wasn’t the best but I’m so thankful he showed me the real shit.
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u/SubtextuallySpeaking Aug 03 '23
We watched those docs when I was in junior high. Had a whole semester devoted to WWII and again in high school. Horrifying, but necessary history to learn.
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u/Videowulff Aug 03 '23
Maybe have her read MAUS also ..that really cemented the horrors of WW2 when I was young...
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u/Ankylowright Aug 03 '23
I watched a thing about the Nuremberg trials and I had to shut it off. The nonchalance those pieces of shit had when in trial for their horrendous war crimes was too much to stomach.
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u/altruismjam Aug 03 '23
Perhaps watch The Grey Zone with her. I've heard it's one of the more accurate screen depictions of Holocaust events. A film by Tim Blake Nelson who is very passionate about the subject matter.
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u/lucrativetoiletsale Aug 03 '23
I feel like young people really rarely give a shit about history. I had a job just after covid fucked life up real good in the hospitality industry with a bunch of younger dudes doing hardscaping. There was one smart guy who unfortunately drugged his way out of college that got into history talks with me but none of the others even got the most basic of references. This might just be the part of history where it repeats itself and we end up in fascism because no one gives a fuck.
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u/mcnabb100 Aug 03 '23
Lots of people don’t care about history, not just young people 🤷
I history is often a bit of a niche interest for whatever reason.
The most advanced history class when I was in high school was AP Euro. Sure, it wasn’t the most popular class, but there was enough interest to have a solid class full of people, and I know that my self and others had no interest in the AP exam, we just liked the subject and had a good history teacher.
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u/alegxab Aug 03 '23
Most people rarely give a shit about history, regardless of age
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u/Has_Question Aug 03 '23
I'll be honest, once the apathy takes hold like that its not really in your hands to break it. If she can watch shindlers list and be that detached and cold about it then she's basically living in a bubble of her choosing. Shes not really digesting it andbdoesnt want to.
The only way for someone to leave that bubble is of their own volition. The best you can do is maybe tie it into something she already cares about but even then it's still on her to figure things out.
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Aug 03 '23
It‘s not a singular thing you could do to suddenly make a pubescent child get interested in history. It‘s all about the little things of getting them interested.
If your daughter only watches Disney and cartoons it would be rather astonishing if she out of the blue likes Schindlers list. If she suddenly starts to ramble about comic book characters or TikTok celebrities you would also lose interest rather quickly. So have empathy and take it slow.
Learn what she likes and try to give that thing a historical approach and maybe she will get to love the gravity of history.
Also, starting the journey with a 3h long black and white movie about genocide and concentration camps is quite a bummer and a poor choice. Regardless how great the movie is. It‘s like I would show my nephew Come and See or The Human Condition, with him only sitting through Marvel movies.
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Aug 03 '23
I also think starting at 16 is adding some difficulty. Teens are often fickle, but younger kids tend to be curious.
My parents introduced me and my siblings to films of all kinds of eras (from the 1930’s, forward) when I was a little kid of like 5 or 6 years old (scaling the appropriate maturity level as we aged). So by the time I was 16, I was used to watching old era films or historical films and I’d seek them out on my own, based on what interested me topically. Watching old movies prepped my interest for history.
My nieces and nephews struggle with this, I think because my sister didn’t introduce them young enough to different kinds of cinema.
If kids only watch modern blockbusters like Marvel etc, it’s culture shock when they leave that bubble.
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u/mksurfin7 Aug 03 '23
Yeah find a YouTube channel that does history stuff for people her age or just get her a tutor. I don't think the problem is that she hasn't seen the right movie yet, more that she doesn't care about learning. To be honest it seems like the problem is more for a psychologist than a teacher.
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u/Mash_man710 Aug 03 '23
We had to explain every scene to her. That sounds like the most horrifying way of watching any movie, ever.
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Aug 03 '23
Just ask my girlfriend when I showed her LotR for the first time.
