Ratings

I intent to write something substantive about The Dark Knight at some point, but let me just note this point from Chris Orr's excellent review: "This is not a film for children, and the MPAA should be ashamed of its PG-13 acquiescence."

That's very true. I'm not sure the whole ratings system is a great idea in the first place, but as-applied it leads to absurd results like this one. If Christian Bale had stubbed his toe and said "fuck" a bunch of times, I guess this would have been an R movie. But without naughty words or naughty body parts, an incredibly dark, violent movie that deals entirely with genuinely mature themes (rather than euphemism "mature" ones) gets a pass. It totally defies common sense. And it does so in a context where guidance is actually necessary. Most of the time I feel like parents probably don't need ratings to have a good idea of what is and isn't appropriate for their kids. But one can easily imagine a parent of a young child who watches Batman cartoons not giving the subject much thought and then drawing false confidence from the PG-13 rating and suddenly he's watching people get set on fire, key characters be brutally murdered, people getting tortured, cold-blooded executions, etc., etc.

Comments

If a game-changing bombshell lands in the desert and no US media pick up on it, did it really happen? Answer, No. But they're doing a fine job of reporting the "retraction" without even mentioning the original statement. So they can't be accused of ignoring it, can they? It's right there in black and white on page L 73, with the lede well buried in the 8th paragraph. What's your problem?

I think the term "kabuki" fits. Dunno which is more hilarious, the utter predictability of how these things always always always play out or the touching trust in left blogistan that somehow this time it's going to be different. Lucy: Charlie Brown: Football.

Posted by DrBB | July 20, 2008 12:36 PM

I wonder if the use of sonar technology as surveillance of Gotham and Morgan Freeman's commentary on how ethically questionable it was have any implications regarding the bush administration. Although at the end of the movie it would seem that perhaps the Nolan brothers wanted it to be viewed as, at least in this case, a necessary evil-I suppose it depends on your interpretation.

Posted by little nardini | July 20, 2008 12:42 PM

I think BB mistook one thread for another. But as a professional literary critic, I'll be very interested to hear what you've got to say about Dark Knight.

The political themes are clear, but the political message is far from clear.

My take, distilled down to a minimum. On the whole, it tends to make Batman into the sort of necessary-evil vigilante (aka Decider) we've become familiar with from 24. And anyone who's been following the torture debate knows a little about the role 24 played in *that*.

But there's a weird counter-current in the story, which goes beyond making the vigilante a tragic hero all the way to making him a sacrificial hero. Necessary Evil may be necessary, in this story, but it's still really Evil, and in the end it needs to be driven from the body politic.

One other Batman footnote: I do love the plot about the ferries. The point of the ferry story . . . and I think I can say this without any spoilers . . . the point of the ferry story is that there's a deep core of goodness in ordinary Americans, although that goodness has not been visible lately in the way they vote. It's wish-fulfillment for people who feel collectively soiled by 2004.

Okay, I'll stop there.

Posted by Ted | July 20, 2008 12:50 PM

Once upon a time, the MPAA had a rating of "M" - for "mature audiences." In fact, my mother would not let me go see "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" because it was rated M. Maybe they should bring that one back. There's an awful lot of grey area between PG-13 and R.

Posted by Roddy McCorey | July 20, 2008 12:58 PM

I haven't seen Dark Night yet, but when all the reviews and commentary on a movie discuss its Big Important Archetypal Themes And Messages, I've learned to drastically lower my expectations for that particular film.

Posted by James Gary | July 20, 2008 12:59 PM

The MPAA seems to be willing to bend to the major studios to give them PG-13 ratings when the studios need it for their intended big blockbusters to succeed. If the MPAA had given "Titanic" an R rating because of Kate Winslet's nude scene, then the movie would have made a small fraction of the money it did in the US. Teenage girls would not have been able to see Leonardo di Caprio every other day and would have had to spend money seeing another movie and sneaking into "Titanic." Meanwhile, rather tame movies like "Kissing Jessica Stein" get an R rating just because it deals with being a lesbian/bisexual (I don't really remember any nudity in it or anybody swearing like a sailor). This is what happens when you have a regulatory board (public or private) that doesn't explicitly sketch out its rules.

Also, isn't giving movies an R rating for language kind of silly? 13 year olds outside of Utah know the word "fuck." They know swear words exist. Ratings shouldn't be geared towards protecting a small minority of ultra-cocooned children, but to help the average parent make informed choices.

