On Media and Parenting

On Wednesday I was invited to go out to the movies with some friends. One of the people I went with has young children (aged about 6 and 9). This is my take on the train of thought used to choose which movie to attend.

Besides some personal issues I had that day, the movie was fairly enjoyable. I was not present at the time of the movie selection, so I am relating the process from a slightly removed perspective (I was told the story by someone in attendance).

A little background about the crew: Computer illiterate, none of them spend any time on planning. Most things that happen at the last minute if at all. They always want to get together and do things, but they each have a low tolerance level for inconvenience. This could be why they always go over on their cell phone minutes – they call to try to do activities together, but end up just talking about all the horrible reasons why they can’t. One even got her phone shut off because she talked too far over the plan and couldn’t pay the bill.

The film choices didn’t look good for children. There was talk of going to see Bridge to Terebithia, but it wasn’t playing at the particular theater where they were having this discussion. Even though there were three passenger cars available, the inconvenience was too much for them. Somebody suggested Spider-Man 3, but that was ruled out because of how scary the Venom character was supposed to be. One person had seen it already and told the others that it wasn’t really that scary.

Somehow the film Next came into the discussion – I don’t know if it’s just because it was playing sooner or what, but one person said it was a good movie because it was about saving the future. That movie is rated PG-13. The rationale for going to see this film, in the end, was that the group already owned a lot of movies that were rated PG-13.

The kids are still nowhere near age 13.

We watched Next. I missed the beginning part of the movie because I was late. The remainder was filled with violence and curse words. The plot was not bad, but somewhere along the line, someone decided that adding a smattering of curse words would make the film more believable. Upon leaving, one of the children said she really liked violent movies. They had all expected the younger one to fall asleep, but she stayed awake through the whole thing. The kids didn’t talk with their mom about the movie afterwards.

Probably no one will think about it again. Except me.

I think it’s silly to censor the internet and try to shelter kids so much that they aren’t connected to the culture or real life as we as adults know it. At the same time, there is quite a difference between having a kid accidentally or occasionally stumbling across media that isn’t appropriate for their age group and sitting them down as a captive audience in a theater. To watch something that’s not appropriate and probably doesn’t interest them anyway.

If they had been able to wait two more days, we could have gone to see Shrek together. If their homes were in a livable condition, we could have sat on someone’s couch and made popcorn in the microwave and seen Alice in Wonderland, Mirrormask or even Lilo and Stitch. Because this time they saw a PG-13 movie with little or no fuss, they will now beg and plead to be taken to other films with that rating in the future. And their mom will give in – it will be even easier because she can say ‘well, they saw Next already. This film probably doesn’t have as much violence as that one did.’

Not to say the PG-13 movies are unhealthy or evil. I just don’t think that it should be the standard for someone who is six.