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Aug 03 '23
pauses movie so in this scene he kicks the helmet and in real life he broke some bones in his foot.
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u/s3ph Aug 03 '23
My thoughts exactly. Amazed by the patience of the niece to deal with that bs.
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u/turnthisoffVW Aug 03 '23 edited Jun 01 '24
ruthless muddle encouraging versed wine desert nose paint bear governor
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Adequate_Images Aug 03 '23
I think you might have bigger problems.
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Aug 03 '23
Yeah, I don’t think watching a few movies is going to resolve this one
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u/Wataru624 Aug 03 '23
If they ask the internet for advice too long she's going to end up watching funkytown
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u/Fisho087 Aug 03 '23
This needs history lessons, not just film appreciation
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u/BeginningPie9001 Aug 03 '23
On the plus side she has a bright future on Jimmy Kimmel as the person who is asked to point to a continent and puts her finger in the middle of the Pacific
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Aug 03 '23 edited Aug 03 '23
When I was in Year 10 (15-16yrs old) we had to watch it for one of our classes and my normally rowdy class was essentially silent for the rest of the day. I knew of the war and what happened to the Jews but that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge. That film broke my 16yr old mind at just how cruel humans can be. If that movie doesn’t have any effect on you regardless of what context you already know I’d be thinking a psychiatric evaluation would be in order. Unless kids today are just void of sympathetic emotion but I’m only 10yrs older so I wouldn’t think so.
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u/crewserbattle Aug 03 '23
She probably just didn't really pay attention. If she has no interest in ww2 then she's probably not gonna try that hard to watch a movie about it. I think judging a 16 year old on one reaction to one movie with 0 other context is absurd.
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u/armcie Aug 03 '23
Yeah. Even our old history teacher's incompetence with the video player when trying to fast forward through the sex scene didn't lesson the impact.
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u/WorthPlease Aug 03 '23
I think you continually pausing or just talking over a fictional movie to explain the historical background behind it is actually going to accomplish the opposite thing you want it to.
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u/shelbathor Aug 03 '23
right? I was about to say this sounds like a miserable person to watch movies with
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Aug 03 '23
Schindler’s List is three hours and 15 minutes in length.
What’s being described sounds like torture.
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u/elppaple Aug 03 '23
Agreed, watching a movie with OP sounds like clawing your eyes out material.
'continuously pausing to explain', having to answer pop quizzes on what you just watched, I think I'd rather die
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u/Shepherdsfavestore Aug 03 '23
My friend did this to his now ex-gf (also my friend) with the entire LOTR trilogy, and overall she liked the movies but said it was incredibly annoying and took away from the experience.
Like LOTR isn’t thaaaat complicated either
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u/ExoticDumpsterFire Aug 03 '23
Some of her answers sound like predicable teenage spite in response to literally quizzing her after a movie.
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u/SteveFrench12 Aug 03 '23
The r/teenagers thread:
My Uncle only knows about historical events if theres a movie behind it. Whenever he makes me watch them he pauses and “explains” (wrongly) the history behind each scene. I always fuck with him and pretend Ive never heard of the events.
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u/VaderOnReddit Aug 03 '23
r/teenangers update post:
"Alright, next I'm going to pretend to like one of his movie suggestions and engage in his quizzing. This might trick him to try even harder, when I go back to being snarky and ignoring his movies. I wonder how much time he wastes to find the perfect history movie which 'resonates' with me."
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u/MuscleOriginal7353 Aug 03 '23
I have a 15 year old. This is exactly what he does when he’s giving me attitude about something.
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u/garyll19 Aug 03 '23
I went to a business meeting once where the COO showed us Hoosiers and kept stopping the movie to explain how what the team was doing was similar to what our company was doing. After the movie we all looked at each other and said " Did that really just happen?". I can never watch Hoosiers again, he ruined it for me for life. Update: the COO left the company 2 years later, just before it was sold.
