The Zodiac Elephants of Morpheus
Intentionally funny: Elephant soup recipe, which calls for 1 medium elephant, 500 gallons of boiling water, and onions and potatoes by the bushel. It lists as serving 3800 people, but if more guests show up than expected, you can add 2 chopped rabbits.
Why it’s funny: If you’re cooking a whole elephant, two rabbits aren’t going to make a bit of difference, are they? They’ll serve an additional 4 people, maybe. That’s lost in the noise and overkill of the elephant recipe.
OK, that was pretty basic. Let’s move on to The Matrix.
Unintentionally Funny: Morpheus: The human generates more bio-electricity than 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion, the machines have found all the energy they would ever need.
Why it’s funny: If you have fusion power, you don’t really need human body heat, do you? Just add an extra teaspoonful of water and replace all of humanity.
OK, moving right along.
Pathetically unfunny: The MPAA rating of the David Fincher film Zodiac, which reads “Rated R for some strong killings, language, drug material and brief sexual images.”
Why it’s pathetically unfunny, and talks about how screwed up our country’s priorities are: Shouldn’t it just need to stop at strong killings? Is there really a parent out there who would say, “Oh, graphic images of murder? That’s fine, as long as there’s no profanity or brief images of clothed people having sex!” Are these four criteria really of comparable weight? Depicting bound people being stabbed multiple times is similar enough to the “f” word to list them in the same sentence? Isn’t all the non-killing stuff lost in the overkill of the murders?
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January 4th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Yeah. That was the point of the South Park movie, wasn’t it? Violence should be a worse thing to teach your legacy than a few blue words.
January 5th, 2008 at 11:41 am
It’s very, very sad, but a “Christian” parent at my school was going on and on about how they monitor their teenagers’ viewing: murder, war, blood, guts, monsters, killings, crime…okay, brief nudity or sexual allusions, not okay, the idea being that one is not a temptation, the other is.
January 6th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Depicting bound people being stabbed multiple times is similar enough to the “f” word to list them in the same sentence? Isn’t all the non-killing stuff lost in the overkill of the murders?
Sort-of depends. I’d let my (theoretical) child watch Sweeney Todd before I’d let him/her watch Pink Flamingos, despite the fact that I think that slitting throats is probably worse behavior for a kid to emulate than eating dog crap. Kill Bill, despite being infinitely more violent, is probably more appropriate for children than Requiem for a Dream.
Every child is different. My brother could handle images of extremely graphic violence at a much earlier age than I could (I suspect that this is because he was raised with a television, and I wasn’t). Ultimately, it falls to the parents to decide what a kid can handle, and that decision should be as informed as possible. So, yeah, you’re going to find a lot of things listed together, because the full information regarding what’s in a movie should definitely all be listed on the package.
Having said that, the MPAA can lick my ass.
January 6th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Mike, do you have a project of essentially objecting to everything I post on principle? For those out there wondering, despite the unlikely moniker, Bob Mike is not an alter ego of mine in whose guise I write in response to all of my posts.
I think that neither Kill Bill nor Requiem are appropriate for children, and frankly should both have NC-17 tags, as I believe does Pink Flamingos, which is really not suitable for anybody, IMHO.
Have you seen This Film Is Not Yet Rated?
January 7th, 2008 at 8:50 am
I have seen it, yes. Again, I’m strongly against the MPAA. However, I’m of the opinion that it is the responsibility of parents to monitor their children’s viewing habits, and in order for that to take place, I think that they should have comprehensive information regarding what their children are viewing. Obviously, violence and murder should take top priority, but that doesn’t mean that parents shouldn’t also have a heads-up that, after watching Pulp Fiction, their child is going to be talking like Samuel L Jackson for a week (let’s face it, we all talked like Samuel L Jackson for a week after our first viewing of Pulp Fiction, but none of us has gone out and ass-raped Ving Rhames… yet).
