DO ASK, DO TELL

I gave birth to my son at age 25. My husband and I raised him in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. Neither my husband nor I had close relatives in the city so the three of us spent a lot of time together. We chose career paths in the arts that created opportunities to travel around the United States and abroad for work. Our son came with us. At a very young age our son became used to interacting with adults and got accustomed to restaurants, parties, film sets and screenings. At international film festivals, it was very common for filmmakers who were parents to have their children with them. It felt progressive, it felt inclusive, it felt right. We decided as parents his curiosity was the barometer of his intellectual development. If he was old enough to ask a question, he was old enough to hear the answer. If we didn’t know the answer, we would seek the answer together. As parents we wanted to instill empathy, creative expression, self-interpretation, and analytical thinking through art. Movies was one vehicle we used to help him develop those skills.

Growing up in Colombia in the 70’s and 80’s, I found cinema through my grandmother, Florencia. She used to watch movies all the time. Matinees on Wednesdays and VHS rentals. My uncle, her brother Jaime, used to have a collection of thousands of pirated VHS tapes in his bedroom. I was probably seven years old, and one of the first movies I remember peeking to see was Mornau’s Nosferatu (1922). My grandmother was playing it on her television, recliner set back, and eating white rice with chopped red tomato. She would not allow me to see the movie because it was too scary. I remember it vividly. I would have to go to my room and go to sleep, or “El Coco will come get you,” she would say. Terrifying.

I would attend matinees with my grandmother to watch the classic movies of Mexican comedian Cantinflas. Cantinflas was the Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin of Latin America. I remember watching some of his early work from the 40’s and 50’s continues through the 80’s. As I grew older and my grandparents moved from Cali to Bogotá, it was with our housemaid, Rosa that I attended the matinees. Rosa preferred Hollywood movies, so we watched the 80’s big budget good guys vs. bad guys movies with Eddie Murphy, Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, and of course Sigourney Weaver. The relationship I had with Rosa was very special, we spent a lot of time together. Rosa was raised in a port-town in the Pacific called Buenaventura (meaning Good Adventure). She would tell me the scariest folktales. Wife’s tales that made no sense, but were compelling, none the less.

She shared many stories, but the ones we I remember vividly were El Coco, La Patasola, La Llorona, and El Hombre Caimán. There are many interpretations and variations of these stories throughout Colombia and Latin America, but all had one shared goal: to scare the children to teach them moral lessons. The stories became substitutes for honest and direct conversations between adults and children. They were and remain lies we believed as children.

El Coco, from Spanish culture, was the threat you’d get if you did not go to sleep on time. El Coco will come to take you away from your family. Moral: Discipline and routine.

La Patasola (single legged woman), from the Pacific region in Colombia where Rosa was from, told the story of a gorgeous woman who roamed the streets. If men fell for her, she would lure them into the jungle where she transformed into a one-breasted and one-legged vampire lusting for human blood and flesh. Moral: Do not lust.

La Llorona (the weeping woman), from the region of El Valle del Cauca, told the story of a mother who drowned herself and her children out of revenge against her husband who was having an affair with another woman. Dressed in white she roams the streets calling out for her children. Moral: Revenge against men does not pay off.

Finally, El Hombre Caimán (Alligator Man) originated in the Atlantic coast near the city of Barranquilla. It tells the story of a young man who liked to peak on women while they bathed in the Magdalena River. He seeks help from a witch to turn him into an alligator so he could swim near the women without being scolded. He has two poisons, one to turn him into an alligator, the second to turn him back into human. Once an alligator, because he does not have human hands, he spills the second poison on himself and is only able to turn himself half human. Moral: Do not try to be someone you are not. There is a festival of music named after the legend.

The colloquial stories were terrifying for a child to hear. The children’s reaction to the stories entertained the adults. I found it cruel. Speaking about sex, race, infidelity, moral values, became much harder conversations to have when substituted with allegory and metaphor. I never talked about these topics with my parents. You just didn’t.