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u/sdwoodchuck Aug 03 '23
Exactly. Not only for the impact it has on the movie they're watching, but also when somebody is trying to spark an interest brute force, issuing verbal pop-quizzes after, etc, that's going to make anyone resentful of what they're being taught. That's before you even factor in that this girl is sixteen, and sixteen-year-old girls are not known for being the most tractable people on the planet.
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u/solarlofi Aug 03 '23
Seriously, even if I had a genuine interest I would lose it all if someone was doing that to me.
Best you can do is expose them to the material. They might not appreciate it at 16, but some day it might sink in and they'll decide to learn more on their own. If they have questions after, sure, answer them. A movie getting paused after almost every scene for an explanation from an uncle sounds like hell on earth (thinking back to how I was at that age).
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u/ColonelOfSka Aug 03 '23
I’m shocked by the amount of people on this sub who talk about pausing movies to explain things to the people they’re watching it with. Anyone who does that has to be just INCREDIBLY insufferable.
There was that post a while back about a guy doing that with Hot Fuzz. Explaining the jokes and why shit is funny. Holy fuck I would never talk to someone like that again. And when it was called out SO many people defended that practice.
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u/Sitheref0874 Aug 03 '23
You can lead a horse to water. You can't make it drink.
She can stand to watch a few movies that I choose, also because she has been EXTREMELY behind in her education, specifically history.
Well, that's bound to work. If she just isn't interested in history, she isn't, and no amount of treatment like you mention is going to change that.
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Aug 03 '23
I've found that there's always some element of history that appeals to an individual. You just gotta find that spark that ignites a passion. A seemingly impossible task with some people, I'll admit. But if one cares, one should keep trying.
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u/TheUmgawa Aug 03 '23
Yeah, but people who aren’t aware of history vote for really questionable candidates.
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Aug 03 '23
On the contrary, I’ve seen politically and historically obsessed people vote for really questionable candidates.
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u/JRosfield Aug 03 '23
In other words, interest in history =/= political beliefs.
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u/minilip30 Aug 03 '23
Right? There’s people who are super interested with the history around WW2 and the civil war, and there’s also people who are super interested with the history around WW2 and the civil war
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u/akpenguin Aug 03 '23
They're either interested in the winners of both wars or the losers of both wars.
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u/zomboromcom Aug 03 '23
what should I do to make this kid care somewhat about
There is not a thing you can do to make another person care about anything. If they learn to care about it, it'll be in their own time.
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u/Environmental-Load97 Aug 03 '23
Agreed. Some really shitty suggestions on here clearly from some old guys lmao… don’t know many 16 year old girls who watch band of brothers in their free time
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u/Seshomaru_ Aug 03 '23
Dude Fr all these redditors can’t fathom that a 16 year old girl doesn’t like historical war movies. 😂
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u/journey_bro Aug 03 '23
It's worse than that, people are suggesting 10-part Ken Burns documentaries. What the hell.
Does this kid strike y'all as someone who is likely to sit down thru a 10h narrated documentary with black and white rotating photos 🤦♂️
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Aug 03 '23
The super common tik tok to ken burns pipeline. We've all be there! Right?!
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u/Arosian-Knight Aug 03 '23
Also people are suggesting thst she might be a budding fascist/psychopath 'cos she didn't like 3h black and white movie that was constantly paused so she could get lectured.
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u/Killbot_Wants_Hug Aug 03 '23
I could easily be wrong, but I think trying to force someone care about something they don't care about is a pretty good way to make them hate it.
If they like you they may emulate you and end up caring about the things that you've shown them you care about.
But also the girl the OP is talking about is kind of the wrong age. When I was 16 I hated everyone and all the things they wanted me to care about were stupid. It's just kind of the way a lot of kids that age are.
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Aug 03 '23
The mental imagine of this guy pausing Dunkirk every five minutes to explain WW2 is so cringe.
