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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: R-rated movies being shown in school
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 12-22-2004 12:21 AM
My first problem with this whole thing is that, somehow, people believe that the rating system is sacrosanct. It is not. How can assigning a letter (or letters) to a movie change the character of that movie from something that is educational or quasi-educational (To turn a phrase: "Edu-tainment") into something that has no redeeming value whatsoever?
Is watching the movie Black Rain any more or less relevant to a class lecture on world government simply because somebody wrote a letter "R" (or "MA" or whatever) after the title?
Doesn't everybody here (and most of the American population) know that ratings are often assigned almost arbitrarily as a marketing tool instead of what they might have been intended to be in the first place? A GUIDELINE for determining whether one wanted to watch a movie?
How many movies do you know where they drop the "F-Bomb" or flash a tit just to bump the movie up to the "Adult" demographic? How many movies do you know that SHOULD have been rated but weren't for some (supposed) marketing reason?
Letter rating movies had a lot more meaning in days past. Today, I'd say it's almost irrelevant. Most movies tell you more about their inclusion of "possibly objectional content" in the trailers, posters or even the TITLE than anything else!
For cripe's sake! These people make it sound like they were showing PORNO FLIX in the classroom!
Do parents have the right to say whether their children can or can not watch a certain movie? YES!
Should the Principal of the school have the right to say to a teacher, "No. Don't show movies just for entertainment."? Of COURSE!
Just don't make a Federal case out of it! Stuff like this happens all the time! It HAS happened for a long time. IT WILL continue to happen for a long time!
When I was in High School, my science teacher gave us quizzes every Thursday. IF the class average on any week's quiz was a "B" or better (above 80%) he would get us a reel of cartoons on 16mm and play them in Friday in class. It was our reward for studying. Heck! The Principal even stopped in once in a while! He'd look in the door, see us watching a cartoon and say, <Thumbs Up> "Good Job! </Thumbs Up>
Maybe that idea of gettng permission slips from parents at the beginning of the year is a good idea but these people getting bent out of shape over a stinkin' movie is nothing but a batch of crap!
Sheesh! Get OVER it already! Will you, people!? ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 12-22-2004 01:55 AM
I don't have much of a problem with the movies themselves, what bugs me is that they are SHOWING MOVIES AT ALL. The teachers are hired to teach, not show "Tin Cup" during school hours. (Now if each movie screened was followed by a lecture about how much better that movie would have been on a big theatre screen, then maybe I'd be in favor of the whole thing.)
That said, I don't care how good "Saving Private Ryan" or "Platoon" are, they are still entertainment movies and contain large globs of fiction. Kids are screwed up enough without their sense of history (what little they have, that is) being skewed by fictional movies presented as "lessons" in the classroom.
Also FYI, the teachers in Billings went on strike during the 2003/4 school year for higher wages. They won most of what they were striking for, largely due to the backing of the people in Billings. I'd bet if they struck again today, the people wouldn't be as "behind" them as they were during that strike.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 12-22-2004 03:54 AM
quote: Randy Stankey
My first problem with this whole thing is that, somehow, people believe that the rating system is sacrosanct. It is not. How can assigning a letter (or letters) to a movie change the character of that movie from something that is educational or quasi-educational (To turn a phrase: "Edu-tainment") into something that has no redeeming value whatsoever?
We're dealing with two different issues here. Firstly, how reliable are the judgements of film censors? Secondly, is there any justification for showing fictional feature films as part of delivering a high school education?
On the first one, my answer would not very, and that they change on a regular basis. The British Board of Film Classification, for example, is quite clear in that it seeks to reflect the overall balance of public and expert opinion as to what is acceptable for being seen at the different age groups at different times. So, for example, when King Kong was first released in 1933, it had an 'X' certificate here, meaning that no-one under 21 could go to see it. It is now rated 'PG' for theatrical and video release, meaning that anyone can see it, but that the Board recommends that under 7s should do so with an adult present. There are many sensible reasons for that re-evaluation, e.g. those stop-motion effects would have looked a lot scarier to viewers in 1933 than to those bought up on CGI in 2004. But even now, there are some young children who would not be the slightest bit upset by King Kong but others who might be very scared by it.
The second one, IMHO, is that they can be, if treated carefully. Simply sticking a film on because you can't be bothered to do any real teaching for two hours is not acceptable. Taking history as an example, Mike is right: there is a danger of viewers (not just children!) having their knowledge distorted by fictional stories inspired by real events. But if you use these films to then ask the right questions - why did Griffith depict the aftermath of the Civil War in the way he did, or why were there so many feature films made about WWII during the late '50s and early '60s, for example? - you can hopefully bring up a generation of kids who think sensibly about what they see on the screen and why it's got there in the form it has.
