Terminalcoffee discussion

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movie...

I don't know. Seems difficult to have a hard and fast rule here. I don't get/care about most ratings, anyway...even with kids, there are G movies that bother me and PG-13 movies that don't.

What do you think? Should smoking get an "R"? What do you think about film ratings?

Anyone here see "This Film is Not Yet Rated" by the way?

i have seen cartoons where bugs bunny is in a gangster get-up and smoking. sorry kids, under 17 not allowed

on a almost unrelated note, here is my fav smoking joke:

"Me and my wife , we got a rule we only smoke after sex...i've got the same pack since 1975"
-Rodney Dangerfield

I think they want to digitally remove cigarettes from old pictures and movies too... Marlene Deitrich without a cigarette? What's the point?

What Bun said, only louder.

Next think you know, they're gonna want a PG-13 rating for gleeking or wet willies! *sigh*

Yeah, smoking has become shorthand for "villain" these days, so we already KNOW it's bad.

This is tooo stupid to talk about
maddening.

I watched "This Film is Not Yet Rated" - I learned a great deal about how the movie rating system works. I didn't know it was all secretive, but it is. I also learned that sex in America is taboo while violence on screen runs rampant, in Europe it's just the opposite. Which if you think about it, makes sense. Sex is normal, and human - slicing up some innocent teenage girl in a grotesque fashion...is not. Smoking making a movie rated R, not a terrible idea. Besides, it's kind of already that way anyway. It's not like the High School Musical movies are riddled with teen smokers. Most movies with smoking are already PG-13 or R. Parents just need to be involved with their kids - then no amount of sex, violence, or smoking on screen will be the deciding factor in their choices in life.

Interesting ideas you raise here, Melissa. It does seem that American values are somewhat skewed, when you put it like this.

I remember really liking that movie too.

I have always found the violence = okay
and sex = taboo quotient here in the USA baffling & frustrating.

So if they make smoking into something worse than slasher films, then they need to do the same with alcohol, all cussing, any slight nudity including bathing (I could see her ankles for gosh sakes!), and pretty much anything that adults may do in a normal day. How about working in cubicles or voting? Kids shouldn't be exposed to that kind of maturity, should they?

We just watched "This Film is Not Yet Rated" a few weeks ago and I was a) appalled at the way William Hays & his cronies set up ratings systems with a single-minded agenda, and b) that much of the sex = taboo & violence = ratings bull was pretty much what we already thought it was. I am still continually amazed at how so-called normal families (good churchgoers & all that) don't seem to even notice the violence flashing all over tv, but if you show something even remotely sexual they are appalled. My sister was up in arms last year when they had that Victoria's Secret Angels show during prime time, and that she caught her teenage sons (16 & 18) watching "that filth". (sigh)