SUPERBAD, SUPERDUMB, & SUPERVULGAR
you've been warned.
First, a word of warning to parents and guardians
and any other people who claim to care about these things but don't actually
take the time to research them: this blog post is rated R for strong language,
rhetorical violence, and pervasive disgust for people who can not accept
responsibility for themselves, their children, or the media they
consume.
Now...
It wasn't Mackenzie Carpenter's fault last time. And it isn't her fault this time either, if only because she does her damnedest to balance a story that can only be balanced at the increasingly crowded intersection of common sense and rank stupidity. The real fault, such as it is, lies with many of the people Ms. Carpenter was accursed enough to interview -- we'll get to them in a minute -- and with the editors who lately can not resist assigning her these God-awful non-stories that she must somehow, no doubt against every personal and professional fiber of her being, attempt to pass off as real stories for the front page of One of America's Great But Occasionally Off-Target Newspapers.
This morning, poor Ms. Carpenter's beat -- it's become more of a drone these days -- places her above the fold but below the belt, struggling to maintain both personal probity and professional dignity while cranking out the hard-hitting puff-piecery of Movie Ratings: What's a Parent to Do? The answer, as you will soon see -- and as you surely already know -- is simple. But poor Ms. Carpenter must pretend it is not, if only to produce 1,250 words of point and counterpoint on a subject that, were it not for the heads of some of its subjects, would have no point at all.
To wit:
Tom -- we're not using his last name because he doesn't want to embarrass his three children -- ...
Not by anything he says, of course -- he's one of the few people in the article who makes any sense at all -- but by association with an issue so obviously non-sensical.
...counts himself lucky when deciding which movies his teenage daughter will see. That's because he has a 22-year old son who acts as his personal R-rating alert system.
My guess is that Tom does not want his children to be ridiculed by their peers for possessing that most rare and perplexing of parents: one who sets reasonable and occasionally unpopular limits for his children after first engaging the world around them. It is, these days at least, a bit like possessing a parent who can not read. Or who has three heads.
"My son walked in the house last week from seeing Superbad," Tom said in a recent interview from his home near Meadville, "and the first words out of his mouth were, 'Do not, do NOT allow my 16-year-old sister to see this movie.'"
Tom also does not want the friends of his children -- or any of the rest of the world -- to know that he has reared a twenty-something who not only accepts and respects these limits but also supports and evaluates and helps contribute to them. In a supergood world, Tom would be hailed as an example for all parents and children to admire. But in our superbad one, he must hide his surname and hope that no one makes the connection, lest he be shunned at every multiplex in Meadville. If that's really where he lives.
Don Anderson, pastor of Hays Methodist Church in Hays, wasn't so lucky. He went to see the R-rated "Superbad" with a friend and her adult son after viewing the trailers, which seemed benign enough.
That's right. Blame the trailer. It's always the trailer.
Any time you hear someone whine about how the movie he went to see wasn't the movie he expected to see, he always blames the trailer. As if the trailer told him that the hills were alive with the sound of music but the movie showed him that the hills have eyes. Or as if the preview promised Cars but the movie delivered Saw instead.
For the record, and just for the fun of it, let's consider that trailer for Superbad:
• In the first 23 seconds, you get 4 cleavage shots, an awkwardly homophobic joke, a reference to college partying, a wolf whistle, and a lustful reference to the breasts of the mother of one of the main characters.
• At 28 seconds, you get title cards that read From the guy who brought you...Talladega Nights and The 40 Year-Old Virgin -- two films not exactly known for their demure good taste.
• At 41 seconds, after a few more references to partying and a shot of the guys getting bounced out of a night club, one character drunkenly vomits on another.
• At 45 seconds, the first of several references to My brand-new fake ID.
• At 1 minute, an underage kid uses this fake ID, tries to buy alcohol, and gets punched in the face.
• At 1 minute 13 seconds, a quick string of black and Jewish jokes.
• At 1 minute 25 seconds, one main character tells another: You know when you hear girls saying, "Oh, I was so gone last night, I shouldn'ta slept with that guy." We can be that mistake!
