R-Rated

When we lived in St. Croix, we lived in the Hess Camp Compound. They had a club with pool and ping pong tables and tennis courts. Once a month they showed first run movies.

In 1970, they were showing the new R-rated Sam Peckinpah movie, "The Ballad of Cable Hogue." It was admittedly a controversial departure from Disney and Davey Crocket. Many of the kids were not allowed by their parents to go in and see it.

We were. Obviously, or I wouldn't write about it.

The movie was a western that took place towards the end of the wild west, as there was an automobile in it, which was ironically Cable's (Jason Robards) undoing (it ran over him). The movie had very little gunslinging, a little cursing and no skin was shown. It did have the obligatory saloon "gals" and poker. Today it wouldn't rate a PG-13 (I looked up the scale) and today's pre-teen boys wouldn't watch it even if it was R. Transformers PG-13 delivers better babes and blood.

The Princess wasn't allowed to see an R movie until she was in college.

Carson has seen a couple. (However, the Princess has decided he won’t be seeing any more anytime soon, which means I won’t either; unless, I watch them after 9 am chores completion and before she comes home. After she reads this, my chores list will undoubtedly be increasing.)

His favorite is (was) "40 Year Old Virgin" uncut and unrated. It would have been rated an X back in my day. Does this make us bad parents? I don't think so. The Princess might.

This country is so obsessed with sex and its entire spectrum. We have the horrified prudes and "the eh so what." I fall towards the latter, as most of you knew, or just figured out. So does most of Europe. And Asia. And so forth.

My brother and I watched Cable Hogue and neither of us are gun slinging, whore-loving deviants. Although, the Princess does tend to take exception to my rather liberal use of four letter words. I might point out that I didn’t learn them in movies.

The interesting thing about today's sex scenes in films, which the Princess has decided Carson shouldn't see, yet laughs at when he does, is he isn't interested in them. Every time that portion of the movie comes on, he is never paying attention. It is the other parts that he finds funny, and doesn't understand either. His favorite scene is when the boys get together to play poker (that's my boy) and talk about the size of various women's "poopahs," as Carson likes to refer to them.

He still believes that babies are placed in a mommy's tummy through her head, so we are not too concerned about him having sex anytime soon. Or ending up a deviant.

Two nights ago, while the Princess was away, Carson and I cheated on the movies. We watched Notting Hill. Yep, a chick flick. The cheating was that we watched a chick flick. It is rated PG-13 for sexual content and brief strong language. If you count the fact that Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts are naked in bed (no nudity shown), then I guess that counts. As for language it is British cursing mostly about bugger off and wanker.

In the movie, Julia is shown pregnant in the last scene. For the first time Carson asked why? Gratefully, not how. Although if he had been interested he might have figured it out from 40 Year Old Virgin’s sister film Knocked Up. Which we started to watch with him, and quickly decided not to, thus ending his run on Judd Apatow films.

Quite frankly, we get more concerned when he watches The Incredibles, a cartoon. Because there is violence in it (you didn't think it had a sex scene did you?). But, since it is rated PG acceptable for him, we let him watch it, and it doesn't seem to give him nightmares.

As I reflect, if movies do influence young children, I suppose we may have to worry about Carson playing strip poker dressed as Mr. Incredible.

We don't allow any movies with extreme PG-13 violence, because those do scare him, and they scare the Princess. So I have to watch them by myself. Love that blood and violence, especially when combined with poker, a la Sopranos.

Don't worry, I don't own a gun.

And yeah, there is a strange twist. The X rated/unrated movies, we watch(ed) as a family. The R-rated gratuitous violence flicks, I have to watch by myself. Quite the opposite of when I was younger.

But that’s, ahem, another story....