Originally published September 30, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1089
What’s the purpose of labels or ratings?
Invariably, it has to do with the kids—with enabling parents to make judgments as to whether their children should be allowed to see a particular film. Oh, sure, there are adult movie goers who use the Motion Picture Association of America’s G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 as guides for themselves because they have problems with certain subject matter. But, by and large, one would have to deduce that the ratings are designed around the interests of children.
After all, four out of the five deal specifically with moviegoers’ parents or ages. PG is “parental” guidance, and I doubt that the intent is for me to call my folks and ask if I can see a particular movie. (Although I admit it is fun to see an ad on Nickelodeon for some kid-oriented 900 number, which is invariably accompanied by a stern warning to, “Ask your parents’ permission.” So sometimes I’ll call my father and ask permission, and he’ll say, “No, it’s a waste of money.” And then I’ll call anyway. The joys of being 38.)
And PG-13, R, and NC-17 all factor age into their warnings.
So whenever people bring up the topic of labeling comic books, parallels to the movie ratings system are invariably drawn. And one runs into a real danger when opposing such arguments because of the kid angle. For ratings (and, by extension, comic book cover labels) have the interests of kids at heart. And if you are opposed to such notions, then you are automatically presumed to be opposed to the welfare of children. Which places you squarely into the when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife realm of debating.
The implication, you see, is that since movie ratings “work,” then a comics rating system would work as well.
But do movie ratings work? Are youngsters genuinely shielded from movie subject matter that could possibly be damaging, disruptive, nightmare-inducing, or in some way, shape or form injurious to their precious little psyches?
No, they don’t. No, they aren’t. The notion that kids are somehow being isolated from PG-13 and R films is, at best, self-deluding on the part of the American public. (I’m leaving NC-17 out of this discussion, since so few films garner the rating that it’s pretty much irrelevant.)
Kids are exposed, on a routine basis, to films and film subjects that the MPAA board clearly states are inappropriate. The exposure is so sanctioned by other aspects of society—including the parents supposedly guided by the ratings—that one wishes the MPAA would just throw in the towel and stop deluding itself into thinking that it’s serving much of a function.
Two things are considered kid-oriented these days: toys and comics. (I’m talking about public perception here, so get off my case, OK? I buy toys for myself and I read comics, so I know dámņëd well they’re not just for kids.)
Check out the toy stores. In particular, check out the “action figures.” (They’re called “action figures” because, if they were called “dolls,” no boy in the age range of 8 to 12 would come near the things.)
In the toy stores, you can find toy lines based on: Aliens (rated “R”); Predator (rated “R”); Nightmare on Elm Street (rated “R”); RoboCop (rated “R”). Plus, I’m sure, others that I’ve forgotten.
At last we know what the “R” in Toys “R” Us stands for.
Not to mention Jurassic Park, which was PG-13 but so intense that the director himself said he wouldn’t bring his kids to see it.
Clearly all these R-rated movies have significant audiences in the very age group that the R-rating would theoretically discourage from seeing the film: significant enough, in fact, that toy manufacturers put out a staggering assortment of figures and playsets. And kids half-a-decade younger than the supposed ideal age for the films snatch the toys off the shelves, and the parents buy them.
Why do the parents buy them? Because the kids have already seen the films. The toymakers know that the kids have seen the films. (I mean, if they didn’t, then the toymakers wouldn’t be making the toys, right?) Either the kids have seen them on videotape or on cable or even in the movie theaters. I routinely see children as young as 5 at R-rated films.
You can make the argument that Aliens and Predator have comic book tie-ins, and, hence, a built-in younger audience. But that just furthers the point I’m making: that the line separating what is and is not appropriate to what age has become so blurred that trying to regulate it is an exercise in self-delusion.
Indeed, look at comics, if you will. To be specific, look at the back-page ads at DC or interior ads at Marvel featuring a skin-headed Woody Harrelson looking sullenly out at the reader: “A bold new film that takes a look at a country seduced by fame, obsessed by crime, and consumed by the media.” It is, of course, Oliver Stone’s new film, Natural Born Killers: a film so intense (one reviewer referred to it as a “phantasmagoria of violence”) that—as I understand—it narrowly avoided the NC-17 rating.