• At 2 minutes 9 seconds, after some more obvious and uncomfortable homophobic humor, an enraged character screams, What the... -- and it's pretty clear what the next word is going to be -- before the scene shifts.
• At 2 minutes 21 seconds, after watching the fake-ID punch several more times, one character declares, That is bona fide bad ass!
It's not exactly Caligula. But does it seem particularly benign to you?
For a 72-year-old man who peppers his conversation with "doggone," the actual movie was not a pleasant experience.
I would imagine that, for a 72-year-old man who peppers his conversation with doggone, real life is not a pleasant experience. And, for someone who says things as silly as these next two sentences, I'm not so sure that it should be.
"We saw the preview and it looked kind of funny, but it didn't suggest nonstop f-words, which the movie was full of.
The preview may not suggest nonstop f-words -- fulcrum? frostbite? fulminate? -- but the filmmakers' pedigree certainly does. (A little awareness of your world, or even of the movie you're about to see -- much more on this in a minute -- might be a help here.) And that cut at the 2:09 mark seems, at least to my less-than-delicate sensibilities, to suggest the coming of a phrase a bit less benign than What the doggone heck?!
But, really: when has Pastor Anderson ever seen a trailer that suggested nonstop f-words (feverish? fulsome? flippant?)? When has he ever seen a trailer with so much as a single f-word (follicle? folderall? f... oh, now I get it!)?
And the theater was filled with families, all these 13-year-olds, who were probably thinking this must be OK because Hollywood is feeding this to us and our parents let us come."
Those parents are complete fucking idiots.
Because anyone who has paid any sort of attention to the trailer, the commercials, the reviews, the word-of-mouth, the news and entertainment feature reports, and anything else having to do with the film at all -- in other words, anyone who knows enough about the movie to want to see it -- should know, unless they have buried their heads firmly in the sand or up their own asses, that Superbad is not a fucking family film. It is not suitable for children, it is not suitable for 13-year-olds, and it is barely suitable for the 17-year-olds who can see it without a parent or a fucking guardian.
Oh, and Reverend: Hollywood can't feed you something you don't willingly eat.
Now.
As a public service to any parents out there who still haven't figured out that they should be paying close attention to the kinds of films their kids want to see or ask to see or even silently wish they could see, I recommend a handy, if occasionally frightening, little web site called Kids-in-Mind. The site, which promises Movie Ratings That Actually Work, takes a look at every major film release and then provides an almost fetishistically detailed account of the film's quotients of sex & nudity, violence & gore, and profanity. If you can't be bothered to pay attention to any other fucking source of information, just consult this site. You'll have no fucking f-word fucking surprises the next time you go to the fucking movies.
Wanna see what I mean? Check out the review of Superbad, which scores a not-so-benign 8 out of 10 for Sex & Nudity and a whopping 10 out of 10 for Profanity. Here's excerpt:
A teenage boy lists a number of sexual fetishes: feet, urine, animals, etc., and describes watching vaginal penetration. A teenage boy makes an insulting sexual comment about another teenage boy performing oral sex on his father. A teenage boy stares at another teenage boy's mother's cleavage when she bends over to speak to him, and tells his friend in crude terms that he is jealous that he nursed from those breasts when he was a baby. A man talks in crude terms about two teenage boys having sex with teenage girls. A man talks about a woman performing oral sex on him.
And that's just the first third of that paragraph. Which is one of ten total paragraphs. On the Sex & Nudity scale alone.
Wondering about the extent of the profanity -- by which I mean the f-word and the s-word and, well, you know, all those other bad fucking words -- in the film? They chronicle that too:
175 F-word and its derivatives, 2 obscene hand gestures, 50 sexual references, 63 scatological terms (8 mild), 80 anatomical terms (1 mild), 19 mild obscenities, 2 derogatory terms for homosexuals, name-calling (idiot, stupid, dumb, retard, loser), 2 religious profanities, 10 religious exclamations.)
To help you make sense of those explanations, they even have a profanity glossary.
(I told you they were thorough.)
