Infant/Toddler ‘Actors’ Potentially Being Traumatized

[FrankGSterleJr]

JODIE COMER TOLD TO STOP COMFORTING CRYING NEWBORNS MAKING HER NEW FILM
By Celebretainment Jan 8, 2024
Jodie Comer was ordered to stop soothing crying babies during the making of her new film.
The 30-year-old ‘Killing Eve’ actress, who has no children, plays a petrified mum who flees her London home with her newborn amid an ecological flooding disaster in the upcoming survival movie ‘The End We Start From’.
She told The Sunday Times about the experience of handling different babies during its production: “It’s such a lesson. The smallest baby was eight weeks. At first my hands were visibly shaking. My younger cousins have grown up now, so I’m not around babies an awful lot.
“It felt like a huge responsibility. I thought, ‘Wow, they’re so fragile’.”
Jodie added she became more confident with the babies on set and would try to calm the children during shooting — but was told to let them cry.
She said: “I became more comfortable, sometimes to my detriment! There are scenes where we needed a baby to cry but I was soothing him instead.
“The crew would shout, ‘Stop!’ ….
________

IN his book The Interpretation of Dreams, Dr. Sigmund Freud states: “It is painful to me to think that many of the hypotheses upon which I base my psychological solution of the psychoneuroses will arouse skepticism and ridicule when they first become known.

“For instance, I shall have to assert that impressions of the second year of life, and even the first, leave an enduring trace upon the emotional life of subsequent neuropaths [i.e. neurotic persons], and that these impressions — although greatly distorted and exaggerated by the memory — may furnish the earliest and profoundest basis of a hysterical [i.e. neurotic] symptom …

“t is my well-founded conviction that both doctrines [i.e. theories] are true. In confirmation of this I recall certain examples in which the death of the father occurred when the child was very young, and subsequent incidents, otherwise inexplicable, proved that the child had unconsciously preserved recollections of the person who had so early gone out of its life.”

Contemporary research tells us that, since it cannot fight or flight, a baby stuck in a crib on its back hearing parental discord in the next room can only “move into a third neurological state, known as a ‘freeze’ state … This freeze state is a trauma state” (Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal, pg.123).

This causes its brain to improperly develop; and if allowed to continue, it’s the helpless infant’s starting point towards a childhood, adolescence and (in particular) adulthood in which its brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines.

We also now know that it’s the unpredictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, that does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes.” (pg. 42)

Decades before reading Freud’s theories or any others regarding very early life trauma, I began cringing at how producers and directors of negatively melodramatic scenes — let alone the willing parents of the undoubtedly extremely upset infants and toddlers used—can comfortably conclude that no psychological harm would come to their infant/toddler actors, regardless of their screaming in bewilderment. (And they’re not really actors since they are not cognizant of their fictional environment.)

Initially I’d presumed there was an educated general consensus within the entertainment industry on this matter, perhaps even on the advice of mental health and/or psychology academia, otherwise the practice would logically compassionately cease. But I became increasingly doubtful of the factual accuracy of any such potential consensus.

Cannot one logically conclude by observing their turmoil-filled facial expressions that they’re perceiving, and likely cerebrally recording, the hyper-emotional scene activity around them at face value rather than as a fictitious occurrence?

I could understand the practice commonly occurring within a naïve entertainment industry of the 20th Century, but I’m still seeing it in contemporary small and big screen movie productions. [FYI: Over the last five years or so, I’ve unsuccessfully tried contacting various actor unions on this matter.]

Meanwhile, in January of 2017, a Vancouver dog-rescue organization cancelled a scheduled fundraiser preceding the big release of the then-new film A Dog’s Purpose, according to a Vancouver Sun story, after “the German shepherd star of the film was put under duress during one scene.”

The founder of Thank Dog I Am Out (Dog Rescue Society), Susan Paterson, was quoted as saying, “We are shocked and disappointed by what we have seen, and we cannot in good conscience continue with our pre-screening of the movie.” ... This incident managed to create a controversy for the ensuing news week.

While animal cruelty by the industry shouldn’t be tolerated, there should be even less allowance for using unaware infants and toddlers in negatively hyper-emotional drama — especially when contemporary alternatives can readily be utilized (e.g. a mannequin infant or digital manipulation tech).

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Indeed. No wonder they grow up so screwed up. It must be very confusing to very young children to have strange adults gushing over them and pretending to be its parents. Children are often rquired to say 'I love you Daddy/Mummy''. Actors also yell and scream in front of very young child actors and babies. It can be quite disturbing. I don't know if they have some way of 'splicing' the film so that it only looks as if the child is there, but sometime they are actually holding the baby or toddler and screaming right next to its ears. It's child abuse.

[commonsense]

Indeed. No wonder they grow up so screwed up. It must be very confusing to very young children to have strange adults gushing over them and pretending to be its parents. Children are often rquired to say 'I love you Daddy/Mummy''. Actors also yell and scream in front of very young child actors and babies. It can be quite disturbing. I don't know if they have some way of 'splicing' the film so that it only looks as if the child is there, but sometime they are actually holding the baby or toddler and screaming right next to its ears. It's child abuse.

Yes. And sadly all of it is for the entertainment of the public.