Now there’s a certain basic truth in advertising: You place an ad where you think it’s going to reach your audience. You don’t see too many ads for jock straps in Cosmo, nor does Maybelline take out major eyeliner displays in Sports Illustrated. If (in this case) Warner Bros. were simply running a back-cover ad in DC Comics, you could try and chalk it off to the corporation’s just taking advantage of a handy venue. But it also ran the ads in Marvel Comics. Therefore, Warner Bros. must figure the ads will make an impression on potential ticket buyers. And demographic studies at Marvel place the core comics consumer between ages 11 to 15 years old.
I would like to think that the irony is not lost on any of you. Here we’ve got the MPAA with their ratings-in-theory, while out in the real world, the ratings-in-practice—as far as toys, as far as comics, as far as advertising go—mean absolutely nothing.
This is the example of sterling audience guidance that some would inflict on comics: a notion that doesn’t work on a practical basis, even though it’s been in place for years. And I’m not even getting into obvious drawbacks, such as that an R rating doesn’t keep out unescorted kids, either because of lax ticket sellers or good-natured college students willing to act as “escorts” to eager kids. If R ratings don’t keep viewers out of theaters, how can comic book ratings do anything except serve as lures to kids whose interest is piqued?
Perhaps the thing that is saddest is that the movie producers and toy makers are absolutely correct. They can advertise in comics without anyone thinking anything of it. They can license lines of toys and get parents to buy those lines.
Because in the “action figure” aisles, the majority of the toys focus on fighting. (They don’t call ’em “action” for nothing.) Toy guns, swords, crossbows, bows and arrows—weapons of every sort—either scaled down for the dolls to wield or large enough for the kids to use themselves.
Or the comic books: page after page of mindless, unending, barely coherent violence. No story. No characterization. Fighting and gore. A true irony it is that DC Comics eliminated all ads for guns. Remember BB and air gun ads? Don’t see ’em anymore. That’s not happenstance. That was corporate decision. Marvel followed suit.
Yet the editorial content of comics and the mentality of the toy lines—and the acceptance of society—is such that people who want to reach consumers interested in R-rated tales of chaos and mayhem know exactly where to go: to the kids.
What it all goes back to is our society’s far greater tolerance for violence than the other great bugaboo of R-ratings—sex. After all, there were no ads for The Piano in any comics. I don’t recall a 9½ Weeks toy line hitting the stores when that film was in the theaters (which is kind of a shame, when you get down to it.)
Produce a comic book with 22 pages of mayhem, violence, and action—and devoid of characterization, theme, or any sense of worth—and advertise films celebrating the same mindless sense of bellicosity, and you can sell it on your corner newsstand without eliciting so much as a raised eyebrow. But produce a comic book with 22 pages of sex (doesn’t even have to be kinky), and advertise—I dunno, Indecent Proposal—and you’ve got a title that will likely be sold only from behind the counter (if at all) and might even be the subject of narrow-minded, ill-informed articles in major women’s magazines.
Which only serves to emphasize the core reason the MPAA ratings don’t work: The unavoidable subjectivity of the process renders it useless. The MPAA obsesses over clipping three or four frames—three seconds here, five seconds there—nitpicking to change a film from NC-17 to R, from R to PG-13. And in the meantime, the parents on whose behalf the MPAA is allegedly acting simply ignore, or are oblivious to, what the ratings stand for.
So what have we got? Films with mindless violence, advertising in comics with mindless violence, geared towards young audiences so inured to mindless violence in society (and so unmotivated by their parents or peers to seek out something finer or more thought-provoking) that it all just feeds upon itself.
Movie ratings do nothing to “protect” younger viewers, which renders ludicrous the notion that comics should emulate the practice. It would make just as much sense to get rid of the MPAA (or the Comics Code, for that matter) and replace them with Beavis and Bûŧŧ-Hëád—and reduce the ratings system to a simple “Sucks”/”Doesn’t Suck.”
Hëll—perhaps it would even make more sense.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to c/o Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705, and finds it kind of sick that the captors of the 52 American hostages in Iran back in the ’70s are now ambassadors and high-powered politicians. Aside from the fact that everyone knows government-endorsed terrorists should only be working in tax collection, one wonders whether these former “students” considered the entire hostage situation as some sort of big master’s thesis.)
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“And demographic studies at Marvel place the core comics consumer between ages 11 to 15 years old.”