In a summer where raunch is ruling the box office -- from top-grossing gross-out film "Superbad" to "Knocked Up" -- many parents have had enough, and they're blaming the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for not doing its job when it comes to keeping young people out of R-rated, sexually explicit movies.
Note to whining parents: that's your fucking job. So do it. And then shut the fuck up.
In part, it's the trailers, they say, which don't convey just how disgusting or inappropriate a movie may be for a young teen.
Again with the trailers. Trailers to which, as I've already noted, parents and pastors apparently pay no attention. This should not, of course, be all that surprising, since they don't pay any attention to the fucking movie reviews either.
Now. I will grant that the Post-Gazette review was written by Barry Paris and was, therefore, a great, steaming pile of bad puns, self-indulgent asides, and grating half-wit-ticisms. But even so, a little digging and a little due diligence could have produced these precious pearls of warning from the depths of the Parisian manure:
Crude, tasteless, sex-obsessed teen comedies... two...geeks...desperate to lose their virginity... Get the girls wasted, and sex is guaranteed... It's the scaled-down, Monica Lewinsky kinda action they want... "It's not fair girls get to flaunt their [breasts], but we've gotta hide every [erection] we get." ... Seth spent his whole childhood drawing penises... stopping first at a bar for some heavy under-and-overage drinking... outrageously profane... How gleefully raunchy is this? To find out, stick around through the final credits, which are festooned with the most grotesquely "creative" collection of penis drawings ever assembled.
Surely that gives you some idea, you know, that you shouldn't take your fucking children to see it.
But there's also a sense of parental helplessness as marketers step up efforts to sell sex to young people in movies, media and the mall, from Wet Seal's thongs to Victoria's Secret bubble gum "Pink" line of provocative lingerie -- technically aimed at 18- to 22-year old females, but popular with younger teens, too.
Here's a thought: don't buy these things. Don't let your children buy them. Don't let your children even look at them.
In short: be a fucking parent.
Faced with this general loss of cultural innocence, what's a parent to do?
Oh, I don't know. How about... be a fucking parent?
Is that really so hard?
(Yeah. I know it is. At least sometimes. But if you're gonna wuss out, then you can't blame your lack of a spine on Hollywood or the MPAA or all the media coverage you don't read because you're too busy paging through Victoria's Secret catalogues.)
Too bad, counters Elizabeth J. Pascuzzi, of Ross and the mother of a 16-year-old girl.
Finally, another a voice of reason. And, better still: one who's not afraid to proclaim her sense, or her surname, to the world.
"It's an old cliche, but it starts with the parents," she said. "If parents are concerned, why are they allowing the family to watch 'South Park,' 'Desperate Housewives' and the countless other junk programs on TV? Why do they pay for magazine subscriptions to 'Teen Magazine'? Frankly, I'm tired of hearing people complaining. Turn off the TV, stop being hypocritical, and take the kids to church."
Amen, Elizabeth. A-fucking-men.
Sometimes, though, the "f-bombs" and crude scenes creep up without warning on cable networks like Comedy Central and FX and other media outlets, said Christopher Newell of Monroeville, the father of a 14-year-old daughter.
Bull-fucking-shit.
There are no fucking f-bombs on fucking Comedy Central or on F-fucking-X, because the fucking FCC would have a fucking hissy fit. They'd fine those fucking networks out their motherfucking asses, and they'd never let them get the fuck away with it.
Have you ever heard an f-bomb on either of those fucking channels? Have you ever heard an f-bomb on any fucking channel that wasn't a subscription channel like HBO or Showtime? No fucking way. Because it doesn't fucking happen. No matter what the fuck Christopher Fucking Newell of Motherfucking Monroeville motherfucking says.
(How's that for creeping up on you, Christopher? Holy fucking fuck!)
His daughter understands that R-rated movies aren't allowed, "period. And she knew that on her birthday last year when she turned 13, that did not give her a free pass to PG-13 movies, either.
Well, halle-fucking-lujah!
The man may be delusional about his cable channels, but at least he's being a responsible parent.