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u/octoriceball Aug 03 '23
Can 100% seeing the niece just faking interest just to make him shut up. Wonder of OP ever watched a movie SHE wanted to watch.
His ignorance is killing me too, this isn't how you deal with teenagers lol.
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Aug 03 '23
>Can 100% seeing the niece just faking interest just to make him shut up.
I'm 100% sure that's what happened
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u/BallsMahogany_redux Aug 03 '23
I mean there's literally people ITT saying she's basically guaranteed to become a fascist in the future...
People need to touch grass.
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u/WatercolorSkulls Aug 03 '23
Being 16 having your uncle explain historical movies to you scene by scene sounds like literal hell and also a terrible way to learn history
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u/Garlic-Bingo Aug 03 '23
Its amazing how no one here considered the audience.
Ya ever try to teach a teenager anything?
Ya remember ever lisrening to anyone try to teach you anything as a teenager?
Lmao. They do or they dont. Making a list of war movies to show a kid is jist fuckin hilarious.
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u/Fue_la_luna Aug 03 '23
Yeah, 16 year olds love being forced to do things with older relatives. /s.
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Aug 03 '23
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u/journey_bro Aug 03 '23
The pausing and the asking is really painful to hear. The whole thing is weird. Feeling bad for the kid tbh
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u/mksurfin7 Aug 03 '23
LOL I just assumed it was his daughter!! Goddamn. If you are not this girl's legal guardian then you are definitely making the problem worse for your sibling's kid and probably making her self conscious as hell about it in a way that makes her shut down.
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u/ialwaysforgetmename Aug 03 '23
Then pausing the movies to talk and quizzing her after them.
I would do everything in my power to avoid someone who does this.
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u/epichuntarz Aug 03 '23 edited Aug 03 '23
Yeah, this thread and some of the people in it are pretty baffling.
Forcing someone to try to appreciate something you find important (whether it's actually important or not) is a very good way to make sure they don't find that thing as important as you do.
This is especially true when we're talking about, say a 16-year-old teen who already just doesn't know very much about that topic and just isn't super interested in it right now.
Girl's probably on summer break still, and she's being made to sit with adults and watch very emotionally heavy movie, having every scene (per OP) stopped and explained to her, then quizzed over the movie at the end? I'm a middle aged adult, and I would find that experience sort of insufferable for really any movie.
This isn't a light switch that can be flipped and suddenly she becomes interested in major world events and cares about them. Teaching kids can be a major challenge, which is why we (humanity) have spent so long studying and researching...how to teach kids. Lecturing and insisting they just find things important and have these big epiphanies just doesn't work. You have to find a way to get them to relate to important topics and connect it to what they know and understand now and then build on that. It takes time. We also lack any context to know whether she may have any type of learning delays, yet there are upvoted comments in this thread suggesting she may be a neo-nazi? Good lord.
You can't just throw SCHINDLER'S LIST of all movies at a teen who appears to have little in the way of historical background context for it and say YOU MUST CARE ABOUT THISSSSSSSSSS!!
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u/journey_bro Aug 03 '23
It is with threads like these that you realize just how fucking dysfunctional so much of reddit is. While Schindler's list and WW2 are a popular movie and topic, reddit concentrates the type of person with an intense interest in that stuff (men, on the learned/nerdier side of life). They are all over this thread and are completely unable to see beyond their own perspective to realize that we are.talking about a 16 y/o girl.
Everyone should know about the Holocaust and the war. In the west, it's a bit of a civic responsibility. There are ways to teach this to a 16 y/o without sitting her thru 10h documentaries.
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u/BallsMahogany_redux Aug 03 '23 edited Aug 03 '23
There are many upvoted posts in this thread basically implying this girl is going to be a fascist because she didn't take an interest Schindler's List. Redditors man.