I wonder what that would be these days.
I worked at several local comics shops over the last several years and the majority of my regulars were between their late 20s to mid 50s. Kids, or teens actually, only came in, on average, to buy Magic cards. I saw more kids buying video games a Toys R Us than buying comics. And yes, they were the more violent games.
I almost never see anyone under 18 at Midtown Comics in Manhattan, nor at A&S Comics in Guttenberg, NJ. Though in the latter case, I usually make it a point to be there between 12pm and 2pm, when kids are still in school, this would not be relevant during the summer. Any idea what the demographic for Marvel or DC is today, Peter?
I NEVER see people from that age range at ANY of the comic stores – be it in Scranton or Philadelphia – that I go to these days. It’s almost all guys – and some gals – who have been collecting and reading for decades. NOT a good trend for the industry.
I see plenty of kids between 11-15, boys and girls both, at my local comics shop, and at my local bookstore. They’re generally looking at manga, though. The owner of the comics shop, a friend of mine from high school, told me about one time he gave a boy who regularly only bought manga a Spider-Man comic, advising him to just give it a try; the boy brought it back the next day, saying he couldn’t figure out how to read it; his sole comics experience had been reading manga in the Japanese right-to-left format, so the western style, he said, confused him. Sad, no?
Just a couple of points, not completely related to each other.
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Movie makers seem to take at least the distinction between PG-13 and R pretty seriously, and it’s tied to talk of profits. In commentaries and behind the scenes things, especially on comic book movies, they talk about the need to make adjustments to get it to PG-13 instead of R because the studio is worried it will make less if an R. So there’s something going on there. (That sometimes backfires when a series that has been R-rated has a PG-13 entry, such as the first Aliens vs. Predator film. A lot of the criticism focused on it being watered-down.)
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Some of those toys related to R rated movies have messages on them saying they are for “adult collectors.” That does as little to prevent sales to kids as one would expect. I did hear some fuss when the first live action Transformers hit the theatre about the fact it was rated PG-13 but had toys related to it marketed to kids as young as 2 years old. But that talk quickly died out because no one seemed interested in examining it
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The main result of the rating system Marvel is using seems to have been to marginalize all-ages comics. Many readers look down their noses at anything stamped all-ages, which is stupid since all the classic stories held near and dear to older readers were, of course, all ages. “The Coming of Galactus” anyone? I can’t totally blame this effect on the death of Thor The Mighty Avenger, one of the best new series of last year, because Marvel also flooded the market at the same time with Thor comics and drowned it out, but I think the aversion to something that looks like it’s for kids was a contributing factor.
There’s another effect brought on by these ratings: The studios know that G movies bring only young kids and their parents. In order to have the class age that pays the most (that is teen-agers and young adults), they have to get their movies rated PG or PG-13. Which is why they add swear words to thier movies. Which is the reason I was surprised when I saw the second TMNT movie, and found out that the Turtles used a lot of expletives (in France, they had to use “Merde”, because “Enfer” or “Ðámņáŧìøņ” are not considered as very strong words, unlike in the US).
I always liked it when companies would take an R-rated franchise, and market it to me in a kid friendly manner. I was so stoked there were Rambo and Robocop cartoons, as I wasn’t allowed to see the movie (though I did see First Blood Part II when I was 8, and freakin’ loved it!).
There were of course toy lines to tie into both. The Rambo action figure I has was sweet!
http://www.figurerealm.com/Galleries/rambocoleco/RamboFirePower-Front.jpg
Though in trying to find that image, I just realized there were Rambo figures made prior to the cartoon. They actually say, Rambo First Blood Part II. That’s kinda jacked up.
Four words:
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Highlander: The Animated Series
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“We need a new cartoon for the kids. How about we base it on this movie franchise about people cutting off each others’ heads?”
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J.
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JGLJR, taking something violent, dark or “adult” and making it kid friendly isn’t really a new concept. Ever read any of the original Grimm Fairy Tales? Ever read some of the stories that Disney made into films?
But, yeah, making toys off of stuff like that… Next thing you know some jerk will get the bright idea to sell kids toy guns, little cowboy hats, bandanas and fancy belts and have them run around “killing” bad guys and Indians.
and finds it kind of sick that the captors of the 52 American hostages in Iran back in the ’70s are now ambassadors and high-powered politicians.