Deadwood was one of my favorite shows of the last five years, and if I had a teen, I think that he or she could handle the violence, the sex, and the profanity. I still wouldn’t let them watch it, though, because of the casual racism and misogyny displayed by some of the characters. Strictly speaking, gutting a man and watching him bleed out on your office floor is probably worse than using the word “chink” to describe a business associate, but in my judgment the latter would be something that I’d be less comfortable with having my teen view than the former. As a parent, that would be my call to make.
I like my movies laced with profanity, sex and violence. I also like people to make informed decisions for themselves and their families based on comprehensive information, rather than on some sort of extremely arbitrary ratings system.
Also… You think Kill Bill should be NC-17? For realzies? You and I would have eaten that movie up as teenagers, and I don’t think it would have done us any harm. It’s certainly less intense than some of the stuff that I watched at that age.
Also also… I realize that I come off as a bit contrarian, and I am something of a contrarian by nature, but I love Pink Flamingos.
You have my 100% agreement regarding The Matrix, though. The entire premise of the movie falls apart if you look at it too closely.
“So the machines have FUSION, but they need bioenergy. Which they can’t get from animals or drugged or lobotomized humans for some reason. No, they definitely need it to come from humans with fully functioning brains. Except, they can’t just strap them down and take their bioenergy for some reason; the humans need to think that everything is normal. Well, yeah, this system does seem like it would use up more energy than it would likely create, and yeah, feeding dead humans to living humans would probably not sustain the population for very long, but no one is going to notice that. We’ve got bullet time!
January 7th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
We probably would have eaten up Kill Bill as teens. I’m not sure that’s a good argument for allowing teens to view it, however.
As I’ve said before on this site, I really, really wish there was a no-stigma adult rating for things: something that says, “In no way is this appropriate for kids, but you’re not a perv if you want to watch it as a grown-up.” But somehow we only tolerate stuff that “might be OK for our kids to see”. But we still want to watch the stuff. So, rather than toning down our tastes, we keep increasing the amount that kids can see.
I, of course, am all for adults monitoring their kids’ viewing habits. And the MPAA has no right to exclude kids from films if their parents are not there. Solution: no kids in movie theaters! Ever! Problem solved.
January 8th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Solution: no kids in movie theaters! Ever! Problem solved.
I’ll take it a step further: No movie theaters! Ever!
I’ve recently started going back to movie theatres regularly after a long exodus, and with the exception of visiting the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax, I invariably find myself wishing that I’d just stayed home and waited for the DVD. You’d think that the astronomical rise in ticket prices would have done something to keep the assholes who don’t care about the moviegoing experience of anyone around them out, but it seems to have had the opposite effect.
January 8th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
From Slate’s latest Movie Club:
Read the rest here although INTENSE AND BOLDED SPOILER WARNINGS if you read the rest of the discussion. They go into detail on how most of the viable Best Picture candidates end, so don’t read beyond this one post if you care not to know the endings of Atonement and No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood and… uh… Knocked Up.
January 10th, 2008 at 6:44 am
I’ve found Arclight, and specifically their 21-and-over screenings, to be quite tolerable. [insidejoke]C’mon people, it’s not a movie, it’s an experience![/insidejoke]
Um … is that Slate Movie Club code for “black people talk in movies”? Boston: 25% black. Philadelphia: 43% black. Atlanta: 59% black. Not that I’m arguing one way or the other, but that’s what immediately jumps into mind as the biggest difference between Boston and Philly/Atlanta.
January 11th, 2008 at 6:27 am
Oh. Maybe. But since his complaints seem to be more about the way theaters are run than about the people inside of the theater, so my guess is that it’s not code for anything.
February 7th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
[…] they showed a single bare breast? They couldn’t have aired it in the first place. Per our previous discussion: I don’t give a fuck, Bob Mike, this is fucking fucked up. Anyone who would censor above-the-waist female nudity and allow this adult material to be […]
February 8th, 2008 at 2:31 am
[…] I’ve reconsidered my claim that Kill Bill vols. 1 and 2 should have received NC-17s. I think R is appropriate for the […]