Posted by Reality Man | July 20, 2008 1:00 PM

Um, I meant Dark Knight. With a K.

Posted by James Gary | July 20, 2008 1:01 PM

This Film Is Not Yet Rated is heavy-handed at times, but its central point about the way content is only a secondary influence on rating matters here. If this were an independent film about 'That Man', rather than a big-budget marquee franchise, does it get a different rating? Most likely so.

Thing is, that seems to carry over beyond the odd MPAA system. In the UK, it's a '12A' (I'd expected a '15' before I looked); in Australia, it's an 'M' (no age restrictions, mature content, 'moderate in impact'); in Canada it's a '14+'. All of these seem to lowball the film.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 20, 2008 1:03 PM

I haven't seen Dark Night yet, but when all the reviews and commentary on a movie discuss its Big Important Archetypal Themes And Messages, I've learned to drastically lower my expectations for that particular film.
Posted by James Gary | July 20, 2008 12:59 PM

Nolan does handle these things deftly, so you're not being hit over the head with them. They flow naturally from the story and certainly do not come across as heavy-handed moralizing.

Posted by Captain Noble | July 20, 2008 1:06 PM

I haven't seen Dark Night yet, but when all the reviews and commentary on a movie discuss its Big Important Archetypal Themes And Messages, I've learned to drastically lower my expectations for that particular film.
Posted by James Gary | July 20, 2008 12:59 PM

Nolan does handle these things deftly, so you're not being hit over the head with them. They flow naturally from the story and certainly do not come across as heavy-handed moralizing.

Posted by Captain Noble | July 20, 2008 1:11 PM

As someone who is laughably squeamish with regards to what I found interesting watching the movie was how little of the ultra-violence (and there is a lot in the movie) takes place on screen. Usually there's a cut away before it happens or it happens just out of shot.

Posted by Keven | July 20, 2008 1:18 PM

At the showing I was at a guy sat down in the row in front of me with a kid who could not have been older than 6. 6!

I don't think the guy was ignorant of the movie and what sort of violence it contained and thought "Oh, it's only PG-13". I think he thought "Yes, it's OK for me to expose my kid to this stuff at a very young age."

I agree with you: This a problem. But I'm not sure if changing the rating to R has any real effect.

My pet idea: More detailed labeling of movie content. We're already sort of doing this but I advocate going further - like food packaging: "Movie features graphic images of violent death. 26 by stabbing, 102 by gun fire, and 206 by explosions. 12 die screaming. 2 wounds are shown in graphic detail." Non-spoiler alert: Numbers not real.

I don't think this in and of itself will stop people from taking their kids to movies like this. But, it might get enough information out there that enough people - even those who have not seen the movie - have a reaction of "You took your kid to see that!" that bozos like the guy in front of me think twice before doing it.

Posted by MarcInSeattle | July 20, 2008 1:22 PM

As someone who is laughably squeamish with regards to violence what I found interesting watching the movie was how little of the ultra-violence (and there is a lot in the movie) takes place on screen. Usually there's a cut away before it happens or it happens just out of shot.

Posted by Keven | July 20, 2008 1:27 PM

And, yet, if they had not, Dark Knight would have been cut to fit whatever PG-13 guidelines were, in order to maximize profitability. There was too much money at stake not to. The vacuity of the ratings system alone allowed us to see what, ultimately, was a pretty good movie.

---

And, Ted, I HATED the ferry sequence, because it was sappy and completely out of line with the portrayal of humanity throughout the rest of the film. It felt like someone spliced in a couple scenes from Spiderman-2.

Posted by Anthony Damiani | July 20, 2008 1:36 PM

The British Boars of Film Censors released the following about the Dark Knight:

THE DARK KNIGHT tells the story of Batman’s continuing war on crime and in particular his personal battle with the psychotic Joker. It was passed ‘12A’ for moderate violence and sustained threat.

