I'm getting sick and
tired of people bitching that the newly released Beowulf cartoon
should be rated "R" and is too violent for their tender tweens to view.
"PG-13 is the new R," they claim. "When I was
young," they tell me, "my parents could feel safe dropping me off at a
PG rated movie." When I bring up the PG rated Raiders of the Lost Ark,
Indiana Jones and the
Temple of Doom, Poltergeist,
Clash of the Titans,
Gremlins
and Jaws
they go ballistic. "Those movies weren't nearly as bad as Beowulf," they
swear while taking a break from writing their congressman about banning
the latest Grand Theft
Auto videogame.
These people are seeing the Beowulf
cartoon through a set of perspective distorting "parenting goggles"
(not
to mention 3-D glasses). Now that they have kids of their
own, things that were perfectly acceptable are intolerable and "warping
the youth." They got through Raiders, Temple of Doom, Poltergeist, Gremlins and Jaws just fine when
they were kids and young teenagers, but God forbid their children get
to have a similar experience.
Face it folks -- American parents have turned into a bunch of fucking
pussies.
But since they refuse to believe the PG-13 rated Beowulf cartoon is
less violent than the live-action PG movies of the past, I'm here to
prove them wrong, once and for all. Hopefully that way they'll stop
their whining and we can all go back to enjoying movies without a
chorus of complainers making those annoying clicking sounds with their
tongues whenever they want the rest of us to know how disgusted they
are by what's taking place on screen.
How is the PG rated Raiders
of the Lost Ark
scarier/more violent than the PG-13 Beowulf?
Try
tarantulas all over a guys back, a rotted corpse popping out on spikes,
a freshly killed character with a spike through his head and another
his neck (all this in the first 10 or 15
minutes), a snake pit filled with lunging snakes and corpses that pop
out and make "screaming" sounds and have giant boa-constrictors
squirming
their way through their innards, a guy getting chopped apart by an
airplane propeller, another guy getting his hand burned on a hot
medallion
and screaming wildly, some villain getting a bullet in his head,
another dude dropping dead with a back full of poisoned arrows, angels
turning into flying/screaming skeletons as they approach the screen and
a bunch of people having their faces melted in a very graphic
fashion, their eyeballs popping out and their heads exploding.
Since pictures are worth a thousand words, let's have a look, shall we?
These are shots from Raiders
of the Lost Ark -- a PG rated film that
was marketed as a rollicking adventure fun for the whole family:
Alright, that's pretty nasty. Worse than anything found in
the cartoon Beowulf.
Imagine it on a big screen jumping out at you and you'll
understand why this movie scared the shit out of me as a child (but I
loved every shit-scaring minute). Still not convinced? Still think the
cartoon Beowulf
tops spikes through a guys head? How about this, from
the same PG rated movie:
Ouch. Now that's gotta hurt. Or this:
May not look all that scary, but considering she
flew gently toward the camera as a beautiful angel and then suddenly
turned into a monstrous demon/ghost/corpse once she filled the screen,
it scared the hell out of many people -- adults included. A similar
scene happened in the family film Ghostbusters
at the beginning in the library. Unfortunately, I can't locate a
picture.
Even Indy's old friends (or competitors) aren't in the best shape.
Here's Jones paying visit to a rotted buddy of his toward the beginning
of Raiders of the Lost
Ark.
But why stop there, when there's still the PG rated Indiana Jones and the Temple of
Doom?
Ah, nothing like a flaming heart ripped from
an innocent victim by a mad cultist with corpses on display behind him
for decoration. The cartoon Beowulf
is much worse, right?
And what could be worse than what's worse than the cartoon Beowulf?
How about a bloody (and still beating) heart pulled from the body prior
to both the heart and the body being sent into flames? This also
happened in the PG rated
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
I don't remember Beowulf being tortured and force-fed blood from a
human skull. Maybe I was too caught up in the 3-D FX at the Imax to
notice. In the actual movie (Indiana
Jones, not the cartoon Beowulf),
blood pours from the mouth of the skull directly into our hero's mouth.
Still wanna tell me that PG-13 movies have gotten more violent than PG
rated films were when you were a kid? Or did you simply grow up to be a
gigantic pansy?
How about a flaming skewer thrown by our hero (Indy) into
a tortured bad guy? Not exactly family-fare, right? But Temple of Doom
was
advertised as a film for the whole family and I know a lot of families
that went (including mine). And we loved every damn minute of
it.
Well, every damn minute without that annoying Willie bitch.
Jaws
was full of violence, but unfortunately I couldn't find any shots of
the decapitated head, the devoured corpse that washed up on the beach,
the dismembered leg, etc. etc. I did find this blurry shot of Quint
getting chowed down upon by the Great White. Yes, this movie was rated
PG. Yes, it was more violent than the PG-13 cartoon Beowulf. Oh, it
also showed full frontal nudity. With a real female, not a CG Angelina
Jolie Barbie doll looking thing with glowing golden moss covering her nipples.