"The last thing I want to experience again is the uncomfortable feeling, that awkwardness when we watch a scene in a movie that makes my daughter and I look at each other with that 'I can't believe I watched that scene with my father/daughter' look on our faces," Mr. Newell said.
You can avoid that, of course, by knowing what the hell you're taking her to see. Or by just not looking at her.
For her part, Joan Graves, head of the MPAA's Classification & Ratings Administration, has a suggestion: check what the R-rating actually says before taking your child to the movie.
Oh, perish the fucking thought!
This Joan Graves woman is clearly a communist. Or a socialist. Or something. I mean, how dare she suggest that parents take some fucking responsibility for their children and their own fucking choices?!
Some parents seem to think the MPAA should call them on the phone, or send them an email, or maybe just drop by their houses and personally tell them what's going on in every movie at the multiplex. But you know what? If they did, the parents would still fucking ignore them. Just like they fucking ignore every fucking thing else that might make their lazy fucking asses think, if only for a fucking moment, about saying no to their spoiled fucking children.
"'Superbad's descriptor says, 'R for pervasive crude and sexual content, strong language, drinking, some drug use and a fantasy/comic violent image.' You can get a pretty good idea of the content from that. 'Superbad' is a very funny and extremely crude movie.'"
That seems pretty fucking clear to me. I mean, does that fucking sound like the kind of fucking movie to which you'd take a fucking 13-year-old kid?
I don't fucking think so.
Ms. Graves noted that the ratings board not only increased the details offered in its "descriptors" of R ratings, it also altered its R-rating advisory earlier this year to caution parents that it is "not appropriate" to bring children to R-rated movies.
Well, there's a fucking news flash. And yet these fucking parents still don't fucking get it.
They won't be happy unless the MPAA sends battalions of stormtroopers into their homes and into their local theaters to prevent their wayward children from seeing movies like Superbad when their parents are too fucking Superdumb or too fucking Superweenie to stop them first. Of course, the moment that does happen, the parents will scream bloody fucking murder that the MPAA or the government or some motherfuckers are doing their job for them, and that none of those people have any right to parent their children.
To which I say: Well, somebody fucking has to. Because you people sure as fuck aren't.
Now...
It wasn't Mackenzie Carpenter's fault last time. And it isn't her fault this time either, if only because she does her damnedest to balance a story that can only be balanced at the increasingly crowded intersection of common sense and rank stupidity. The real fault, such as it is, lies with many of the people Ms. Carpenter was accursed enough to interview -- we'll get to them in a minute -- and with the editors who lately can not resist assigning her these God-awful non-stories that she must somehow, no doubt against every personal and professional fiber of her being, attempt to pass off as real stories for the front page of One of America's Great But Occasionally Off-Target Newspapers.
This morning, poor Ms. Carpenter's beat -- it's become more of a drone these days -- places her above the fold but below the belt, struggling to maintain both personal probity and professional dignity while cranking out the hard-hitting puff-piecery of Movie Ratings: What's a Parent to Do? The answer, as you will soon see -- and as you surely already know -- is simple. But poor Ms. Carpenter must pretend it is not, if only to produce 1,250 words of point and counterpoint on a subject that, were it not for the heads of some of its subjects, would have no point at all.
To wit:
Tom -- we're not using his last name because he doesn't want to embarrass his three children -- ...
Not by anything he says, of course -- he's one of the few people in the article who makes any sense at all -- but by association with an issue so obviously non-sensical.
...counts himself lucky when deciding which movies his teenage daughter will see. That's because he has a 22-year old son who acts as his personal R-rating alert system.
My guess is that Tom does not want his children to be ridiculed by their peers for possessing that most rare and perplexing of parents: one who sets reasonable and occasionally unpopular limits for his children after first engaging the world around them. It is, these days at least, a bit like possessing a parent who can not read. Or who has three heads.
"My son walked in the house last week from seeing Superbad," Tom said in a recent interview from his home near Meadville, "and the first words out of his mouth were, 'Do not, do NOT allow my 16-year-old sister to see this movie.'"