The BBFC Guidelines at ‘12A’ state that ‘violence must not dwell on detail’ and that ‘there should be no emphasis on injuries or blood’ and whilst THE DARK KNIGHT does contain a good deal of violence, all of it fits within that definition. For example, in one of the stronger scenes, Batman repeatedly beats the Joker during an interrogation. The blows however are all masked from the camera and despite both their weight and force; the Joker shows no sign of injury. There are also scenes in which the Joker threatens first a man and then a woman with a knife and whilst these do have a significant degree of menace, without any actual violence shown they were also acceptably placed at ‘12A’. In the final analysis, THE DARK KNIGHT is a superhero movie and the violence it contains exists within that context, with both Batman and the Joker apparently indestructible no matter what is thrown at them.

THE DARK KNIGHT also contains some special make up effects that whilst clearly not real, have the potential to be moderately frightening.

This work was passed with no cuts made.

Posted by ndm | July 20, 2008 1:49 PM

It was very Spider-Manish, but there's probably something very subtle about that scene that I'm guessing was missed.

The people, the civilians actually voted to blow the other boat up. When they thought that their responsibility was shared, it was actually lessened. However, what happened was that nobody actually wanted to do the deed. Nobody wanted to pull the trigger. Nobody really wanted the responsibility.

I think there's a subtle message there about the potential for democracy being used as a "I didn't do it" defense. That a vote doesn't mean that you're actually responsible for that vote, and that makes the combined "view of the people" a lot baser than individual beliefs and actions.

Posted by Karmakin | July 20, 2008 1:52 PM

"But one can easily imagine a parent of a young child who watches Batman cartoons"
If said cartoon happened to be the companion DVD, Batman:Gotham Knight, pretty sure they knew what they were getting.

Posted by Rob | July 20, 2008 1:54 PM

To be clear: when I say I *loved* the ferry plot, I mean mostly that I was amused by the underlying idea.

I don't mean that it worked particularly well as film narrative.

Actually, my one-word review of the whole film would be "Meh." I enjoyed it, but I didn't think it was either exceptionally fun or exceptionally deep. I'm just intrigued by the way American pop culture is grappling with the aftermath of Bush. It seems to be happening most interestingly in actiony or science fictiony genres, not in Big Serious Films.

If I had to vote for a single example I might point to the last Bourne movie. But I can't say what's interesting about that one without giving away the ending.

Posted by Ted | July 20, 2008 2:12 PM

If Christian Bale had stubbed his toe and said "fuck" a bunch of times, I guess this would have been an R movie.

Also way funnier.

Posted by ed | July 20, 2008 2:12 PM

I thought the ferryboat scene worked because the film is so intense and dark that you genuinely didn't know what was going to happen. In Spider-Man there wouldn't have been any real suspense.

Posted by Just Dropping By | July 20, 2008 2:37 PM

Matt: no spellcheckers or proofreaders at he new blog, ok? We don't want to lose the essential Mattiness of your output.

Posted by jimbo | July 20, 2008 2:38 PM

I'm sorry, but what part of "PG-13" is so hard to understand? It means quite possibly unsuitable for children under 13! Is "13" really that hard for parents to grasp, simply because every PG-13 movie isn't exactly the same as every other one?

I went to see the South Park movie years ago in the theater, and it was clearly rated R. Before the lights went down, I saw multiple little kid/parent groups where the kids were all 12 or under. They practically blasted out of the theater when the characters broke into musical number "Uncle F***er".

If parents are too bone-headed to pay attention to the ratings, and too lazy to do a little research into the movies, don't blame the MPAA.

Posted by LFC | July 20, 2008 2:53 PM

As the adult member of my family who basically determines what is appropriate fare for my niece and nephew (13 & 9 respectively), and because I happen to love movies and graphic novels, I KNEW from the beginning that this movie (or rather film) was NOT going to be screened by the kids, and made it clear not only to my sister and brother-in-law that it was not appropriate but explained it to the kids themselves so that they understood why they weren't seeing the movie while their friends probably were.

Posted by cb | July 20, 2008 3:21 PM

As the adult member of my family who basically determines what is appropriate fare for my niece and nephew (13 & 9 respectively), and because I happen to love movies and graphic novels, I KNEW from the beginning that this movie (or rather film) was NOT going to be screened by the kids, and made it clear not only to my sister and brother-in-law that it was not appropriate but explained it to the kids themselves so that they understood why they weren't seeing the movie while their friends probably were.

Posted by cb | July 20, 2008 3:22 PM

I wonder if the use of sonar technology as surveillance of Gotham and Morgan Freeman's commentary on how ethically questionable it was have any implications regarding the bush administration.

