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Topic: Eighth Grade’s R rating deters actual 8th-graders from seeing it. What a shame.

Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 07-20-2018 06:19 PM

The only reason there ARE ratings is to give parents an idea about the movie's content. It's not designed to "keep people out." It's designed to encourage parents to do actual parenting, which so many these days sadly don't.

The hard part of course is where to draw the line. Applying one yardstick to all parenting standards is pretty fraught with problems.

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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002

posted 07-26-2018 01:40 AM

This reminds me of "Woodstock" where young people who attended couldn't see the movie. It was also rated "R" because of MF-bombs and a scene where a couple takes off their clothes and lays down in the grass. It was actually quite tame.

I think the ratings system works, but they do occasionally make mistakes. I haven't seen this film yet, but it seems like they made a mistake. I think it's ridiculous that superhero movies with thousands of violent deaths get a PG or PG-13, but throw in a few vulgarities or a sex reference and the Board panics, except for certain filmmakers.

Was it Ron Howard's Parenthood (PG-13) that had the scene in the car where Mary Steenburgen is talking about oral sex? I think they let that slide just because it was Ron Howard.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 07-26-2018 10:51 AM

It did have that scene, but it was so mild there is no way it would’ve ever warranted an R.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 07-26-2018 04:28 PM

quote: Mike Blakesley
The only reason there ARE ratings is to give parents an idea about the movie's content. It's not designed to "keep people out." It's designed to encourage parents to do actual parenting, which so many these days sadly don't.

Is this to assume people who were raising kids 20, 30 or more years ago were by and large being "responsible parents?" Times back then were not exactly idyllic. During the 1970's-80's (when I was growing up) crime rates in the United States were far worse than current rates today. There was no shortage of broken homes, absentee parents with "latch key kids" and hazardous living situations.

If there is one thing I can criticize about the parenting style of people now raising children it's that many of them are too involved with their kids. Growing up, my brother and I had lots of independence. So did our friends. Our parents weren't shadowing us at every baseball practice or Boy Scouts meeting. They weren't trying to micro-manage every little thing. We often walked or rode our bikes to school and after-school activities alone. Today that sort of practice is now being called "free range parenting." One couple (in Philadelphia I think) got arrested due to neighbors freaking out about kids walking to the park by themselves.

Our popular culture routinely insults the Millennials generation, as if people in the Generation X and Baby Boom age groups don't have their own share of disgraceful members. And if these Millennial-age parents are screwed up in the head it's people in my age group and older who raised them to be that way.

My sympathies go out to parents these days, and to people who want to be parents. It's a difficult job and it's expensive as hell. If I was currently raising a child the issue of R-rated movies wouldn't be at the top of my concerns. It's easy to not take a teen to see an R-rated movie at a commercial theater. It's far more difficult to control what kids are being exposed to elsewhere. Even if you're doing everything perfectly all sorts of external bad influences can undermine that work.

40 years ago it was easier for parents to shelter children from objectionable movies, music, etc. There was far fewer outlets of that material. Now there are more ways to access that content and do so immediately without driving to a store or theater. In the past parents could bury their heads in the sand, putting off having "the talk" with their kids. Today parents are forced more to confront the issue. Something good must be happening in that regard. The teen pregnancy rate in the US is a mere third of what it was in 1990.

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William Kucharski
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 244
From: Louisville, Colorado, United States of America
Registered: Oct 2012

posted 08-10-2018 09:47 PM

If the film had really been intend for eighth graders, it would be trivial to edit it slightly to achieve a desired rating.

Instead, they prefer to go for the controversial as a generator of publicity such as the original article mentioned here. Then the filmmakers can tut-tut and wave their fingers and complain about the MPAA all while getting free publicity and, ironically, getting eighth graders to see a movie they probably had no real interest in seeing.

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Justin Hamaker
Film God

Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 09-06-2018 11:48 PM

quote: Mike Blakesley
It's not designed to "keep people out." It's designed to encourage parents to do actual parenting, which so many these days sadly don't.

