The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), the ones who tell you which movies are good for you, is now considering slapping movies that depict smoking with an R rating. Yes, that thing you can see everyday in front of movie theaters everywhere will now be restricted from sight on the screen inside. While the smoking outside will only kill you, the smoking on the screen will damage your moral being.
I'm not a smoker. I like cigars, but only the expensive ones, so I've smoked very few. I really don't like cigarette smoke, especially when I'm eating. And if everyone on the planet stopped smoking tomorrow, I don't think I'd really care. However, if people want to smoke and they're not bothering anyone, let them do what they want.
The MPAA has some pretty strange guidelines when it comes to rating films. For instance, you can only have one or two 'fucks' in a PG-13 movie. If they're are more, even spaced out by two hours, that film is automatically slapped with an R rating. After two, you can pretty much have every character say 'fuck' as many times as you want. However, there are exceptions. ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN has close to 30 'fucks' and it's rated PG.
So, just think of all the horrific and violent images that these new PG-13 horror movies have and compare it with a film with one person smoking, that would now be R-rated. Which is worse for children? "My child may have gotten the idea of chopping off someone's head from a PG-13 movie, but thank Jesus, she didn't take up smoking!"
3 comments:
I'm allergic to cigarette smoke, so I have mixed feelings on the reality of smoking. We're slapping fines left right and sideways on everything that puts toxins in the air, from old vehicles to factories. There are a few smokers who could probably compete.
My biggest annoyance was when I lived in BC and there were people in the building who smoked pot. I suffered horrendous migraines.
That said, the act of smoking a cigarette on the big screen does not justify an R rating. It's really high time that we stopped compensating for a lack of parenting in how we address the arts, because that's what this is about - afraid the impressionable youth will follow in their hero's footsteps. Well what happens when they see the celeb smoking in a photograph in a magazine or in news footage or something?
I think this blog deserves a R rating!
I remember back in the 80's a tv station out here showed an uncut version of Conan. The next day they had an editorial on the news about a woman who had called in screaming because her kids were watching it and they didn't cut the single boob shot in the film.
So the commenter says, "This is what she was complaining about," and showed the 5 second clip. Then he says, "But she didn't complain about any of this," and showed five minutes of stabbings, dismemberments, fountaining blood, and James Earl Jones getting his head cut off and thrown down the stairs.
I have a problem with moral watchdogs. Murder is somehow better than fucking and cigarettes? It's okay to show people getting their heads blown off, but the minute someone lights up an Arturo Fuente you can't show the kiddies. Must be some kind of Freudian penis thing. You can't show those in a PG movie, either.
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