Any force it might have had as a depiction of "a step too far" was lost insofar as it was embedded in an actual ticking timebomb scenario. It essentially said that indiscriminate, blanket surveillance is okay when someone willing to break the law judges the need to be urgent enough. Effectively, Fox's ultimatum to quit was a fig leaf for the 24 crowd to feel like there's some humility in the application of such a system.

It was actually kind of depressing--it was a compromise plot point that didn't come down squarely on one side or the other.

Posted by Justin JJ | July 20, 2008 3:27 PM

I'm astounded that the Brits allow a bunch of pigs to censor their films.

Posted by rk | July 20, 2008 3:31 PM

I went to see the Dark Knight on Friday and ended up sitting next to what looked like a row of 13-year-olds. They seemed to handle it pretty well save for one scene where a character, thrown from a building, lands on his feet in a such a way you can hear his ankles break. That drew the only gasp I heard from the 13-year-olds. I'm not quite sure what that says about 13-year-olds.

The pre-reviews were right, BTW. Ledger was amazing. You simply can't take your eyes off the Joker when he's on screen and can't wait for him to return when he's not.

Posted by DrewShaw | July 20, 2008 3:41 PM

For the geeks: There is a new reference point for Chaotic Evil roleplaying.

What that says about 13 year olds is that destruction, fire, explosions and mayhem are cool because they happen to other people.

Pain is disturbing because it could happen to you.

Posted by John Bragg | July 20, 2008 4:07 PM

Are you freaking kidding? Apparently 99% of America's 13 year olds are a lot more mature than Yglesias (no surprise there).

Just because the film is dark doesn't mean it's bad for kids. The old testament is dark too.

Nothing wrong with this film at all for kids 13 and older, unless you're one of those idiots who thinks it's fine for the kid to read about violence and sex in say the Greeks or even Batman comic books but somehow seeing it on a movie screen is bad.

When Yglesias talks about movies and basketball, he proves he is a callow fool who shouldn't be given free reign by the Atlantic.

Good riddance, Yglesias. Stick to talking about bicycles and your blogger sycophant friends and you'll be okay.

Posted by Young Up Bitches | July 20, 2008 4:13 PM

I think Karmakin has a good point about Democracy and responsibility. Plenty of studies have shown that individuals dramatically alter their own memories of their role in events depending on the outcome. Here is one example, students who have taken an abstinence pledge are much less likely to "remember" having pledged if they subsequently become sexually active.

The study

http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/96/6/1098

and a commentary on it

http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/06/lies_and_abstinence_pledges.php

The question is whether their memory has changed or if the students are simply lying...

I would love to see an anonymous poll on what percentage of the country remembers voting for Bush/Gore and Bush/Kerry!

Posted by sven | July 20, 2008 4:14 PM

Haven't seen the movie yet, but I wonder if some of the people concerned about kids and the level of violence in a PG-13 movie have watched anything on broadcast TV? You don't need HBO, Showtime, FX to see bullets ripping through bodies or autopsy "ick" on CSI, L&O or any of the countless cop shows. 24 is full of torture, kids in danger.
Unless parents are blocking these shows - highly unlikely - seeing the latest bloodfest at the gigantaplex is no big deal to many kids.

Posted by CParis | July 20, 2008 4:18 PM

I went to see the South Park movie years ago in the theater, and it was clearly rated R. Before the lights went down, I saw multiple little kid/parent groups where the kids were all 12 or under.

Well. the opening section of that film is an obvious metacommentary on its rating -- spiking both the enforcement mechanism in cinemas and the dumb parents who think 'R' means 'Really, it's fine to bring the kids'.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | July 20, 2008 4:20 PM

I have a vague memory from 15-20 years ago of reading about a movie which had originally received a G rating back in the late '60s but was later re-rated as R, presumably for violence. I think it was a Western. Does anyone know what this movie was?

Posted by Brandon Berg | July 20, 2008 5:31 PM

"At the showing I was at a guy sat down in the row in front of me with a kid who could not have been older than 6. 6!"

At the 7pm showing I attended last night, there were at least 25 kids under the age of 6 there. Diagonally in front of us were 2 couples and 2 children, the children could not have been older than 3 and 5, respectively.

Posted by Arr-squared | July 20, 2008 5:59 PM

Not to mention that a gun gets pointed at a child's head and another character talks about his father mutilating him.