Tom also does not want the friends of his children -- or any of the rest of the world -- to know that he has reared a twenty-something who not only accepts and respects these limits but also supports and evaluates and helps contribute to them. In a supergood world, Tom would be hailed as an example for all parents and children to admire. But in our superbad one, he must hide his surname and hope that no one makes the connection, lest he be shunned at every multiplex in Meadville. If that's really where he lives.
Don Anderson, pastor of Hays Methodist Church in Hays, wasn't so lucky. He went to see the R-rated "Superbad" with a friend and her adult son after viewing the trailers, which seemed benign enough.
That's right. Blame the trailer. It's always the trailer.
Any time you hear someone whine about how the movie he went to see wasn't the movie he expected to see, he always blames the trailer. As if the trailer told him that the hills were alive with the sound of music but the movie showed him that the hills have eyes. Or as if the preview promised Cars but the movie delivered Saw instead.
For the record, and just for the fun of it, let's consider that trailer for Superbad:
• In the first 23 seconds, you get 4 cleavage shots, an awkwardly homophobic joke, a reference to college partying, a wolf whistle, and a lustful reference to the breasts of the mother of one of the main characters.
• At 28 seconds, you get title cards that read From the guy who brought you...Talladega Nights and The 40 Year-Old Virgin -- two films not exactly known for their demure good taste.
• At 41 seconds, after a few more references to partying and a shot of the guys getting bounced out of a night club, one character drunkenly vomits on another.
• At 45 seconds, the first of several references to My brand-new fake ID.
• At 1 minute, an underage kid uses this fake ID, tries to buy alcohol, and gets punched in the face.
• At 1 minute 13 seconds, a quick string of black and Jewish jokes.
• At 1 minute 25 seconds, one main character tells another: You know when you hear girls saying, "Oh, I was so gone last night, I shouldn'ta slept with that guy." We can be that mistake!
• At 2 minutes 9 seconds, after some more obvious and uncomfortable homophobic humor, an enraged character screams, What the... -- and it's pretty clear what the next word is going to be -- before the scene shifts.
• At 2 minutes 21 seconds, after watching the fake-ID punch several more times, one character declares, That is bona fide bad ass!
It's not exactly Caligula. But does it seem particularly benign to you?
For a 72-year-old man who peppers his conversation with "doggone," the actual movie was not a pleasant experience.
I would imagine that, for a 72-year-old man who peppers his conversation with doggone, real life is not a pleasant experience. And, for someone who says things as silly as these next two sentences, I'm not so sure that it should be.
"We saw the preview and it looked kind of funny, but it didn't suggest nonstop f-words, which the movie was full of.
The preview may not suggest nonstop f-words -- fulcrum? frostbite? fulminate? -- but the filmmakers' pedigree certainly does. (A little awareness of your world, or even of the movie you're about to see -- much more on this in a minute -- might be a help here.) And that cut at the 2:09 mark seems, at least to my less-than-delicate sensibilities, to suggest the coming of a phrase a bit less benign than What the doggone heck?!
But, really: when has Pastor Anderson ever seen a trailer that suggested nonstop f-words (feverish? fulsome? flippant?)? When has he ever seen a trailer with so much as a single f-word (follicle? folderall? f... oh, now I get it!)?
And the theater was filled with families, all these 13-year-olds, who were probably thinking this must be OK because Hollywood is feeding this to us and our parents let us come."
Those parents are complete fucking idiots.
Because anyone who has paid any sort of attention to the trailer, the commercials, the reviews, the word-of-mouth, the news and entertainment feature reports, and anything else having to do with the film at all -- in other words, anyone who knows enough about the movie to want to see it -- should know, unless they have buried their heads firmly in the sand or up their own asses, that Superbad is not a fucking family film. It is not suitable for children, it is not suitable for 13-year-olds, and it is barely suitable for the 17-year-olds who can see it without a parent or a fucking guardian.
Oh, and Reverend: Hollywood can't feed you something you don't willingly eat.
Now.
