MPAA Rating and Parental Complacency 2

Remember MPAA Rating and Parental Complacency, the post that propelled Bad Mom to the top of the Google search engine rankings for "parental complacency"? Unlike some of her playmates, Iris has seen things that are not rated G. In fact, she has seen many PG and some PG-13 movies.

She has even been lobbying to be allowed to watch R-rated movies. "It will be fine because you know I don't repeat bad words." I wonder how much she has seen already? Mark has quite the DVD collection (that list is badly outdated). He's seen and rated over 1000 movies in his Netflix profile. We don't lock up any of the movies around our house. She knows how to work the TV/DVD player and also how to watch DVDs on the computer when she doesn't want to watch what Mark is watching. Hmm.

Their latest obsession is the new Battlestar Galactica series (rated TV-14). Mark loves the political intrigue and the hot women. (In space, everyone is much better looking.) Iris loves it because of the references to Greek mythology. Battlestar Galactica is definitely not a kids' show and only very bad, lax parents would allow their children to watch it. We told her not to talk about the show at school lest any of the other parents find out how bad we really are.

Asides:
When I found out that I made #1 for "parental complacency" in 2006, I emailed all my friends to type the phrase into the Google search engine and then click through. Alas, I did not have enough friends and I lost the distinction in a day. I need more friends.

Mark says that, at least, he didn't show The Omega Man to a 4 year old like someone we know.

Stretching the Definition of Family Movies

My husband was so inspired by A.O. Scott's article about taking children to movies other than "kids' movies" that he started a blog. I guess he wasn't content with my meager coverage of Iris' film education. You will find the link to Bad Dad on the right, along with some of my other coworkers' blogs. (It hit me the other day that I am 40 now and I have known him for 20 years, seeing him both at work and at home.)

Now we can be like Maribeth and Richard. We can leave comments on each other's blogs instead of actually talking to one another. I am jealous, I have never gotten a marriage proposal via blog comment like Maribeth. Oops, on more careful reading, that wasn't exactly a marriage proposal. However, I never got one of those proposals from blogging, either.

Links:
MPAA Ratings Decoded
MPAA Rating and Parental Complacency
Bad Dad

MPAA Ratings Decoded

Iris walked into the computer room while Mark was viewing the Grindhouse trailer. She said, "I think that is for a R-rated movie."

Mark asked why she thought that.

Iris said that it was because the girls had guns. In the PG movies, only the boys have guns. Sometimes the boys die and the girls have to pick up the guns. That would be PG-13.

I asked her what makes a movie G-rated. She replied, "No one has guns."

She has that one nailed. Read more about Iris and movies in MPAA rating and parental complacency.

That's all folks.

MPAA Rating and Parental Complacency

How does the MPAA come up with the ratings? They obviously are not familiar with the workings of the mind of my kid.

Take the movie, Camp, which is rated PG-13. Mark showed the movie to Iris when she was 3 because she was so fond of singing and dancing. He thought she would enjoy a movie about kids putting on a show.

Back in those days, she thought girls wore dresses and boys wore pants. When she asked me why one of the boys in the movie wore dresses, I explained that some boys like to wear dresses. They are called drag queens.

Shortly after her 4^th birthday, we took her to see The Hoboken Chicken Emergency at the Theatre for Young Audiences in Orange County. At the intermission, we looked through the cast bios and we noted that the mutant chicken, Henrietta, was played by a man. In the second act, the slightly older child to Iris’ right pointed to Henrietta and referred to the chicken as she. Iris turned around and explained, “Actually, that’s a man in a girl costume. He’s a drag queen.” The people within earshot just bust out laughing.

All in all, Camp was fairly innocuous despite the PG-13 rating. YMMV.

Then we showed her Chicken Run which is rated PG so it should have been milder. You would think. But it is a chicken egg farm and eggs lead to chicks. The eggs were being collected to be eaten by people. As if that wasn’t traumatic enough, chickens that didn’t produce enough eggs were also being killed and stewed.

That led to discussions about whether, if left alone, the chicken eggs would hatch into little chicks. I told her, if the eggs were fertile, they could hatch. She said, “Oh, they are like fish. The girl fish lay the eggs and the boy fish swim over and fertilize the eggs.” I asked her how she learned that. She said that she saw it on the Discovery channel with her daddy.

Then she asked how come there was only one rooster and so many hens. I pointed out that another rooster joined the farm. She asked how one or two roosters can fertilize the eggs of so many hens. I did not want to discuss polygamy with my 4 year old. Then she wondered how the roosters can fertilize eggs with hard eggshells after they have been laid.

I tried to distract her by telling her about the insects that pollinated the flowers and vegetables in our garden. She kept going back to the chickens. I couldn’t believe that I was having a discussion about the birds and the bees with my 4 year old. It just wasn’t fair. I was supposed to have a few more years to warm up to this subject. I was going to play it cool and not slip into clichés about the birds and the bees. But there I was, talking about chickens and bees and flowers.

The moral of this story is that movies with milder MPAA ratings are not necessarily safer movies to show my kid. I might also add Discovery channel is not innocuous either.

Aside
While driving with a 3 year old Iris in 2004, she told me that, “Boys marry girls and girls marry boys, right?” I said that is usually right, but mommy is from San Francisco. In San Francisco, boys can marry boys and girls can marry girls. She went and related this to her entire preschool class. I got funny looks from the other parents for weeks.

To a 3 year old, marriage is about weddings and pouffy dresses. This conversation did not lead to a discussion about the birds and the bees.

Links:

• Be careful what you say to your kids
• The cold hard truth