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And it would still be another 11 years after the above was written before Ahmadinejad would take office. Sigh.
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As usual, everything in the article still holds true today. Sex vs violence. The pointlessness of ratings systems.
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And yet, the music industry would emulate the ratings, as would comic books. Video games eventually would as well. None of it has really done any good.
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The mention of the PG-13 Jurassic Park brings up memories though. I was a few months short of turning 12 when I went to see it with my brother (a year younger) and a friend (a year older). We went on our own; no parents. I do recall it being rather intense, but it’s almost tame compared to some of the stuff being released as PG-13 films now.
There’s a fantastic documentary call This Film is Not Yet Rated about the MPAA and their seemingly arbitrary rating standards. Really good stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Film_Is_Not_Yet_Rated
That was a good film. Most of the board members, IIRC, weren’t even parents of kids under 18. It makes it clear that the MPAA is really all about helping the studios to maintain power, and their ratings are arbitrary aesthetic value judgments, and are not based on any consistent, objective measure of content.
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Yeah, I saw that as an instant play on Netflix last month. Hilariously funny and more than a little troubling even if taken with a grain of salt. I’ve also heard some horror directors discussing the ratings system on the late Fangoria Radio where they talked about how arbitrary it was. They would get a film passed and rated with very little real problems and then on the next film run into issues over FX gags that were less intense, extreme or gory than some of the ones that previously passed with no issue. Just stupid all the way around.
From what i’ve read, Lucas gamed the system to get the first Star Wars film rated PG instead of G because a G rating would have been the kiss of death with the film’s probable core audience.
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And Spielberg apparently used clout to get Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom a PG rather than an R (though it looks as if some scenes may have been recut to lower the gross-out factor, also); he announced that no Indiana Jones film would ever have an R,the sid on a talk show that if he had a thirteen-year-old he would certainly not let the kid see it.
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(Spielberg, BTW, was more or less directly responsible for the PG-13 rating’s establishment – “Temple of Doom” and Gremlins {which he produced} were the proximate causes of the rating…)
I use MPAA ratings as a base guideline, but rely on http://www.commonsensemedia.org/ for the final decision. On that site they state specifically which acts of violence, language, sexual themes, etc. are used in any given movie. That helps me decide what is appropriate for my children based on my values.
When I was a kid, I had HBO and parents who both worked, so I watched unedited rated-R movies whenever the hëll I wanted. The summer Full Metal Jacket was in constant rotation was an eye-opener, lemme tell ya.
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Maybe there was a 9 1/2 Weeks toy line, but it wasn’t sold at Kay-Bee, if you get my drift.
The Last Tango in Paris lunchbox was a big seller in certain areas, I hear.
I personally adore my Basic Instinct ice pick. I take it out whenever I have a party. I love their slogan:
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The Basic Instinct ice pick. For that wild lesbian serial killer in you.
Actually one of the DVDs for Basic Instinct (the version with the blue container) comes with a pen shaped like an icepick
You know ratings on stuff and attempts at self-censorship are becoming nonsensical when you can have half of Stamford, Connecticut blown up in a comic book, but Nick Fury and Wolverine can’t smoke. Um?
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Yeah, I had my major meltdown on that one a few years ago now thanks to the Sci-Fi Channel.
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http://jjchandler.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/they-have-gotta-be-fn-joking/
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The people who figure out what is and isn’t “good for us” are so full of $&!^ most of the time that it stopped being funny a long, long time ago.
Jerry,
Yeah. The “Marvel mandate” strikes me as absurd. It was inspired, in part, I believe to Joe Q losing his father to cancer and deciding that if one kid picked up smoking or continued to do so as a result of seeing one of Marvel’s characters “making it look cool” then that would trouble his conscience.
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It is not something I agree with. At all.
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If only it were just a “Marvel Mandate” though. The regular censors are bad enough, but the “Cause” censors and the censorship done for their crusades drives me absolutely buggy.
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I mean, it’s actually gotten to a point (to keep with the cigarettes example) that you can do films with characters getting stoned on screen and sometimes get less grief over that than if you have a “good guy” character in the same film smoking a cigarette. You can make a movie where the lead characters kill dozens of bad guys, blow up large chunks of a town, bang some woman they first meet 20 minutes into the film and sit around laughing about it all over cold beers when everything has finally settles down, but don’t you dare show those same good guys smoking.