I did find plenty of shots from the PG rated Poltergeist. Plenty
of
shots that are plenty worse than anything in the PG-13 cartoon Beowulf that has
soccer moms and NASCAR dads undies all up in a bunch. Here are a couple:
Pretty, huh? Pretty ugly compared to anything in the
cartooon Beowulf.
And this is just the beginning of the gore found in the PG rated Poltergeist.
Gives a whole new meaning to coming out of the closet (probably how
Republicans have envisioned it from the beginning). And is a pissload
scarier than the animated Grendel (who was still a groovy monster) in
the cartoon Beowulf.
Unfortunately I can't find any pics of all the corpses in the swimming
pool at the end of the PG rated Poltergeist,
so you're just gonna have to rent it. Man, those screaming corpses
scared me. But not as much as that freaky clown scared my younger
brother. Stupid freaky clown scaring my younger sibling.
Why not close with this juicy shot from Clash of the Titans
-- another PG rated film advertised for children and featuring a ton of
nudity and violence?
Or maybe this, from the 1977 beloved family classic, Star Wars: A New Hope?
Or its 1980 sequel, The
Empire Strikes Back?
Nah, we'll end on a shot from the prolonged, horrible death of Stripe
in the PG rated Gremlins (filmmakers seemed to have a thing for melting
faces back then).
This was too much to handle for the 8-year-old children in the
audience. Especially after Kate's Santa Claus story, "It
was Christmas Eve. I was 9 years old. Me and Mom were decorating the
tree, waiting for Dad to come home from work. A couple hours went by.
Dad wasn't home. Christmas Day
came and went, and still nothing. It was snowing outside. The
house was freezing, so I
went to try to light up the fire. That's when I noticed the smell. The
firemen came and broke through the chimney top. And me and Mom were
expecting them to pull out a dead cat or a bird. And instead they
pulled out my father. He was dressed in a Santa Claus suit. He'd been
climbing down the chimney... arms loaded with presents. He slipped and
broke his neck. And that's how I found out there was no Santa Claus."
As far as the sexual content in the cartoon Beowulf deserving
an R rating? Hmm. Jaws
had
a topless girl running along the beach at the beginning showing her
non-cartoon tits (and they were large) and her non-cartoon nipples. PG
rated Airplane!(one
of the funniest movies ever) had a stewardess giving her
inflatable co-pilot a blowjob, causing the co-pilot to get a
shit-eating grin on his face. It also had a panic scene where everyone
in the plane is running everywhere and, in one of the most gratuitous
nudity shots in
cinematic history, has a woman with big boobs stop in front of the
camera -- completely topless -- and jump up and down so her breasts
jiggle for the audience's viewing pleasure. I paused that scene on
video and masturbated over it when I was a teen, just because I could.
Since when does "PG" or "PG-13" mean "Made For Kids," in the first
place? PG means "Parental Guidance." Maybe these parents should
actually GUIDE their children rather than coming onto message boards
afterward to whine and moan about how awful movies are when they're
unknowingly giving away nothing more than how awful their parenting
skills are. My mom and dad went to every single movie before I saw it,
to see if it was appropriate for me to see. Now parents have
detailed descriptions telling them what's in the movie and they still
can't figure out whether or not the movie is suited for their spawn?
How can parents complain that a PG-13 movie was violent and had partial
nudity when the RATING DESCRIPTION itself for the cartoon Beowulf -- which
is on all the posters and in all the ads -- reads, "Rated
PG-13 for
intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual
material and nudity." It's hard to believe parents take their
kids to these films and then stomp out demanding a refund. As a theater
owner I'd refuse to issue them a refund and ask them what part of,
"INTENSE sequences of VIOLENCE, DISTURBING images, SEXUAL material and
NUDITY" they didn't understand.
Mom and dads can no longer avoid the content description of a film as
an announcer READS it aloud on both the television and radio
commercials and all print media lists this content anywhere and
everywhere it can be read. So parents have NO excuse unless they're
both deaf and blind. Anyone
complaining about the content of a PG-13
movie once they chose to bring their offspring to the film is obviously
already dumb.
Personally, I cannot stand hearing what content is in a film, as I
consider it a spoiler. Why are we all supposed to parent somebody
else's child if they can't handle parenting that child themselves? Of
course children/teens are going to get away with things they shouldn't,
even with the best adults doing the greatest parenting. But that's part
of growing up. This fear of anything and everything "corrupting" the
youth is successfully crippling our society and the ability of adults
to parent responsibly without expecting somebody else to do it for them.
It takes a village? Oh, fuck off, Hillary. It takes decent parenting.
Leave us villagers alone.
Email Alex
The above text is Copyright 2007 Alex Sandell [All Rights
Reserved]. Copy it without my permission and a melting face will be the
least of your worries. That's right -- I went there!
You're nut number
to
dare enter this page since March 14th, 1997!
Beowulf, PG-13 the new R, Violence and sex in
PG movies, Indiana Jones, Gremlins, Poltergeist, Jaws, Star Wars, The
Empire Strikes Back, Angelina Jolie
nude, fucking, pictures, graphic
