When my daughter, Clementine, had a friend sleep over the other night, my husband mentioned to the parents that he and I would be watching Jackass 2 later on that evening. Although he didn’t really think Clementine and her friend would be interested in watching it, he thought that it was best to make a full disclosure of the evening’s activities. As it turns out, this was a good thing: the parents were dead set against their child having anything to do with Jackass 2 (they said they were worried that if their son saw the movie, he might try and imitate the stunts).
Later on that evening, after I had watched the movie, I thought back to that comment and all that it implied. While part of me wondered just where, exactly, they thought their son was going to find either an obliging horse, an arena full of bulls, or even a box of questionably smelly fake “beard” hair, another part of me wondered if they’d really understood what this movie was all about, or whether they had just issued their Jackass fatwa solely on the basis of Jackass 2 being an “R” rated movie.
Not that there is anything wrong with that–if I was any kind of a parent myself I’m sure I would probably want to keep my children from watching “R” rated movies, too. The problem is, though, that with the current ratings system, an “R” rating is just about meaningless. Take a movie like Jackass 2, for example: how does this movie–its only “crimes” being language, nudity and some really gross scenes (see: Horse, semen, referenced above)–get a “restricted” rating, while a movie like The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland–a movie so soul-searingly bad that I was afraid that if I continued to watch it my internal organs were going to get up and leave the theater without me–pick up a “G”? I mean, really: sure Jackass 2 featured a graphic scene of a guy taking a dump on a three-inch toilet, but in The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland, Elmo sang. A lot.
A few years ago, when the movie The Aristocrats came out, there were a lot of comments from the movie-going public about how a movie like The Aristocrats clearly showed the limitations of our current movie ratings system: even though this movie did not feature a single exposed nipple, loaded gun, rotting zombie corpse or mountain of cocaine, it was still deemed so foul by the MPAA that it wasn’t even given an “X.” And yet Racing Stripes, which came out the same year–and which featured the horrifyingly awful spectacle of Dustin Hoffman supplying the voice of the wise, old, zebra-counseling donkey (in an effort, one can only assume, to financially ensure his continued supply of “exposed nipples and mountains of cocaine”)–got a “G.” (Personally, I would rather watch Marlon Brando do just about anything with a stick of butter than to have to endure the sound of the same voice that once said “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me,” braying the words, “B-b-b-elieve in yourself.”)
I think the time has come for a new ratings system to emerge, one that more accurately reflects the cinematic pitfalls that movie trailers so often conceal. This would be especially helpful for children’s movies, which in general tend to be so bad that the highest praise I can usually bring myself to give one is that it “didn’t suck.” The new ratings system, however, would warn people about a movie like Racing Stripes by giving it a “D” rating (for dull), or about a movie like Mary-Kate and Ashley Go (fill in the blank) by giving it a “V” (for vapid).
And movies like Jackass 2 and The Aristocrats? They would clearly get a “FASBNFSO” (Funny as hell, but not for sleep overs).