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Just leave it the hëll alone already. Let people tell the story they want top tell with the characters they want to use, give it a rating or advisory that makes sense and let the adults out there decide for themselves what they can and cannot tolerate to watch or let their kids watch.
There’s a whole subset of pørņ these days that involves girls smoking.
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So i’m told.
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Not that i’d know – i’d never watch it, because i find smoking in such a context a bit of a turn off – but i’ve certainly read about it.
I’ve seen it. I’ve even helped produce some.
I don’t know if anyone’s ever seen the Pecos Bill segment from Disney’s “Melody Time,” but here’s the way it originally looked:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hixe6V_KuAA
When it made it to video some years ago, all scenes of Bill smoking had been removed or digitally re-edited.
Wow, the right wingers would love you, Mike. A guy offended by smoking in pørņ not by the pørņ, but by the smoking. LOL. 🙂
“There’s a whole subset of pørņ these days that involves girls smoking.
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So i’m told.”
In the terrific documentary INDIE SEX, Dita Von Teese observes that there are probably people with a smoking fetish who watch and re-watch the old black and white films when smoking was done far more glamorously. Roger Ebert once said those films make smoking look cool (sexy?) by having an empty space next to the actor smoking, then having the actor exhale and filling that space with smoke.
Kim Metzger: There’s a whole subset of pørņ these days that involves girls smoking. Not that i’d know – i’d never watch it, because i find smoking in such a context a bit of a turn off…
Luigi Novi: Boy, the right wing would love you, Kim. You’re offended by such things not because of the pørņ, but because of the smoking… 🙂
That isn’t my quote, and you obviously know it isn’t, as you comment on the same statement, addressing the person who did say it. I’m assuming there was a brain and/or computer fart that occured when you wrote this.
I don’t smoke, but have no problem with people who do, just as I don’t drink alcohol and have no problem with people who do. (My Dad, for the last 33 years of his life, was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And, over the years, I’ve run into people who confuse AA with the temperance movement. AA members do not go around telling people they shouldn’t drink. The organization is the granddaddy of self-help movements, with the idea being that the drinker has to admit he or she has a problem. Members get together and share their stories with each other and, by doing so, find it within themselves to stop drinking. Sorry, end of rant.)
Finally, I’m not into pørņ, my older, born-again sister has seen to that. But I do enjoy well-done erotica. Yes, there is a difference. Look at a copy of “Playboy” and a copy of just about any other “adult” magazine these days to see the difference.
The silly thing about an “across the board” no smoking rule is it cuts both ways. It doesn’t allow for scenes like the X-Men one where Kitty tried smoking and got sick.
Yesterday, I saw the remake of “True Grit,” which is the Coen Brothers’ first PG-13 rated movie. And I found myself reflecting that the original, which features the same scene involving a knife and fingers, as well as the famous line “fill your hand, you SOB” (okay, I used the initials) was rated G.
I also remember my stint as a teacher in Nevada 30 years ago, when one very religious kid bragged out loud about never going to R-rated movies. I pointed out to him that he had seen “Alien,” which he’d talked about weeks before. He was stunned that a movie could be rated R for reasons other than nudity.
Ever seen the Goofy short “No Smoking”? Good luck EVER seeing it, except on DVD.
Ah, you forget, these days we have YouTube. I went there, typed in “No Smoking,” and up popped Goofy, with, I think, German sub-titles. If you want to save some time, just go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmjjHkxTItE
The irony, of course, is that Walt Disney himself was a heavy smoker. If his animators were in the mood to goof off, they knew they only had to listen for the sound of Disney’s smoker’s cough as a signal to get back to work. The habit is probably what killed Disney just 10 days beyond his 65th birthday. I was 13 at the time, and it wasn’t “cool” to like Disney at that age, but I was still sad.
gray64 and Kim,
Tanks for making me aware of the Goofy short “no Smoking” and thanks to Kim for posting the link
Produce a comic book with 22 pages of mayhem, violence, and action—and devoid of characterization, theme, or any sense of worth—and advertise films celebrating the same mindless sense of bellicosity, and you can sell it on your corner newsstand without eliciting so much as a raised eyebrow. But produce a comic book with 22 pages of sex (doesn’t even have to be kinky), and advertise—I dunno, Indecent Proposal—and you’ve got a title that will likely be sold only from behind the counter (if at all) and might even be the subject of narrow-minded, ill-informed articles in major women’s magazines.
