Jan. 6. Dennis Prager: “My wife mentioned how much we enjoyed The King’s Speech to Mormon friends. Could they see it? It has an R-rating.
“There’s no violence. No sex. Just 30 seconds of profanity. It was necessary and funny.
“It’s as modest a film as you can get. There aren’t even any sexual innuendos.”
“The religious should rethink their R-rated ban and take it movie by movie.
“R is for children. I would think twice before taking a ten year old to The King’s Speech.
“Schindler’s List is a searing movie about the Holocaust. Rated R. There are two scenes with female nudity.”
“How could you depict the horror of the Holocaust without an R-rating? The same thing for the Hanoi Hilton.”
“The rating system is for kids. It should not be your guide. There are PG-13 films that are unbelievably raunchy and pointless and vapid.”
“I don’t think there’s an NC-17 movie worth seeing.”
Chaya: “If I have standards in my life about language, every good parent does, and I say that this kind of language is inappropriate and it should never come out of your mouth…”
Dennis: “What about 15 [year old]?”
Chaya: “The same thing holds. If you go to a movie like The King’s Speech, where you are hearing that kind of language, the teenager is getting the message. You are sending the message to your teen that in certain situations it’s OK.”
Dennis: “In certain situations it is OK.”
Chaya: “No. Not in my house.”
Dennis: “Let’s say you are watching a WWII movie in your house about American soldiers fighting the Nazis and a guy is horribly wounded and he yells out an expletive but the movie is about fighting the Nazis and ending the Holocaust and Nazism, but you wouldn’t let your kid go because the soldier yells out an expletive?”
Chaya: “But I’m wondering about the message for my kid?”
Dennis: “The message for your kid is unless you are getting blown up by a grenade while fighting bad guys, don’t curse.”
Chaya: “You know how teenager’s minds work. They’re going to extrapolate from that…”
Dennis: “They’ll extrapolate from that that my parents have common sense.”
Paul: “I wouldn’t go to the movie (The King’s Speech) or let my teenagers go. It’s not necessary to contain profanity or anything graphic to convey a message.”
Dennis: “Let’s take Schindler’s List. I don’t think one in 10,000 people who know about the Holocaust know that most of the Jews murdered were murdered while naked. I don’t know how you convey that idea without nakedness.”
A Catholic youth minister says we have to engage with art. He recommends Fargo.
Dennis: “I hated it. I thought it made light of murder.”
Caller: “My kids hear this language at school. They live in the real world.”
Another caller describes the profound effect Saving Private Ryan had on him at age 13.
Dennis: “Why would an American want to keep their child or themselves from seeing Saving Private Ryan. I think it should be obligatory on every American to see the hell of D-Day.”
Caller also loved the R-rated Passion of the Christ.
Dennis: “It may have been the most violent movie I saw.”
“If you raise your children in a home that tries to convey messages that there is holy and profane, to be able to juxtapose your home with things kids see in a film may be good. They are going to leave your house one day.”
“I want to encourage Hollywood to make ennobling films, even if there is an expletive that is important in the context of the message conveyed.”
Thursday, January 06, 2011 Radio Show
H1: Movie Ratings
Prager H1: Dennis argues that religious adults should not be so rigid as to miss worthwhile R rated movies like “The King’s Speech.” He also makes the case that parents should expose their age appropriate children to important R rated films like “Schindler’s List.”
