Age-Inappropriate Art

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    Age Inappropriate Art is when a teen/child either sings a song or has a skit or is involved in some other performance that could be considered not suitable for someone so young. Normally Played for Laughs. Subdivision of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior. Compare Age-Inappropriate Dress, where a character is wearing something that doesn't fit his age. If it's an adult suggesting it, then it's Corruption of a Minor. See also From the Mouths of Babes.

    Examples of Age-Inappropriate Art include:

    Comic Books

    • The Australian version of Mad Magazine commented on this in its satire of Young Talent Time. One of the performers announces that he is about to sing "The Lady is a Tramp", commenting that Frank Sinatra performed song when playing a womanizing nightclub owner in Pal Joey "so it should suit a callow fourteen year old right down to the ground".

    Fanfic

    Film

    • In Little Miss Sunshine, Olive performs a striptease at a beauty pageant to the song "Super Freak", complete with moves her grandpa taught her for the routine. Everybody but her family, the possible-pedophile in the audience, and the actual beauty pageant winner acting as a judge is mortified by how it highlights the objectification of all the young girls.
    • In-universe example: Hamlet 2
    • Donnie Darko: The local New Age Guru MCs an event where local elementary school girls perform pop songs en masse in heavy makeup and skimpy clothes. The parents love it. Turns out he's a pedophile.
    • In Jersey Girl, the main character and his daughter have to do a scene from a musical at a school pageant. Everyone, everyone else does "Memory" from Cats. The scene they do? "God That's Good", the human meat-pie making song from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The crowd's reaction is at least half the joke.
    • Uncle Fester helps the kids put together a wonderful example for a school talent show in the first movie.

    Literature

    • In the sequel to Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet, a few kids at Claudia/Morgan's school sang "The Internet Is for Porn" From Avenue Q.
    • In Jane Eyre, Adele, Mr. Rochester's eight-year-old (or so) ward's "accomplishment" is the singing of a French song about a woman who has been betrayed by her lover, and plans to wear all her jewels and best clothes to the ball that night to show him how little she cares.
    • The Day Of The Locust: Would-be child star Adore Loomis sings the raunchy blues song "Mama Don' Wan' No Peas" and has the moves to go with it.
    • The Hunger Games: In "Mockingjay", When she was little, Katniss sang, "The Hanging Tree" and didn't understand why it upset her mother so much

    Live Action TV

    • There was an episode of Dance Fever where a girl of about 6 lip-synced and danced to Madonna's "Like a Virgin".
    • A episode of Grounded for Life featured the teenage daughter performing "Big Spender" at her Catholic school's talent show.
    • Arrested Development featured an uncle and a niece and later an aunt and a nephew sing "Afternoon Delight" by Starland Vocal Band.
    • A lot of Saturday Night Live characters and sketches have had this over the 37 years (and counting) it's been on the air. A recent[when?] example appeared on the third time Scarlett Johansson hosted, which featured a sketch about up-and-coming child actresses (played by Johansson and feature player Vanessa Bayer) performing monologues and famous scenes from movies that aren't for children, such as Brokeback Mountain, The Color Purple, A Few Good Men, and On the Waterfront.
    • On Head of the Class, the students were putting on a production of Hair and a discussion of the Nude Scene came up. Mr. Moore resolved it. First he said that "all the people who think we should do the nude scene stand over here, and all the people who don't think we should do the nude scene stand over here," thus separating the boys from the girls. Then he said, "OK, those of you who want the nude scene - get naked!" The boys then decided they didn't want to do the scene.
    • Similarly, there's an off-screen performance of Hair ("'Black Boys Are Delicious' was quite well-done!") and an on-screen performance of Salome by elementary school kids on Two Guys, a Girl And A Pizza Place.
    • Minipops: How's this for a show concept? It's on a mainstream channel at teatime. It features hit songs of recent years being sung by prepubescent children in costumes copied from the original artists and full makeup. Hit songs include, for particularly squickyness, "Nine to Five" by Sheena Easton, in which the singer relates how hard her husband works, but then she's cooked him dinner and they have sex. British television, Channel 4, early 1980s.
    • Several episodes of the current revival of Beverly Hills, 90210 centered around high school students preparing a production of the musical Spring Awakening, a play that includes a semi-explicit love-making scene.
    • One episode of Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide had Ned accidentally painting an orange naked lady in art class.
    • All of Wonder Showzen.
    • Tosh.0 came up with a novel way to get around Standards and Practices and still show Famous Awful Internet Porn Clips: Disturbingly adorable reenactments with kids.

    Daniel Tosh: The great thing about doing this thing in Hollywood is that there is no shortage of awful parents who'll let their kids do anything for a SAG card.

    Music

    • There have been cases of 5-year-olds singing "Lady Marmalade" from Moulin Rouge.
    • Kidz Bop is a much-reviled album series of hit songs being sung by children. The songs chosen apparently weren't screened carefully beforehand, as they include Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", P!nk's "Who Knew", Lil Wayne's "Let it Rock" and Florida's "Club Can't Handle Me", among others.
      • Some singers catch on to this, however. Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy refused to greenlight a cover of "Dance Dance", due to it being inappropriate.
    • Depending upon one's personal morality standards, there have been cases of under-18 singers performing songs about issues far beyond what some might consider a 14, 15, 16, etc. year-old to have knowledge or experience with. In recent years, such criticism has been leveled against performers such as Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears, but similar complaints were aimed back in the 1960s at singers such as Annette Funicello and Lesley Gore, too.
    • Deliberately done in music videos: A school pageant about Joan of Arc, Conquistadors, and the Donner party; kids playing at The War on Terror, and one with little kids dressed as and lip-syncing Notorious BIG and Co.

    Real Life

    • Truth in Television, at least for recent generations. Many kids from The Nineties and The Noughties (2000s) sang some of the dirtier popular songs with their friends.
    • One local music festival had a 14-year-old girl singing "If You're Good to Momma" from Chicago. Not okay.
    • Courtney Love auditioned for the Mouseketeers when she was young. The issue was that she was reciting a Sylvia Plath poem for her audition.
    • The unsolved murder of Jon-Benet Ramsey put a harsh spotlight on the world of "Little Miss" pageants (see TLC's Toddlers and Tiaras) and the sexual undertones of putting preschool-age girls into costumes, hairstyles and makeup mimicking those of, glitzy, often raunchy, grown-up stage performers.
    • Then there was that second-grade production of Scarface. Tony Montana's F-bombs were switched out, but still...
    • Many, many elementary schools have the choir sing "Seasons of Love" from Rent at the end of the year. We pray that they never look up...any other song from that show.

    Web Comics

    Web Original

    Western Animation

    • South Park is full of this. From Butters' song "What What (in the Butt)" to the Nativity scene with a graphic birth scene.

    Stan: Dude, what does 'Fingerbang' mean?
    Cartman: It's when you make a gun with your hands and go BANG, dude.

    • An early (well, comparatively) episode of The Simpsons had one kid performing "My Ding-a-Ling" as part of a talent show. He got yanked off stage.
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