Posted by Big Pimp | July 20, 2008 6:03 PM

I guess I'd say if the kids can handle the graphic novels, they should be given a shot at watching the movies produced from those novels. They're often strong stuff but they're wildly creative and people of all ages appear to like them. Maybe the transition from page to screen was a little too much for my seat mates.

To Brandon Berg: Maybe it was The Wild Bunch. I don't know what it got in the 60s but I seem to recall some issues during its re-release in the 90s over violence.

Posted by DrewShaw | July 20, 2008 6:25 PM

Dark Knight and other superhero movies are hurting America because they're dumbing our culture down to death. These movies turn peoples' brains into mush.
Dark Knight is a steaming pile of excrement.

We don't need any more stupid superhero movies. We need more movies like The Godfather, Godfather Part II, The Great Escape, Last Year at Marienbad, The Conformist, The Seventh Seal, Day for Night, Wings of Desire, A Woman Under the Influence, Husbands, Safe, Citizen Kane, All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard, The Grapes of Wrath, On the Waterfront, The African Queen, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Advise and Consent, Elmer Gantry, To Kill a Mockingbird, In the Heat of the Night, Lawrence of Arabia, A Man for All Seasons. Goodfellas, Mean Streets, All the President's Men, Network, Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Wall Street, The Hours, and Sophie's Choice, Seven Days in May, Fail Safe, On the Beach, Annie Hall, Manhattan, My Dinner With Andre.

Posted by Seth | July 20, 2008 6:28 PM

Yes, the voting on the ferry boat scene is a dud -- borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring! But so's the rest of Dark Night or Dark Knight.

more here:

http://www.moviesintofilm.com/dark_knight.htm

Posted by Ludowici (or We, the Undersigned) | July 20, 2008 6:53 PM

Who turned over the rock and let the snobs out?

Posted by sunsin | July 20, 2008 7:08 PM

I simply don't agree. I love noir and films/graphic novels like The Dark Knight or Sin City are just about as close as we're getting to noir these days. Maybe they're not Treasure of the Sierra Madre or Citizen Kane but the movie industry always had room for The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon, as well. And frankly I doubt the makers of most of the films you mentioned set out to make art; they were likely trying to make entertaining movies.

And the ferry scene was a dud. I think the producers chickened out. The Dark Knight series is, well ... dark. Frank Miller likely would've blown up both boats.

Posted by DrewShaw | July 20, 2008 7:11 PM

Who turned over the rock and let the snobs out?

Posted by sunsin | July 20, 2008 7:08 PM

It wouldn't be the first time. You want to get a sense of it, check out the comments section on this post Yglesias did on Harry Potter a year ago:

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/07/harry_potter_and_the_haters.php

Or the comments on this post on the best films of 2006:

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2006/12/2006_on_film.php

Posted by Another Chris | July 20, 2008 7:50 PM

Talledega Nights?! Jesus Christ.

Posted by DrewShaw | July 20, 2008 8:03 PM

Frank Miller is a knuckle dragging neanderthal, a malignant hack, and a pestilence who degrades our culture with his wretched, rancid, nauseating, lowest common denominator filth.

Miller can't shine the shoes of Shakespeare, Moliere, Honore de Balzac, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Doestoevsky, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Luigi Pirandello, Samuel Beckett, Eugene O'Neill, William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Drieser, Willa Cather, Flannery O'Connor, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, E.M. Foster, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Ivy Compton Burnett, Laurence Durrell, Walker Percy, Saul Bellow, William Gaddis, John Barth, John Updike, Philip Roth, J.D. Salinger, Don Delillo, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Powers, William T. Vollman, Carson McCullers, Robert Coover, A.S. Byatt, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, John Galsworthy, Louis Auchincloss, Paul Auster, D.H. Lawrence, D.M. Thomas, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust.

Posted by Seth | July 20, 2008 8:41 PM

Are you making up these lists or do you have them written down somewhere for reference? This is beginning to sound like High Fidelity.

And Frank Miller is a genius whose vision has guided the direction of graphic novels and now, movies, for the last 20 years or so.

And he doesn't have to be Moliere, no more than Dashiell Hammett had to be Shakespeare or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cervantes. There's room for everybody.

Except maybe Will Farrell and Talledega Nights. I'm still trying to get my head around that.