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A reasonably famous case from the world of self-published comics: WaRP Graphics’ ElfQuest once had a parents’ group up in arms about an issue toward the end of the original series. Was it the blood-soaked pages of the Go-Back/troll war? Perhaps the graphic depiction of Redlance forcing his staff to grow thick thorns – right through an attacker’s hands? Maybe the scenes of Two-Edge being tortured, or the one panel showing that he mangled his own feet in order to escape captivity?
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No, it was the extremely tame splash panel, with the beginning of the Go-Back’s ceremonial orgy before heading off to war. The only unclad characters were shown from the back, and not in any great detail; most of the figures were in shadow. But it was the implied sex, not the extremely graphic violence, that bothered this parents’ group. (And why they were buying ElfQuest for their kids is another question – I understand Richard Pini had the same reaction to this as Sam Clemens is reported to have had when he got complaints about what children read in Huckleberry Finn…)
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So, a bad guy threatening a little girl, only to buy a dagger in the forehead, shown in explicit detail (in the previous issue) – good. People having consensual sex, with no graphic detail – bad. Maybe I’m missing something here…
Maybe I’m missing something here…
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Nope, you’ve summed up the absurdity of it just fine.
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South Park did a great episode about this as well. Butters takes a throwing star in the eye, nobody cares; Cartman walking around naked, freak out.
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Gladiators on a field of combat hitting each other and turning their brains to mush? Most popular sport this country has to offer in the form of American football. A nipple is shown during the half-time show of the Super Bowl? Shìŧ, meet fan.
There’s a song “I Was Confused (About the Television Set)” by the sadly defunct local band Ten Hands which has some lyrics that always come to mind when thinking of situations like this:
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I watched this show just the other night
And I must say something was not right
How come people on television’s weird in the head?
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Well, they wont show sex, but they show a lot of killin’
I guess it must be better to show blood spillin’
Than to let little Junior see two naked people in bed.
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–Daryl
I’ve never actually bothered to see the Super Bowl bit but correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t trued that there wasn’t *even* a nipple shown during the Janet Jackson thing, because she was wearing a pastie?
I still recall the time I returned to Victoria, BC from Port Angeles, WA and the guard checked the DVDs I bought to make sure there wasn’t any pørņ. No pørņ, but there was a copy of Jason Goes to Hëll. The guard didn’t even comment on that.
I find the dichotomy as ridiculous as you do, but I think I understand it. Life is infinitely more scary than death, and while both sex and violence are imitible, sex is much more likely to be imitated. Plus, the consequences of sex (i.e. more people) are arguably more serious than the consequences of violence (i.e. death). Stupid, I agree, but there you are.
I have a problem with the idea that sex can be “imitated.” To my way of thinking, that is like saying sleeping can be imitated. It’s a basic human drive. People will have a drive to have sex, no matter how you portray sex in the media.
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The consequences of our neurotic hang-ups about sex isn’t less people having sex. It’s people having dysfunctional sex lives.
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The idea that the sex drive can and must be supressed is one of the more diseased Abrahamic religious concepts. And the reason for why the Catholic Church is full of pedophiles, if you ask me.
I don’t mind ratings systems as long as they are voluntary. What really upsets me is when governments try to get involved, such as states that have tried to require ID checks at theatres, or tried to ban NC-17 movies entirely. I’ve read about film ratings in other countries, and it’s depressing to learn that most of them have the force of law behind them (and in some cases the ratings board can unofficially ban something simply by refusing to rate it).
Remember: the previous “rating” system – the “Hays Office” was both designed to dictate what adults were or were not allowed to see – had prior script and final cut approval, as well – rather like the Comics Code Authority.
Say what you want about the liberal media in the US, but the absurdity of the acceptance of violence in comparision to sex as regarding what is acceptable for kids is proof that the conservative mindset also has a lot of clout in American culture.