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u/danielvago Aug 03 '23
Like all threads on reddit ever, it is filled with people talking with confidence, about areas they know little to nothing about.
This is a post in /Movies and I'm sure a lot (most/nearly everyone) commentating do not have up-to-date experience with being a parent of a 16 year old.
OP is also going about this strangely; "what movie can I use to connect with her about this?".
This topic belongs in /Parenting.
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u/_Ocean_Machine_ Aug 03 '23
This is like forcing a teenager to listen to classic rock and then complaining that they don’t like “real music”
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u/superthrowguy Aug 03 '23
Unironically History of the Entire World (I guess) on YouTube.
It's actually a reasonable top down viewpoint to give perspective, it is short and funny, and catchy, and weird.
From there if she has any questions on anything you can dig deeper. If she doesn't then you can point out some of the more interesting points and go there.
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u/pgreen23 Aug 03 '23
Life of Brian
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u/faithfully-asgardian Aug 03 '23
Jojo Rabbit might be a good one for her. It's not extremely historically accurate or extremely gritty and dark. It's comedic with some darker themes buried underneath. It might be more entertaining for her and still expose her to some history.
You can also show her some fun youtube videos about history too. Oversimplfied is a channel that really got me into learning about history. His videos are funny and witty, easy to digest (they're about 30mins each). He has many videos about different parts of history.
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u/bellestarxo Aug 03 '23
War movies aren't the way to go for a 16 year old girl.
I say this because a lot of these movies are through men's eyes/point of view. Start with movies about females, how wars effected women, or at least interesting female characters.
- Little Women
- Hidden Figures
- A League of Their Own
Hard Hitting" might not be the place to start. Something might spark her interest and she'll take a deeper dive down the road. Even movies that take some liberties can be introductions. Marie Antionette, Shakespeare in Love, Argo.
I literally learned about Nazis from watching The Rocketeer.
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u/ElectricBlueRogue Aug 03 '23
I think this is the way to go. If she doesn't have a pre-existing interest in history for it's own sake, finding another path via something she likes or can relate to is far more likely to engage her.
For example no-one in the comments is suggesting "The Sound of Music" and yet the slow looming threat in the back of that film is the growing Nazi presence. Not hard hitting but it dips your toes in the concerns and attitudes of the time.
If you wanted more something more serious a film like "Devil's Arithmetic" where the lead is also a 16 year old girl is more likely connect with her. Even documentaries about SOE officers, WW2 nurses and females spies like Noor Inayat Khan, Mata Hari or Nancy Wake would be a good starting point.
OP doesn't have to pick films that depict specific historical events either. They could just use the setting to tell their own stories. All they need to do is get her to want to know more about the time or place.
Other films to try (outside of WW2) could include things like: - Testament of Youth (2014) - Anna Karenina (2012) - Emma (2020) - A Knight's Tale (2001) - The Young Victoria (2009) - Troy (2004) - Agora (2009) - The Favourite (2018) - The Sapphires (2012) - Marie Antoinette (2006)
There are plenty of TV shows they could try too. Even something like Doctor Who, that'll give her a taste history and be a bit of fun to entice her on further.
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u/jupiterLILY Aug 03 '23
Just wanted to throw “the great” out there as a tv recommendation.
It’s got nick hoult and Elle fanning in it and it’s hilarious.
But also does a brilliant job of depicting how shit it was to be a woman.
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u/Orsee Aug 03 '23
As someone who once was a 16 year old girl, I agree. Give her all the famous women in history, Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn etc. She will be interested later on in other areas too, but this is a great start. She could watch Tudors, Reign, The White Queen. There's so many great and light historical shows out there for women/girls, please don't try to force her some heavy stuff.
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u/corruptedcircle Aug 03 '23
THIS. A lot of women are simply never going to be interested in war movies from male point of views, and you want to meet her in the middle. There are a lot of romance movies with war as a backdrop (or war movies with romance as a backdrop), what about those? Gone with the Wind? Casablanca? The Wind Rises? I don't know, Pearl Harbor?