Posted by DrewShaw | July 20, 2008 9:12 PM

Gee, Seth, why isn't Alan Moore on your list?

Posted by Bat of Moon | July 20, 2008 9:48 PM

> It essentially said that indiscriminate,
> blanket surveillance is okay when someone willing
> to break the law judges the need to be urgent
> enough.

Bruce Wayne was not an agent of the government. Seizing control of the cell phones was probably a violation of the Telecommunications Privacy Act (for what little that fig leaf is worth), but I am not sure what would be illegal about a private citizen spying on the city.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | July 20, 2008 10:09 PM

A while ago there was a documentary about a little girl artist. My movie reviewer (Boston Globe), discussing the question of whether this might be an interesting film to see and talk over with your kid, noted that the R rating was due to a brief glimpse of a canvas in a gallery which contained a four-letter word. So at least the children were saved from that.

The Batman rating (and the opinion that it should be R is universal among critics I've read) is another example of the MPAA's weirdness regarding a) adding PG-13 rather than R-13; b) having standards for violence (and sadistic torture) so much looser than those for anything else.

I wouldn't take my 6-year old to see this. But I admit he's seen a number of PG-13 films at home, in part because of a much-older sibling, in-part because it doesn't bother him the way it did said sibling when she was 6. Part of the problem above is taking your little kid to the opening weekend--if you do take little kids to such things, it should be because you're sure they can handle it, not because you want to see the show and not get a babysitter. (Worst offenders--parents who try to get their terrified child to stop fussing and enjoy the movie: They're crying! Carry them out away from the terrifying images! I don't caren that you then miss some of the movie--it serves you right.)

Watching a nature documentary with the 6-year old this week, as the parasitic wasp grub, having sucked the spider's nutrients for several weeks, injected the neurotoxin which scrambled her brain, liquiifed her, sucked her up (you could see the liquid spider moving up the legs' exoskeleton), then used her last pitiful web as the basis for its cocoon, it did occur to me that I regarded this as interesting and educational, but a CGI alien doing the same thing would be rated much more harshly....even if David Attenborough narrated. (We loved the series, Life in the Undergrowth, by the way--we learned all sorts of stuff about bugs both exotic and local, such as that the weird thing he found in the mud at the river a few days earlier was a dragonfly larva.)

Posted by Deborah | July 20, 2008 10:12 PM

The idea behind the rating system was that the industry is supposed to police itself, rather than have the government impose its own system on it. It was Jack Valenti's proudest achievement.

Frankly, I didn't think there was that much overt violence in the movie, aside from the aforementioned broken ankles and maybe one other thing. I thought some of the Star Wars movies were more overt in their violence.

Posted by DrewShaw | July 20, 2008 10:27 PM

have you ever had a profile on Ric h ki ss.c om? Someone tells me that you're a cer tified mill ionaire there with many nice photos. .Is it ture? Are you still there?

Posted by show | July 20, 2008 10:39 PM

"I'm not quite sure what that says about 13-year-olds."

What it says is that all this patronizing bullshit from socially correct pundits is so much bullshit.

13-year-olds know what guns do. They know what knives do. They know what a blowjob is. They know what sex is. They know what hookers do.

Christ, Jodie Foster had to have psychological evaluation before being allowed to do "Taxi Driver" back in the '70's. Her mother hit the roof about it, and hired a a former California governor as her lawyer. Later, Foster said it was ridiculous - that every kid she knew was perfectly aware of what hookers did. They see them on the street every day. And that was thirty years ago.

If a kid is too young to UNDERSTAND what they are viewing on the screen, then the issue is for the parents to explain it to them. Shock and lack of comprehension of the meaning of a scene is the only issue for very young children.

I saw a horror movie once when very young which made me faint - the specific scene was one where a plastic surgeon was removing a woman's entire face with a scalpel. Beyond that, nothing ever upset me in a theater. One scene in "The Fog" where someone's eyes are put out with a baling hook I thought was excessive enough to walk out on as lame film making but not be actually upset. Later I watched the same scene on TV with much less reaction. The only movies I've ever walked out on where the result of horribly bad plot, acting and directing - maybe two or three films in my whole movie watching career. David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" was one.

