I told them so!
I have been saying this forever! Now we have the numbers to back it up.
Finally! Thank you!
Update: Thought I'd include a little more insight into our movie life. This was an email I sent to Joe in response to his comment on this post.
"We have quite a few R rated movies. Mostly me. Lots of G, PG and PG-13 too, but I'm very into film and can do an R rated movie as long as the sex and language don't get to much. They stay down in daddy's office in his secret stash. I'm not as particular on violence as that's the most consciously "fake" part of the movies to me. I'm into story and film as a story telling medium, and what frustrates me is that so many stories could be told equally well with less language and sex and other adult material. Then they can be shared with a wider audience including kids. I want to share the stories with my kids, but the extra stff just keeps me from showing them these films till they get a little older.
Like last night---I had found that 80s film "Short Circuit" in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart and picked it up along with The Pagemaster. I try to give the kids something to new to watch every so often if I can. We're on our 687th showing of Nemo---that's the never ending video in our house. We watched Short Circuit as a family and found there is a lot of unnecessary language and sexual references in there that I hadn't remembered. There was enough that I won't be leaving it upstairs for my kids to bask in that material at their leisure. So it'll be one of the DVDs down in daddy's office that never sees the light of day again. I thought it was ok in the 80s but not a fabulous movie---and now I own it. Dang.
There is a website that I love and use a lot since my daughter turned 13. When PG-13 movies became 'legal' by the rules we had a talk. I told her that even though the movies allowed her access by the age limitation, they still weren't something that she would need to see. So I still ask them to seek approval before going to things with their friends.
Some PG-13 movies are no problem. Like the X-men movies. Action violence, the kids know it's fake and it's not too scary for them, so ok. But the ones that worry me are movies like "Bring It On" that sort of glamorize unfettered teenage sexuality. My philosophy is that I know these growing up feelings are going to happen, but it's my job to help them learn how to manage those feelings. And the job can only get harder if you fan the flames with movies and T.V. like that.
So I came across Screenit.com. It's an excellent site that doesn't judge a movie, it just breaks it down and analyzes each new movie that comes out by sections of content that may be considered objectionable. It's got everything from "imitative behavior", which is like bad attitude toward adults, to "sexual content" (advising of everything from kissing and cleavage to nudity and sexually graphic content). It presents the facts and lets the reader now make an advised decision.
It's been very helpful. At times it let me know that it was ok to let them go, or to say No. At other times, it just helped me to be able to talk about possible parts of the movie that could cause problems before we went to see it. One time was recently when we went to StarWars Ep. III, I talked to Leemur about the graphic parts to be sure he wouldn't get to scared. He was ok with it.
Finally! Thank you!
Update: Thought I'd include a little more insight into our movie life. This was an email I sent to Joe in response to his comment on this post.
"We have quite a few R rated movies. Mostly me. Lots of G, PG and PG-13 too, but I'm very into film and can do an R rated movie as long as the sex and language don't get to much. They stay down in daddy's office in his secret stash. I'm not as particular on violence as that's the most consciously "fake" part of the movies to me. I'm into story and film as a story telling medium, and what frustrates me is that so many stories could be told equally well with less language and sex and other adult material. Then they can be shared with a wider audience including kids. I want to share the stories with my kids, but the extra stff just keeps me from showing them these films till they get a little older.
Like last night---I had found that 80s film "Short Circuit" in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart and picked it up along with The Pagemaster. I try to give the kids something to new to watch every so often if I can. We're on our 687th showing of Nemo---that's the never ending video in our house. We watched Short Circuit as a family and found there is a lot of unnecessary language and sexual references in there that I hadn't remembered. There was enough that I won't be leaving it upstairs for my kids to bask in that material at their leisure. So it'll be one of the DVDs down in daddy's office that never sees the light of day again. I thought it was ok in the 80s but not a fabulous movie---and now I own it. Dang.
There is a website that I love and use a lot since my daughter turned 13. When PG-13 movies became 'legal' by the rules we had a talk. I told her that even though the movies allowed her access by the age limitation, they still weren't something that she would need to see. So I still ask them to seek approval before going to things with their friends.
Some PG-13 movies are no problem. Like the X-men movies. Action violence, the kids know it's fake and it's not too scary for them, so ok. But the ones that worry me are movies like "Bring It On" that sort of glamorize unfettered teenage sexuality. My philosophy is that I know these growing up feelings are going to happen, but it's my job to help them learn how to manage those feelings. And the job can only get harder if you fan the flames with movies and T.V. like that.
So I came across Screenit.com. It's an excellent site that doesn't judge a movie, it just breaks it down and analyzes each new movie that comes out by sections of content that may be considered objectionable. It's got everything from "imitative behavior", which is like bad attitude toward adults, to "sexual content" (advising of everything from kissing and cleavage to nudity and sexually graphic content). It presents the facts and lets the reader now make an advised decision.
It's been very helpful. At times it let me know that it was ok to let them go, or to say No. At other times, it just helped me to be able to talk about possible parts of the movie that could cause problems before we went to see it. One time was recently when we went to StarWars Ep. III, I talked to Leemur about the graphic parts to be sure he wouldn't get to scared. He was ok with it.
posted by Will at 1:22 PM
2 Comments:
It makes sense. Thank you for sharing. I just hope Hollywood is reading and listening.
Thanks for the post. Mitzi and I have some PG-13's and R's. But with 6 kids, we never get to watch 'em. But I did get to see Disney's Mulan 648 times and counting. :)
Post a Comment
<< Home