As a child, prohibited to watch the classic movie Nosferatu, but made to endure over and over and over the scary fables of El Coco, La Llorona, La Patasola, El Hombre Caimán made no sense to me.

Once I became a mother, I decided the best way to teach my son, and empower him, was to answer truthfully to his questions. The truth will help him make the right choices. Movies like these tales are fiction. From the time my son started watching television, reading, and going to the movies, analysis was part of the conversation. In essence, the movie does not end when the title scroll begins. Let’s talk about the movie and let him ask questions.

As a filmmaker, I have never been a fan of the process in which the MPAA assesses a movie and determines the rating: G (all ages), PG (parental guidance suggested), PG-13 (parents strongly cautioned), R (restricted). As a parent I noticed that from the MPAA’s ratings, violence was generally okay in all movies, but the topic of sex was a taboo. I found that disturbing. My mission was to be selective to what movies we watched together, discuss the movie but show him films I believed were strong stories, cinematic, and tastefully created. These were movies we enjoyed together, as he was going to get exposed to mainstream content anyway. He’ll watch Lilo & Stitch (2002) with his friends while we chose Spirited Away (2001) as a family.

My son, now 26, remembers watching movies like The Matrix or Batman with his friends, but when trying to watch anything else, he says of his friends, “After ten minutes I could tell they were distracted, the movie was so slow they were just not in it”, so he would turn it off. Movies we watched together when he was between eight and ten years old, and he remembers vividly include Apocalypto (2006), Adaptation (2002), The Shining (1980), The Game (1997), Wild Hearts Can’t be Broken (1991), The Thing (1982), The Fly (1986), City of God (2002), Quiz Show (1994), Casablanca (1942), The Exorcist (1973), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), The Birds (1963), American Psycho (2000), Dog Day Afternoon (1975).

Although the content of the films was strong, it was thought provoking discussions what we were after. Our goal was to instill in him analytical thinking, appreciation for the story, and what were the filmmakers saying to their audience. Our son asked questions and we answered the best we could. Movies are fiction. These are characters not real people; the story is made up; the blood is not real; scenarios are contrived. We wanted him to be inspired by what he saw, so he could develop depth and purpose in his approach to life. Inspiration not imitation. What is real and what is not. It is the emotion experienced from the viewing that becomes a basis for introspection.

Watching movies is an exercise of emotional exploration. It is also an exercise of empathy. Watching flawed characters struggling to overcome incredible difficulties and moral dilemmas permits an audience to reflect, safely, on their own nature. Like a rollercoaster it is a contrived way to tap into primal response. These are all exaggerated versions of ourselves, of our world. If we feel empathy for a character in a fictitious world, we can feel empathy for a real individual in our neighborhood. It is a reminder that the authentic human experience is a nuanced one.

I prefer what I call “armpit movies.” These are stories that take place in small, often marginalized corners of the world. Sharing that humanity with my son is a way that make us closer to each other and part of a world that needs a lot of healing.

To my son, Marcelo

Carolina Posse is an award-winning media producer and educator. She began her career in the non-profit sector as Programming and Operations Manager of the International Latino Cultural Center in Chicago and ultimately served as Interim Director of the Chicago Latino Film Festival. She co-founded Mostra: Brazilian Film Series, which she presented in cooperation with Partners of the Americas, Illinois-São Paulo Chapter. She has guest lectured for numerous educational and governmental institutions and served on juries for the Sundance Institute, Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), and the Independent Television Service (ITVS). Her film producing credits include Hot Chili (2004), The Quiet (2005), Path of Least Resistance (2006), Little Green Men (2009), The Scary Ham (2018), This is Cindy (2019), American Fumble (2019), American Parent (023), The Game Camera (2025), and The Francis Ellis Mysteries (2025). Carolina has a BA in Film and a Master’s in Arts Management, and is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Film and Television at Columbia College Chicago.