As a public service to any parents out there who still haven't figured out that they should be paying close attention to the kinds of films their kids want to see or ask to see or even silently wish they could see, I recommend a handy, if occasionally frightening, little web site called Kids-in-Mind. The site, which promises Movie Ratings That Actually Work, takes a look at every major film release and then provides an almost fetishistically detailed account of the film's quotients of sex & nudity, violence & gore, and profanity. If you can't be bothered to pay attention to any other fucking source of information, just consult this site. You'll have no fucking f-word fucking surprises the next time you go to the fucking movies.
Wanna see what I mean? Check out the review of Superbad, which scores a not-so-benign 8 out of 10 for Sex & Nudity and a whopping 10 out of 10 for Profanity. Here's excerpt:
A teenage boy lists a number of sexual fetishes: feet, urine, animals, etc., and describes watching vaginal penetration. A teenage boy makes an insulting sexual comment about another teenage boy performing oral sex on his father. A teenage boy stares at another teenage boy's mother's cleavage when she bends over to speak to him, and tells his friend in crude terms that he is jealous that he nursed from those breasts when he was a baby. A man talks in crude terms about two teenage boys having sex with teenage girls. A man talks about a woman performing oral sex on him.
And that's just the first third of that paragraph. Which is one of ten total paragraphs. On the Sex & Nudity scale alone.
Wondering about the extent of the profanity -- by which I mean the f-word and the s-word and, well, you know, all those other bad fucking words -- in the film? They chronicle that too:
175 F-word and its derivatives, 2 obscene hand gestures, 50 sexual references, 63 scatological terms (8 mild), 80 anatomical terms (1 mild), 19 mild obscenities, 2 derogatory terms for homosexuals, name-calling (idiot, stupid, dumb, retard, loser), 2 religious profanities, 10 religious exclamations.)
To help you make sense of those explanations, they even have a profanity glossary.
(I told you they were thorough.)
In a summer where raunch is ruling the box office -- from top-grossing gross-out film "Superbad" to "Knocked Up" -- many parents have had enough, and they're blaming the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for not doing its job when it comes to keeping young people out of R-rated, sexually explicit movies.
Note to whining parents: that's your fucking job. So do it. And then shut the fuck up.
In part, it's the trailers, they say, which don't convey just how disgusting or inappropriate a movie may be for a young teen.
Again with the trailers. Trailers to which, as I've already noted, parents and pastors apparently pay no attention. This should not, of course, be all that surprising, since they don't pay any attention to the fucking movie reviews either.
Now. I will grant that the Post-Gazette review was written by Barry Paris and was, therefore, a great, steaming pile of bad puns, self-indulgent asides, and grating half-wit-ticisms. But even so, a little digging and a little due diligence could have produced these precious pearls of warning from the depths of the Parisian manure:
Crude, tasteless, sex-obsessed teen comedies... two...geeks...desperate to lose their virginity... Get the girls wasted, and sex is guaranteed... It's the scaled-down, Monica Lewinsky kinda action they want... "It's not fair girls get to flaunt their [breasts], but we've gotta hide every [erection] we get." ... Seth spent his whole childhood drawing penises... stopping first at a bar for some heavy under-and-overage drinking... outrageously profane... How gleefully raunchy is this? To find out, stick around through the final credits, which are festooned with the most grotesquely "creative" collection of penis drawings ever assembled.
Surely that gives you some idea, you know, that you shouldn't take your fucking children to see it.
But there's also a sense of parental helplessness as marketers step up efforts to sell sex to young people in movies, media and the mall, from Wet Seal's thongs to Victoria's Secret bubble gum "Pink" line of provocative lingerie -- technically aimed at 18- to 22-year old females, but popular with younger teens, too.
Here's a thought: don't buy these things. Don't let your children buy them. Don't let your children even look at them.
In short: be a fucking parent.
Faced with this general loss of cultural innocence, what's a parent to do?
Oh, I don't know. How about... be a fucking parent?
Is that really so hard?
(Yeah. I know it is. At least sometimes. But if you're gonna wuss out, then you can't blame your lack of a spine on Hollywood or the MPAA or all the media coverage you don't read because you're too busy paging through Victoria's Secret catalogues.)
