An old TV episode

Bogiephil1
I agree with most of what you wrote. My post was not meant to be taken seriously.

The problem with most child actors is that they lack any understanding of how the world works. That's par for the course when it comes to kids but child actors pay for it.

If someone constantly tells someone Johnny Depp's age "God, that was the best acting ever! If you don't win every award out there then someone's robbing you" then that actor knows that someone is blowing smoke up his ass. You tell a child actor, even one in his mid teens, that then he'll believe you. And some people, to get the best possible performance from a kid, will inflate their ego that way.

Years ago I watched a show on child actors which looked at the ones who came out good and the ones who didn't. One of the ones who went on to be normal talked about her first weeks on the set when she gave her mother attitude. Her mother talked to the producers and the child star was sat down and asked if she wanted to continued on the show, because from her attitude it wasn't clear that she did, and if she didn't start respecting her mother then they might have to re-cast her role. Looking back as an adult she knew that they wouldn't be able to replace her just like that, but at the time she believed them and knew that she had to smarten up or be replaced. I don't think that she stayed famous as an adult, but she grew up to be a normal person.

Then you have people like Britney Spears, who turned out so messed up that she's still unable to convince a court that she is a competent adult. Yes, it's been years since her meltdown, but her father is still in control of her life because she's not competent to make her own decisions.

The clip I linked to was to show how at one time spanking was so accepted that it could be on TV that way, not to start a debate about child actors. I mean, can you imagine any show set in today's world having anything approaching "You won't be able to sit for your wedding"?

I had a feeling that it may have been somewhat tongue-in-cheek but, in case it wasn't, I wanted to address the observation that about spanking being bad for children, in that some actors who may have been threatened with spanking onscreen coincidentally turned out to have problems in later life. In a way, I guess I was defending the idea that spanking may be an appropriate part of raising children, whether in real life or in a TV show or movie and of course, your post wasn't meant to be taken seriously and I went off on a bit of a rant about the often brutal realities of show business and their effect on younger actors. I realize that my observations were off-topic from the original post. Sorry

And Goodgulf, your original point was well taken. Such scenes in TV and comic strips are likely long gone, as are the "good ol' days" when such attitudes were far more mainstream. I miss those days...

I thought the Gidget spanking, while it was sort of a good natured thing in some ways, with her sister answering, what was going on when they started to spank her behind, 'Togetherness, darling!' But after when she gave her end of episode monologue about the episode, she was sitting on a pillow, and I think she winced, too. So, it was meant to convey that yes there was an element of playfulness about the chastisement, but it was sound enough to have an impact.

There was one movie where Sally Field strapped her son. You did not see the strapping but you certainly heard it; long and hard. She was a single mom.

Places in the Heart. Sally Field won her second Oscar for it. It's where she uttered the much mocked 'You like me' line when she accepted the award.