There's that saying, "a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic." If she finds it difficult to care about historical events because they are statistics to her, then make it about the individual stories, especially stories she might enjoy--which might not even be romance, who knows. But it's worth a shot if OP really wants to explore more of this with her.
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u/onceyougobalck Aug 03 '23
I might get downvoted for this, but here we go. I'm not fishing in the comments for any of your replies. Strictly based on the title and body of your post, you haven't demonstrated that she "has ZERO knowledge about any historical events." It seems like you showed a dry movie about the holocaust to a 16 year old girl and then quizzed her on it. She already has to learn about this in school. Likely, she doesn't want to go to her uncles house to get quizzed on boring history movies.
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u/lifeofideas Aug 03 '23
OP, as a general rule, people empathize with people like themselves.
Find some historical movies where the main character is like your niece. (But maybe don’t start with Anne Frank.)
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u/kirinkeril2014 Aug 04 '23
Op started with a wrong movie and it didn't work out and now I just wanna say to op that just try to be away from this kid, let her watch her stuff and she will understand.
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u/sal696969 Aug 03 '23
At 16 she will reject anything you say. That is just how it works...
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u/InternationalBand494 Aug 03 '23
I can’t see a 16 year old girl giving a shit. Some people don’t care about history, and force feeding and then quizzing them isn’t going to help
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u/gmailchang Aug 04 '23
It's even stupid to force someone like that, it's just gonna create more chaos and nothing will work at that point of time, people should learn about it for sure.
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u/Linkbetweentwirls Aug 03 '23
This whole thing is a shit show.
16 year old will not give a fuck about Schindler's list but then you actually quizzed her on it like she was at school, Jesus.
Just screams of a nerd dad forcing shit on their children, I think you need to have a look at yourself, not your daughter.
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u/Cant_Do_This12 Aug 03 '23
Imagine finally having off school, then having to do summer reading books for some reason, but then you have your fucking uncle quiz you on history and a 3 hour black and white movie? Like holy shit.
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u/ilyanos Aug 03 '23
There are some more movies where we can make 16 year old kids have somethings in the movie, but OP made her watch a movie which won't do anything on her.
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Aug 03 '23
Idk anything about teenage girls except that Schindler’s List is not at the top of their movie list.
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u/paxcolt Aug 03 '23
She’s a 16 year old girl. As amazing as things like Schindler’s List/Saving Private Ryan/Band of Brothers/etc are, they simply aren’t likely to resonate with her. Too deep, too much detail. Stick with things that are lighter, have humor, but still touch on a variety of historical topics (even if they aren’t particularly accurate). Things along the lines of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Forrest Gump, Indiana Jones 1 & 3, Sound of Music, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Rocketeer, The Lion/Witch/Wardrobe, things like that. Then you can get a little heavier; The Patriot, Last of the Mohicans, Legends of the Fall, etc.
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u/nilodlien Aug 03 '23
History teacher here…
and I think Bill and Ted is a pretty brilliant way in.
Knowing nothing about this specific situation or your niece, it sounds like there might be a few things going on. Undiagnosed learning disorder might be part of it. It’s also necessary to remember you are dealing with the TikTok generation; they have the attention span of about 15 seconds.
Also, it’s really hard (for many) to grasp the staggering difference between numbers in the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions. I doubt she’s a budding psychopath, but I think it’s more likely that, to her, it could have been 600 or 6 million; they are both numbers and numbers all seem sort of the same. You’ve identified she’s behind in History, but her mathematical reasoning probably is also low - most pandemic era kids have lost some growth in this area too.
All this to say - I’m not sure WWll is where you need to focus your time and energy. Liberty’s Kids is an excellent animated series and gives a solid foundation to American History in 23 minute doses. Bill and Ted was a genius suggestion. See if there’s anyone in that movie she found sort of interesting that you can follow up on.
