Anxiety said:

And it was a terrible lesson for kids to show Prince mocking the girls with his puppet.

HamsterHuey said:

Me three. What next, give a movie an x-rating if a character does a line of coke?
WTF? Didn't we go through this shit in the 80's with rating music albums? Remember Darlin Nikki and the bullshit arguments about corrupting the youth?

Let me raise another question.

We seem to agree (with some exceptions) that smoking alone shouldn't give a film an R rating.

Should directors think twice about having their heroes be smokers? Not so much your Quentin Tarentinos, but say, someone producing PG movies. Does that set a bad example?

NDRU said:

In real life only villains smoke?
[Edited 11/13/08 10:15am]

NDRU said:

The flip side of this question is if everything, from guns to cigs to liquor and drugs, gets taken out of movies, will that remove them from society as a whole? IMHO, that would be an emphatic NO!! "We covet what we see everyday"...meaning that the influence of what we see in movies pales to what we experience IN REAL LIFE....what we see our peers and people we physically connect to do in front of us has way more of an impact than what some detached moving picture on a huge screen ever will....

again...IMHO...

dseann said:

I'm not talking about real life, I'm talking about creating a fictional character. Sure people smoke, but how do you decide which ones smoke if you're creating a fictional character?

And like I said, not someone like QT, whose heroes might kill 1000 people at the drop of a hat, and are not really for kids.

But say, Ferris Bueller. What if he smoked? Is that necessary, or a good example for kids? I know he broke a lot of rules that day...

reneGade20 said:

nobody's suggesting removing them entirely, but PG movies are already "censored" to some degree. If you're making a Jumanji, you're not making a reality-based film.

Some films are made to appeal directly to kids. I'm saying, is there a difference if a guy on the street smokes compared to the hero of the movie smoking--in PG movies that kids watch.

NDRU said:

why make a character blonde or brunette? why make a character like lasagna or opera? why make a character left handed or give them a third nipple? who knows? creative choices can't and shouldn't have to be rationalized. if we had to rationally justify every choice made in art, then art would be really boring.

NDRU said:

Quite honestly, if the hero on the screen is doing it, I can still tell my kids not to do it...I have that parental control....different story altogether if my kids see me smoking or whatever...that, to me, has a much greater impact....and greater still would be the impact of my kids hanging out with other kids who smoke....

...I'd be much more concerned (for lack of a better word) with my kids copying the violence in movies than cigarette smoking....

Anxiety said:

true, but wouldn't certain creative choices potentially determine a film's rating?

NDRU said:

Fictional characters are just embellishments of real ones. Some smoke some don't. It would be up to the creator to make that choice and I am strongly opposed to anyone making that choice for the creator of the said fiction.

Also, Ferris Bueller free-based Clearasil so he isn't such a good example for the kids.

NDRU said:

certainly. but are we talking about the decision to bestow particular character traits or are walking about what film censors should do in response to those decisions? let's keep the train on one track at a time here.

Anxiety said:

Well, I'm only through 1/2 cup of coffee, true, but I'm relating it back to the original question.

I don't think incidental smoking in and of itself is enough to warrant an R rating. But if you're creating a kid's movie, then what about your hero? Is that different? In the case of a chain smoking hero, could it warrant a more restricted rating?

NDRU said:

i think we already have that in place, don't we? at least a PG rating, no?

when i think about smoking in children's entertainment, i can't think of any strong examples of how smoking is glamorized (other than by cartoon mascots in cigarette ads, i suppose, and that IS evil). i can think of comic book characters who are characterized by their smoking, like peter parker's boss in the spidey comics, but i always took that as a characterization of him as an unpleasant, strident person. hardly glamorizing.

i certainly wouldn't be into seeing big bird and prairie dawn lighting up marlboro reds on sesame street, but i don't think it's the kind of thing that, if someone smokes on a night time sitcom, mommy should put her hands over junior's eyes and start praying.

Anxiety said:

fair enough. The reaction (mine included) to the notion that smoking should influence rating was basically "no, that's ridiculous!"

But at a more subtle level, we don't want to see the teletubbies smoking. So maybe an R rating is a bit much, but maybe PG or PG13 as you're saying (of course, kids can see R movies with adults, unless the rules have changed since I was a kid)?

Maybe if America was MORE educated about real life, these ineffective ratings would NOT be an issue.

NDRU said:

actually, i remember the ratings system SOFTENING a little in the 80s when PG-13 was instituted. suddenly, you could cuss a little more and show a little more bare booty and get a little more violent, but still within whatever boundaries they deemed acceptable for the rating. for a while, i think a PG was just a glorified G. i don't know if it's still perceived that way.

Anxiety said:

I think many parents sadly perceive anything other than an R rating as okay for kids.

And then there are some parents that don't care at all and bring their toddlers to midnight showings of American Gangster I saw it with my own eyes.

sextonseven said:

i see that a lot too. usually it's with babies, i guess because they figure the little lambs are too young to understand what they're looking at on screen.

As a parent, eventhough my daughter is an adult, we can't be overprotective.
Of course, we shouldn't rate it as adult.

sextonseven said:

I never understood why children are allowed to films that are for adults only if they are there with an adult .

Serious said:

Because the assumption is that the child(ren) is(are) with someone responsible...which we all pretty much know isn't always the case....

R rated here is over 18
No I don't think they should be R or MA ...maybe M ...but even then proberly not ..after all don't they see people smoking in real life pretty much everyday when in public
As a parent it is up to us to educate them not to want to start smoking and why

Ocean said:

I saw something on telly the other night where a girl inhaled deeply and said "smoking is sooooo sexy" or something like that
no it isn't