On off screen violence, I've noticed they do that a lot on the "Terminator" show as well. When Cameron killed the fake Sarkissian's henchman, that was done totally off screen. You just saw her closing the trunk of his car on him after he was dead - and you didn't even see the body until later. There are also other benefits to that - it allows the director to maintain the audience's positive reaction to a character. By not watching Cameron kill a human in every episode, the audience retains its view of her as a positive character. Cameron did kill Enrique in episode two - but again, the shots were fired from off screen - and Sarah was already suspicious that Enrique was a snitch - which was later proven to be true. And in another episode, Cameron allowed Russian mobsters to kill the Russian chess player Dmitri and his sister as she ignored the mobsters and calmly walked down the stairs - but again, the kills themselves were off screen in another room. In another episode, Cameron acquired a police uniform off screen - later reference was made as a joke to "somewhere a naked cop lies bleeding."

And of course, in the first season finale, an extremely violent FBI SWAT team's total destruction at the hands of Chromartie is depicted as bodies slow-mo falling into a swimming pool - viewed from under the water - with muffled screams off screen to a Johnny Cash tune. Very clever handling of that scene. Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjDa6k-K20U&feature=related

So clearly some directors are trying to be more sophisticated about showing violence while still depicting violence.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 20, 2008 11:49 PM

hahahahah my dinner with andre

also, i thought the watchmen trailer sucked big time. if snyder can't make a well-paced trailer how is the movie going to be? just take a look at 300.

Posted by Alvaro | July 21, 2008 12:25 AM

It essentially said that indiscriminate, blanket surveillance is okay when someone willing to break the law judges the need to be urgent enough.

It's a bit rich to complain that Batman is using extra-legal means to fight crime.

That's kind of the whole point, isn't it?

Posted by Chet | July 21, 2008 1:39 AM

After seeing it today, I would say The Dark Knight was more intense and disturbing than violent. Much of the violence was explosion-based, not gore. What made it seem violent was Heath Ledger's performance as a sadistic, anarchist wackjob. It wasn't some Dario Argento splatterfest that young children under 13 wouldn't be able to handle. Handling this is more a question of emotional maturity. Put it this way: if you've raised your child to embrace any authoritarian figure who promises to keep them safe when times are tough, they won't be able to handle this. If they can keep a stiff upper lip, they'll be fine.

Is Seth just a parody of a snob?

Posted by Reality Man | July 21, 2008 1:48 AM

Joker said Batman was incorruptible, but that's wrong. Covering up what happened with Dent was a corruption. Incorruptibility is impossible in the real world, and so not even someone like Batman could be trusted with the surveillance system.

Posted by MNPundit | July 21, 2008 2:01 AM

As Michael Medved has long pointed out, R-rated movies, by the very fact of being R-rated, tend to make less money than nonrestricted movies.

So, everybody tries hard to squeeze into the PG-13 slot, which means it gets less and less informative to parents.

This happened before to the PG rating. Thus, in 1984, Steven Spielberg, after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom scared a lot of small children, asked for PG to be subdivided into PG and PG-13. This was immediately accepted and proved useful.

But now, PG-13 has been stretched too far to be helpful, so it would make sense to subdivide PG-13 into PG-13 and, say, R-13 or PG-17.

Posted by Steve Sailer | July 21, 2008 2:38 AM

I think for parodic snobbery, you can't really top the review linked at 6:53 by Ludowici (or We, the Undersigned, if he insists.)

I thought about going through the review and arguing with it here, but eventually I decided that most of my criticisms of the review could be boiled down into one phrase: If you are absolutely determined not to like a movie because you don't like the sort of people you think will like it, you probably will find something to dislike about it. This is not to say that no one could possibly dislike the Dark Knight, but the review is certainly the most determined piece of snobbery I can remember reading.

Posted by Ian Gray | July 21, 2008 6:35 AM

They need to do away with PG-13 and make it R-14. That would mean high schoolers could go to it on dates (the real reason studios avoid R like the plague), but it would scare parents more than PG-13 does. Part of the problem is that parents remember the far more strict guidelines of their days. The video version of the original BLADE RUNNER is the "unrated" cut, which was too harsh to get an R in the early 80s. It would be an easy PG-13 today.

Posted by Mo | July 21, 2008 12:12 PM

It's obvious from the photos of Heath Ledger as Batman that there is no way my 6 & 7-yr olds were going to see it. "Space Chimp" and "Wall-E", on the hand, were certainly appropriate.

Posted by American Citizen | July 21, 2008 4:47 PM