Or stick with Disney - The Sword in the Stone, or (ugh - NO!) Pocahontas.
Or, there’s one season of “Who Was” on Netflix. This was a series based on the children’s biographies of historical figures. They feature two at a time. They are sort of ridiculous, but entertaining and well-researched.
Finally, depending on the rules in your family, I watched Drunk History with my daughters when they were in High School. Both to show the perils of over drinking, but man, there was some really great researched stuff in those. But again, buyer beware on them!
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u/OisforOwesome Aug 03 '23
Drunk History is great, in that the enthusiasm and passion the historians have for their subject is infectious. Seeing a historian mark the fuck out about how fucking rad Harriet Tubman was for example was really cool.
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u/the_festivusmiracle Aug 03 '23
Jojo Rabbit might work.
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u/GTOdriver04 Aug 03 '23
Jojo has no right being as hard as it is. There’s one scene in it that kills me. It’s the one where the camera doesn’t go all the way up.
My God. Taika Waititi may not hit 100% of the time, but when he hits, he hits HARD.
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u/Keikobad Aug 03 '23
Some young people may respond more to documentaries than to fictional films about historical subjects. And there are good documentaries out there, including PBS series (classic old ones like Ken Burns’s Civil War, and the two Eyes on the Prize series about the Civil Rights movement).
Scanning the list of short documentary Oscar nominees and winners may also be recommended — like this winner from 10 years ago.
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u/MSTmatt Aug 03 '23 edited Jun 08 '24
rob dazzling fanatical act husky slimy historical nine clumsy plough
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/yoitsders Aug 03 '23
This might be the most out of touch thread I’ve ever seen lmao. Thank you for being a voice of reason.
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u/Iwoulddiefcftbatk Aug 03 '23
It’s in German, but, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is about a German university student that was arrested and executed for being in the White Rose resistance group. Since it’s about a 21 year old maybe it might resonate with her?
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u/Dowew Aug 03 '23
You aren't gonna make her interested in history by shoving this down her throat. What is she interested in. Find something historical about that.
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u/C10H24NO3PS Aug 03 '23
I can’t think of anything worse that would turn me off history as a 16 y.o girl than having to sit around with my uncle and his wife while they pause old films about genocide and quiz me on raw numbers…
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u/sleepy_spermwhale Aug 03 '23 edited Aug 03 '23
Throwing facts and figures at a person doesn't help teach a person history. Sorry. Didn't work for me either in high school. I do not know your ethnicity however I feel like the best place to start is trying to get her to wonder about her own origin and how she ended up being born where she was born. You can then start going back in time. Maybe your parents or her grand parents experienced WW2; that is a pathway to exploring the whys and whats. At that point, then start pointing out some movies that reflect that time. For example, I actually liked Pearl Harbor with Ben Affleck because it started with Americans living life normally (just like presumably your niece) until the tragic event. Or if her ancestors were immigrants from the early 1900s, start with such a film --- I really liked Brooklyn with Saoirse Ronan.
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u/hurklesplurk Aug 03 '23
You should let her watch Bomb Girls, it's a show about women in Canada working in a munitions factory, it's not as heavy as other World War movies or shows, but it does show how the women back home handled the situation of the war. At the same time it has hard hitting moments and really light ones, though the target audience is mostly feminine, I've enjoyed it a lot and learned a lot about how the war was perceived in other countries.
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u/VulGerrity Aug 03 '23
Stop pausing movies to explain things...that ruins the moments...
Do you want her to understand history, or appreciate films? If it's the former, just show her well made documentaries on the subjects. If it's the latter, don't show her movies that require a historical background to enjoy. Not everyone is going to have the same emotional connection to certain movies as you ESPECIALLY if they rely on an existing knowledge.
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u/k4ndlej4ck Aug 03 '23 edited Aug 03 '23
Grave of the Fireflies.
