Movie ratings and other rambles
Back in high school, when I was well under 17, a friend and I walked into an R movie. Quite openly. Our plan had been to buy tickets for a PG movie and then sneak into the R movie we wanted to see (one reason to always be slightly skeptical of movie ticket sales as an indication of actual viewership - I can't imagine the American teenager has changed that much in the years) but as it turned out, we didn't have to: I knew the person in the ticket booth, another teenager who let us buy the R tickets without blinking and without an adult anywhere present.
Skip forward a few years, when I was down in South Florida, heading to see South Park with
wolfblade and
orianna33. I stepped up to get my ticket -
--and the guy - another teenager - asked my age.
This is where it gets embarrassing; I couldn't remember. (I've found that post age 23, individual years don't matter as much, and I often have to think about how old I am. I'm expecting that to change when the individual years matter again, when, say, I'm over 90 and loudly and annoyingly announcing that fact to people who just don't care, but honestly, most of the time it's hard for me to remember my own age.) I stumbled, blurted out a number which turned out to be wrong, corrected myself, and tried out a second number. By that time
wolfblade and
orianna33 had fallen over in stitches. The unamused teenager said he didn't believe me, and the other two had not been introduced as my parents and guardians. I had to pull out an ID, which was studied (and showed that the second number was correct), and finally got the ticket, with my two friends laughing gleefully that I'd gotten carded for South Park.
I don't get carded much these days, although to my surprise I was carded twice this weekend, which made me think again about these arbitrary age standards. They were roundly ignored at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival this weekend, if I'm any judge, where despite Disney's careful "only two drinks per ID" rule, some younger looking people were getting two drinks, passing them to a friend, and popping right back in line again, suggesting that this was not quite as effective as intended, especially given that some of the younger looking people were bragging about this.
Which is a rambling way of getting to my main point: these age limits aren't effective. In college, about all they did was keep me out of certain clubs where my friends could go, but I couldn't; they certainly didn't keep me from getting alcohol. (They were also responsible for a couple of exciting trips up to Quebec, then known to a certain subset of young New Yorkers as an easy place to buy booze if you are under 21 and willing to endure a long lecture from the U.S. Border Partol about the evils of underage drinking. I never bothered to find out what Quebec thought about that designation.)
Which in turn is a rambling way of linking to James Berardinelli's essay on film ratings, which notes that film ratings have had a negative effect on film making, with screenwriters and directors needing to add or subtract elements just to get the right rating for marketing purposes. I tend to ignore movie ratings, but it's mildly annoying to realize that screenwriters had to take a moment to say, wait, must add a bit of profanity here to get my PG-13 rating, or, hey, must go fade to black here to keep the PG-13 rating, whichever. And I agree completely with his point that it says something
And even there, it fails: I remember watching Quills once and thinking, man, I'm not old enough for this (although this was in the I've forgotten my age stage) and feeling stunned that it received the same rating as Bridget Jones Diary, which, gasp, showed an actress in her underwear about to have said underwear removed. And that was about it, in stark contrast to Quills massive levels of violence and sex and various kinks. Placing the same label on these two films defeats the entire point of a ratings system.
************
In other rambling news, I had a surprisingly active weekend, what with a short expedition to the Winter Garden Music Fest on Friday night and a Scavenger Hunt at Epcot on Sunday. Well. Sorta. I lost the Scavenger Hunt, and quite badly, because I couldn't find it. In my defense, other people couldn't find it either, so we instead attempted to scavenge food and other things at the Food and Wine Festival. It just happened to be one of those clear, perfect fall days in Florida - cool to warm, not hot, with merry little birds, without any major crowds until the afternoon started to lengthen, and I had to leave, acknowledging complete and utter failure on the scavenger hunt front, but success on the molten chocolate lava cake front, which counts as success of sorts.
Skip forward a few years, when I was down in South Florida, heading to see South Park with
wolfblade and
orianna33. I stepped up to get my ticket -
--and the guy - another teenager - asked my age.
This is where it gets embarrassing; I couldn't remember. (I've found that post age 23, individual years don't matter as much, and I often have to think about how old I am. I'm expecting that to change when the individual years matter again, when, say, I'm over 90 and loudly and annoyingly announcing that fact to people who just don't care, but honestly, most of the time it's hard for me to remember my own age.) I stumbled, blurted out a number which turned out to be wrong, corrected myself, and tried out a second number. By that time
wolfblade and
orianna33 had fallen over in stitches. The unamused teenager said he didn't believe me, and the other two had not been introduced as my parents and guardians. I had to pull out an ID, which was studied (and showed that the second number was correct), and finally got the ticket, with my two friends laughing gleefully that I'd gotten carded for South Park.
I don't get carded much these days, although to my surprise I was carded twice this weekend, which made me think again about these arbitrary age standards. They were roundly ignored at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival this weekend, if I'm any judge, where despite Disney's careful "only two drinks per ID" rule, some younger looking people were getting two drinks, passing them to a friend, and popping right back in line again, suggesting that this was not quite as effective as intended, especially given that some of the younger looking people were bragging about this.
Which is a rambling way of getting to my main point: these age limits aren't effective. In college, about all they did was keep me out of certain clubs where my friends could go, but I couldn't; they certainly didn't keep me from getting alcohol. (They were also responsible for a couple of exciting trips up to Quebec, then known to a certain subset of young New Yorkers as an easy place to buy booze if you are under 21 and willing to endure a long lecture from the U.S. Border Partol about the evils of underage drinking. I never bothered to find out what Quebec thought about that designation.)
Which in turn is a rambling way of linking to James Berardinelli's essay on film ratings, which notes that film ratings have had a negative effect on film making, with screenwriters and directors needing to add or subtract elements just to get the right rating for marketing purposes. I tend to ignore movie ratings, but it's mildly annoying to realize that screenwriters had to take a moment to say, wait, must add a bit of profanity here to get my PG-13 rating, or, hey, must go fade to black here to keep the PG-13 rating, whichever. And I agree completely with his point that it says something
And even there, it fails: I remember watching Quills once and thinking, man, I'm not old enough for this (although this was in the I've forgotten my age stage) and feeling stunned that it received the same rating as Bridget Jones Diary, which, gasp, showed an actress in her underwear about to have said underwear removed. And that was about it, in stark contrast to Quills massive levels of violence and sex and various kinks. Placing the same label on these two films defeats the entire point of a ratings system.
************
In other rambling news, I had a surprisingly active weekend, what with a short expedition to the Winter Garden Music Fest on Friday night and a Scavenger Hunt at Epcot on Sunday. Well. Sorta. I lost the Scavenger Hunt, and quite badly, because I couldn't find it. In my defense, other people couldn't find it either, so we instead attempted to scavenge food and other things at the Food and Wine Festival. It just happened to be one of those clear, perfect fall days in Florida - cool to warm, not hot, with merry little birds, without any major crowds until the afternoon started to lengthen, and I had to leave, acknowledging complete and utter failure on the scavenger hunt front, but success on the molten chocolate lava cake front, which counts as success of sorts.