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By the way, I remember watching ROBOCOP, FIRST BLOOD, and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET when I was a lot younger than 17, on Brazilian TV. I think I was 13. Every kid in my school also watched the same movies. I was fine, I was a normal kid, and watching violent movies never made me a violent person. I have the sense that none of the kids I knew became any more violent for watching said movies.
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I thank my parents for never “supervising” what I read and watched. My tastes developed at my own pace. I never developed an obsession for nudie mags when I was 7, for instance.
Theodore Sturgeon’s 1960 novel Venus Plus X is all; about this “violence okay/sex evil” dichotomy in our culture.
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The scene where the Average American Family goes to a drive-in movie (“Daddy – what’s a drive-in movie?”), in particular, sticks with me thirty-plus years after reading it.
Ack. Please mentally end that link at the end of the book title…
I’ve read VENUS PLUS X many years ago, in my Theodore Sturgeon’s phase.
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I remember liking it a lot. One of the things that stuck with me was Sturgeon’s idea that revulsion/fear/demonization of the vágìņá was a sure sign of how neurotic human society was.
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Perhaps it’s a bit too Freudian, but I always thought Sturgeon was into something.
When I worked at a movie theater, we occasionally had people assigned to make sure people under 17 didn’t get into R movies. I loved to do it because it meant not sweeping floors so I would trade with people to do it. One time these two 14 year old who thought they were so clever bought seats to Pokemon 2 and tried to sneak into an R rated movie. Unfortunately- they were at the end of the line I had little else to do and when you get right down to it- Clayton Forrester had the right idea he just didn’t take it far enough. I escorted the kids to their movie– guarded the door and made sure they didn’t leave their fun filled kiddy flick for the first half of the movie.
Geez, I’d hate to attend a party at your house. I’d get nervous every time I tried to go to the bathroom!
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Seriously, I worked in an 8-plex theater too, and I was posted at the door to the auditorium where Showgirls was playing, in order to check tickets. These young men tried to pay me five bucks to let them in. I declined, but I was amused. It’s not like there was anything in that film that they couldn’t see in any other movie, and if it was really Elizabeth Berkley they had to see, they could just wait until it came out on home video, since I don’t recall video stores ever checking IDs or refusing to rent R-rated films to minors, yet another inconsistency in the whole ratings thing. It kinda reminds me of how entertainment industry-oriented blogs will make a big fuss if someone like Angelina Jolie has a nipple slip in public or appears nude in a recent film, even though she’s already appeared nude or a bunch of her past movies.
they could just wait until it came out on home video, since I don’t recall video stores ever checking IDs or refusing to rent R-rated films to minors
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This reminds me of something my little brother, 5 years younger than me, once did. One day, he comes home the small rental store in the town we lived in. He’s all of 11 at the time, and they let him use my name and account to rent Baseketball. Meanwhile, my mother laughed about it. (But my mother did once blow a gasket over the fact that my aunt let her then little children watch South Park.)
Come on now- it could have been worse. I could have made them watch ‘Big Momma’s House’.
I don’t have any kids, so I generally use the ratings system as a guideline for myself because I am what would best be termed a “movie wimp”. I rarely watch anything R-rated and when I do it’s usually for the sake of one particular actor or well-regarded movie. Sometimes I regret it, sometimes I don’t.
I’m of two minds when it comes to “ratings systems.”
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On the one hand, when you’re dealing with something like a movie or a video game, where you generally can’t tell if the material within is “appropriate” for your kids, yourself, etc, without having to purchase that product first, I can see the MPAA ratings as proving a useful guideline for whether it may or may not fall within your personal boundaries. It’s still a tremendously flawed system, but it does well enough. For our family, it means that, if our son (9) wants to see a PG-13 movie, we check it out first, either in the theater or on DVD/cable, before he sees it.
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When it comes to print media like comics, however…I see such a ratings system as less helpful. Books and magazines have survived just fine, getting into the appropriate audiences hands without such a “ratings system.” The counter-argument has been made to me that books and magazines use product/cover design to attract their target audience, while comics – thanks to their long standing (if undeserved) reputation as being all “kids’ stuff” generally don’t. My response to that is: your average comic is 20-22 pages of story. Is it really that much of a challenge to flip through (not read…just flip through) to see if the content of a particular comic to see if it meets the standards of “appropriate” content for whoever you’re buying it for (be it yourself, a child or someone else)?
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–Daryl