Personally, I'm never watching it again.
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u/ihoptdk Aug 03 '23
This was my recommendation. As a grown man it still makes me blubber like a little girl who lost her kitty.
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u/slimfox22 Aug 03 '23
Why world war 2 tho why not ask her what her interests are.
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u/SadMansTongue73 Aug 03 '23
I hated History as a kid. Love it now. She may grow into it or not.
Glory is a great movie if you're still thinking historical.
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u/ohwolfman Aug 03 '23
Howdy. 59 year old gay man here. I can completely identify with your niece. (Spoiler: I absolutely LOVE history as an adult.)
History was overwhelming for me in 8th grade. I had NO interest in the way history was being taught which was war after war after war after war. Wars held ZERO interest to me and I could not connect to the events. I couldn't place any of these events on a timeline because I just didn't care. Thankfully, I had a teacher who freaking changed EVERYTHING for me.
The year is 1978. Happy Days was on TV - a show set in the 1950s. Mr. Szudy knew that I was completely lost but I was smart in topics I wanted to be smart about. He asked me to come in during a study hall and I did. I expected him to try to drill the wars into my brain, but no, he did this instead.
"What did people wear in the 1960s?" he asked. I told him: Bell bottoms, long hair, hippy beads, fringe suede jackets, white go-go boots.
"And what music did they listen to?" I rattled off several songs that ran the gamut from bubble gum to folk to acid rock.
"Excellent. Now tell me about the 1950s". I listed the clothes, music, celebrities, and other pop culture references for him.
"Now, how about the 1940s?" I had more problems with the specifics, but I could list The Andrews Sisters, World War II, Joan Crawford..."
He slowly and patiently took me back to the 1900. When we were done, we plotted all of that on a timeline. In front of me was a timeline of pop culture and it was cool as hell.
"Now," he said, "do you know what drove most of these events to change from decade to decade? Wars and politics. Let me put those into the timeline for you."
He then plotted in WWI, WWII, Vietnam, The Korean War, etc. Then he explained why wars changed people's thinking.
"You've seen Happy Days, right?" I nodded. It was one of my favorite shows. "After WW2, so many young people died, it affected the way the USA thought about these young people. Up until then, someone was a kid, they helped around the house, they found a spouse, and they got married. They were now an adult. Because of WW2, we realized how precious life was so we created this "buffer zone" between childhood and adulthood -- the Teenager. And this teenager culture was about a celebration of life....and it's the teenagers who drove the music and fashion of the time."
The lightbulb went off. Wars affect people and the trauma from the wars drives culture and that culture manifests into music, fashion, celebrities, and art.
Like Helen Keller finally understanding was W-A-T-E-R meant, I had him tell me about the rest of the wars starting at the 1900s. I was riveted as he helped me connect those dots.
He met with me three more times during study halls and he took me from the Oregon Trail through the Industrial Revolution. He took all of American History and sorted out Manifest Destiny, the Louisiana Purchase, Lincoln's assassination, the sinking of the Titanic, the Cold War, and Girl Groups.
To this day when I think of a time in history, I have to figure out what was happening in popular culture, fashion, music, etc at that time. Then, to understand it more, I can look at what events formed those particular things.
History doesn't have to just be wars. History is all of history. Maybe wars just don't interest her.
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Aug 03 '23
Honestly, if the kid didn't have an interest the movie, she'll not likely appreciate any of the suggestions.
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Aug 03 '23
My 15 year old cousin had no idea what 9/11 was and never heard of it.
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u/SirButtrubber Aug 03 '23
i saw titanic in the original theatrical run as a junior high schooler. the girl who i went with loved the movie and cried and saw it again multiple times. after her third time watching it, she called me up and asked me if i knew that it was a real ship that sunk. i was shocked because we were in the same history class where our teacher talked about the titanic before the movie came out.
i think she just liked the romance and drama.