But I still can't work out how any of these arguments could be used to justify showing Tin Cup in a class.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-22-2004 09:16 AM
This whole topic is pretty damned laughable and exposes one of the stupid, ugly truths in America: many "parents" are f**king lazy, selfish idiots concerned only with superficial window dressing details.
Since the vast majority of this country does not read books at all, very few people seem concerned about R or X-rated level content in books. I read books like "Lord of the Flies," "Brave New World," and "1984" in high school. If you made an accurate film version of "Brave New World" it would get an NC-17 rating. But I guess the content in books doesn't count, at least for now. Some self-righteous parent will probably sit down with "Catcher in the Rye" one day, get her panties in a twist about its curse words and get a fascist style book burning organized.
R-rated movies? Sure, most would be inappropriate to show to a teenager. But I wouldn't have any problem with movies like "Saving Private Ryan," "Schindler's List" or the documentary "Shoah" being shown in class.
In the end, many parents foolishly think they can shelter their kids as long as they try to censor as much stuff as possible. And that is sheer lunacy. The more responsible thing for parents to do is talk to their kids about sex and violence in our culture and what the acceptable limits really are and get that established and put into proper context at an early age. Unfortunately, that requires the parents to actually pull themselves away from episodes of "Survivor" and spend some time talking to their kids. Most parents don't want to bother with it at all.
Simple fact is, if a parent doesn't educate their kids about sex, violence, drugs and all sorts of other immoral behavior, the bad kids on the playground will be more than happy to provide their version of the "education."
quote: Mike Spaeth
Parents are abdicating everything to the school's nowadays ... up to and including breakfast
Schools are wrongly having to function as surrogate parents for more and more kids because a growing number of adults are totally selfish, pathetic, immature failures as parents.
Divorce rates are up. Some single parents are absentee parents, just leaving the kids at home alone while they're out at all hours trying to get laid or get high. There's a lot of kids here in Oklahoma being raised by grandparents or aunts/uncles because both biological parents are such irredeemable fuck ups they can't be trusted with kids at all. And the fuck up parents love it! More time to party!! Lots of kids in the public school systems have no positive adult role models in their lives at all. So an increasing burden falls down onto the schools.
The whole idea of kids having to have permission slips signed so they can be taught sex ed, certain Darwininan subjects in science, etc. is really kind of backward these days. Many parents aren't there to do their damned jobs. So maybe they need to sign a slip if they don't want their kids taught a certain subject. If the slip doesn't come back signed, then "junior" has to take the class by default.
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Thomas Procyk
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1842
From: Royal Palm Beach, FL, USA
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 12-22-2004 10:38 AM
I remember watching 16mm in science class, and I'm not even that old! ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
One film I remember which was about 2 hours was from the 60's and called "Hemo the Magnificent" which talked about Hemoglobin, whatever that is. Couldn't hear the film because whenever they would say the character's name, someone in the class would yell out, "HOMO the Magnificent!"
I remember the teacher stopping the film many times to correct some medical or scientific information they were talking about that was kinda dated. Most of it was, "Nobody knows the cause of ______ yet" and she'd stop it and say, "Yes, now they do." ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
My biggest gripe is with English teachers who assign us a novel and go on and on and on about how the movie butchers the book and how it misses a lot of stuff... then they make us sit through the movie after we've read the novel! Great Gatsby and Scarlett Letter come to mind right away, as I had to be woken up many times and finally sent out because I couldn't stay awake.
=TMP=
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Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!
Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000
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posted 12-22-2004 12:23 PM
Stuff we ran in the early '70s at Rancho High School for our various English Lit classes: Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451, Ring of Bright Water, Airport (scope!), Hotel, The Haunting (B&W scope!), The Innocents (B&W scope!), ...tick...tick...tick... For the theater and music department we ran Sweet Charity and Funny Girl for notes (we were doing stage productions of both of these). All presented in the way Thomas despises, as comparisons of screenplays versus original works, and talking about adapting literary works in general.
We too ran them serially in class (actually, assemblies of all English Lit sections that met that hour), about one reel a day, repeated 5-6 times. We also ran the film uninterrupted after school for those that cared to catch it that way. For the musicals we bought out the Huntridge theater for a night and got to see them in 35mm. Everything else was 16mm except for Lord of the Flies which we bagged off-the-air from channel 5 on 1" tape. Gord's post below reminds me that our 16mm was also a pair of B&H's, not Marc's but 1200W incandescents lighting a custom-built (by yours truly) 6x16' screen.
Of those titles, only Sweet Charity raised a few eyebrows (the idea of a high school producing a stage musical featuring "call girls" was a bit touchy in 1972), despite the fact that some of the students in our cast were already dancing professionally as showgirls on the Las Vegas Strip.
To me, very little of today's Hollywood studio output (regardless of MPAA rating) has much business in a high school classroom. Today's "project development" process pretty much removes any literary merit that might otherwise have served as basis for academic discussion.
[ 10-30-2005, 01:21 AM: Message edited by: Paul Mayer ]
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