Too bad, counters Elizabeth J. Pascuzzi, of Ross and the mother of a 16-year-old girl.
Finally, another a voice of reason. And, better still: one who's not afraid to proclaim her sense, or her surname, to the world.
"It's an old cliche, but it starts with the parents," she said. "If parents are concerned, why are they allowing the family to watch 'South Park,' 'Desperate Housewives' and the countless other junk programs on TV? Why do they pay for magazine subscriptions to 'Teen Magazine'? Frankly, I'm tired of hearing people complaining. Turn off the TV, stop being hypocritical, and take the kids to church."
Amen, Elizabeth. A-fucking-men.
Sometimes, though, the "f-bombs" and crude scenes creep up without warning on cable networks like Comedy Central and FX and other media outlets, said Christopher Newell of Monroeville, the father of a 14-year-old daughter.
Bull-fucking-shit.
There are no fucking f-bombs on fucking Comedy Central or on F-fucking-X, because the fucking FCC would have a fucking hissy fit. They'd fine those fucking networks out their motherfucking asses, and they'd never let them get the fuck away with it.
Have you ever heard an f-bomb on either of those fucking channels? Have you ever heard an f-bomb on any fucking channel that wasn't a subscription channel like HBO or Showtime? No fucking way. Because it doesn't fucking happen. No matter what the fuck Christopher Fucking Newell of Motherfucking Monroeville motherfucking says.
(How's that for creeping up on you, Christopher? Holy fucking fuck!)
His daughter understands that R-rated movies aren't allowed, "period. And she knew that on her birthday last year when she turned 13, that did not give her a free pass to PG-13 movies, either.
Well, halle-fucking-lujah!
The man may be delusional about his cable channels, but at least he's being a responsible parent.
"The last thing I want to experience again is the uncomfortable feeling, that awkwardness when we watch a scene in a movie that makes my daughter and I look at each other with that 'I can't believe I watched that scene with my father/daughter' look on our faces," Mr. Newell said.
You can avoid that, of course, by knowing what the hell you're taking her to see. Or by just not looking at her.
For her part, Joan Graves, head of the MPAA's Classification & Ratings Administration, has a suggestion: check what the R-rating actually says before taking your child to the movie.
Oh, perish the fucking thought!
This Joan Graves woman is clearly a communist. Or a socialist. Or something. I mean, how dare she suggest that parents take some fucking responsibility for their children and their own fucking choices?!
Some parents seem to think the MPAA should call them on the phone, or send them an email, or maybe just drop by their houses and personally tell them what's going on in every movie at the multiplex. But you know what? If they did, the parents would still fucking ignore them. Just like they fucking ignore every fucking thing else that might make their lazy fucking asses think, if only for a fucking moment, about saying no to their spoiled fucking children.
"'Superbad's descriptor says, 'R for pervasive crude and sexual content, strong language, drinking, some drug use and a fantasy/comic violent image.' You can get a pretty good idea of the content from that. 'Superbad' is a very funny and extremely crude movie.'"
That seems pretty fucking clear to me. I mean, does that fucking sound like the kind of fucking movie to which you'd take a fucking 13-year-old kid?
I don't fucking think so.
Ms. Graves noted that the ratings board not only increased the details offered in its "descriptors" of R ratings, it also altered its R-rating advisory earlier this year to caution parents that it is "not appropriate" to bring children to R-rated movies.
Well, there's a fucking news flash. And yet these fucking parents still don't fucking get it.
They won't be happy unless the MPAA sends battalions of stormtroopers into their homes and into their local theaters to prevent their wayward children from seeing movies like Superbad when their parents are too fucking Superdumb or too fucking Superweenie to stop them first. Of course, the moment that does happen, the parents will scream bloody fucking murder that the MPAA or the government or some motherfuckers are doing their job for them, and that none of those people have any right to parent their children.
To which I say: Well, somebody fucking has to. Because you people sure as fuck aren't.
Posted: Tue - September 4, 2007 at 07:15 PM
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Published On: Jul 28, 2008 01:40 PM
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Published On: Jul 28, 2008 01:40 PM