Unfortunately all the attention paid to the ratings following Columbine resulted in an environment where carding people and denying entry was really what ratings enforcement looked like. The threats of fines to theatre managers and cashiers did not help, nor did the regular "mystery shopper" reports on theatre compliance.

Although it might be different in some parts of the country, I feel like the pendulum has now swung the other way where providing information is the theatre's primary role. Aside from very young kids, I feel it's become more or less pointless to make ratings enforcement part of the ticket buying process.

That being said, I still bothers me to see people taking young kids to R rated movies, especially those with extreme violence or sexual violence. I wish I could deny tickets in those situations without having to worry about potential litigation. I wouldn't mind my company starting a policy of no children under 6 after 6 in R rated movies.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 09-07-2018 11:10 AM

Theater operators are in a catch-22 situation with ratings enforcement. I don't think the theater staff and management should have any more obligation or responsibility other than just checking the IDs of minors and ejecting them from the theater if they sneak from one movie to another. It's not the staff's job to function as baby-sitters or part-time parents.

It's also not the staff's job to prevent an adult from bringing their child into a theater to watch an R-rated slasher movie. If other parents have a problem with that then they need to confront the irresponsible parent, not bitch at theater staff for "allowing it." The theater only has the obligation to step in if a parent is trying to bring a kid into a NC-17 rated show.

Even if a theater did have a strict policy to stop parents from bringing their young kids into R-rated movies what good would that policy really do other than fuel arguments? The same R-rated movie will be available to watch at home in under 3 months. The same parents foolishly exposing their kids to adult content in a commercial movie theater will no doubt be doing the same thing far more often in the home. It's impossible to police that situation.

The very short window between theatrical and home releases of movies, along with the ease of access to R-rated content in the home, might be why Eighth Grade was made the way it was made. This wasn't the kind of movie that was going to be booked onto thousands of commercial screens. Most people will only be able to see this movie on a TV screen at home. The choice is a judgment call. To be honest a great deal of 8th grade-age kids don't exactly have G-rated vocabularies when the adults aren't around.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 09-07-2018 08:46 PM

quote:
If other parents have a problem with that then they need to confront the irresponsible parent,

Uh, no, they need to keep their mouth shut and mind their own f-ing business. No sense getting into a fistfight if some mom gets irritated at being told "how to parent" by some stranger.

The only time a person should get involved with someone else's kids is if the kids are being put in a dangerous or illegal situation, and in that case it's still better to shut up and call the appropriate authority rather than taking the law into one's own hands.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 09-08-2018 01:17 AM

quote: Mike Blakesley
Uh, no, they need to keep their mouth shut and mind their own f-ing business. No sense getting into a fistfight if some mom gets irritated at being told "how to parent" by some stranger.

Certainly anyone should mind their own business when it comes to what other parents are doing with their own children (within legal reason of course). But assholes don't operate like that. They'll see some adult bringing their 6-year old kid with them to see a slasher movie because the adult is too damned cheap to hire a babysitter. The asshole has to satisfy his feelings of anger on someone. But the asshole is too much of a cowardly bitch to confront the irresponsible parent directly. So what does he do? He takes his anger out on a young theater staffer who, by rule, has zero right to talk back to said asshole. The young staffers get an ass-chewing for something that was not remotely their fault.

Yeah, we don't want fist fights in the theater lobby. But I would have more respect for some jerk getting on to an irresponsible parent and a fist fight results from it. There's no way I could ever have any respect for someone taking it out on an undeserving third party, such as targeting a popcorn jockey who isn't getting paid nearly enough to put up with that kind of crap.

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Martin McCaffery
Film God

Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99

posted 09-08-2018 08:06 AM

quote: Bobby Henderson
The theater only has the obligation to step in if a parent is trying to bring a kid into a NC-17 rated show.

They may have a policy, they have no obligation.

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