Why was TMP G-rated?
- Thread starter gottacook
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^Good grief, if anything, showing something like that literally would earn a stronger rating than just using it as a metaphor. Airplane! was PG because the PG rating wasn't as restrictive then as it is now. This has been discussed in this thread already. PG then was basically what PG-13 is today.
More evidence of how things have changed: The original PLANET OF THE APES was rated "G" back in 1968, despite some pretty intense violence (Taylor gets shot in the throat, among other things), brutality, strong language ("Damn you all to hell!"), and Charlton Heston's naked butt.
I mean, can you imagine a movie in which humans are hunted for sport, lobotomized, and abused getting a "G" rating today? Heck, Zaius threatens to have Taylor "gelded" at one point!
I mean, can you imagine a movie in which humans are hunted for sport, lobotomized, and abused getting a "G" rating today? Heck, Zaius threatens to have Taylor "gelded" at one point!
Neither of those films were really marketed for kids, though.
Transformers 2 has robot testicles, which, if they aren't obvious enough visually, get pointed out explicitly via the dialogue, as well as a fair amount of rough language and Baywatch-style camera-ogling of Megan Fox.
Rango has a really bad balls joke in it.
Wargames from 1983 has wall-to-wall swearing in it, despite the PG rating. Most of the language in it is really unnecessary for the plot.
Ghostbusters has a fair amount of language plus a ghost doing something to Dan Aykroyd that made parents squirm in their seats for having the kids nearby. Ghostbusters really is in the same vein as Stripes, which was R, but without nudity.
I heard a great story years ago (may well have been apocryphal) about a scientist who gave a lecture thoroughly disproving an older scientist's theory, and after the lecture the older scientist came down and shook the young man's hand. I find that lack of ego in the search for truth to be admirable and heartwarming, and I try to be the same. My experience on this forum is that, for the majority, factual correction is nothing personal, but simply intellectual housekeeping.
I heard a great story years ago (may well have been apocryphal) about a scientist who gave a lecture thoroughly disproving an older scientist's theory, and after the lecture the older scientist came down and shook the young man's hand. I find that lack of ego in the search for truth to be admirable and heartwarming, and I try to be the same. My experience on this forum is that, for the majority, factual correction is nothing personal, but simply intellectual housekeeping.
Then there's what Adam Savage frequently says on Mythbusters: "I love being proven wrong!" It's so much more interesting that way, because you get to learn something new.
True, but OTOH it isn't meant literally (since it's physiologically impossible).What if a character says "Oh, go fuck yourself"?
"R" Sexual connotation.
True, but OTOH it isn't meant literally (since it's physiologically impossible).What if a character says "Oh, go fuck yourself"?
"R" Sexual connotation.
One Google search is all it takes to disprove that.
True, but OTOH it isn't meant literally (since it's physiologically impossible).What if a character says "Oh, go fuck yourself"?
"R" Sexual connotation.
Honestly, I think that one's not really used being used in a sexual context. More often than not, "Go fuck yourself" is not meant literally, intended as a suggestion, or taking place during a sexual situation. Yeah, there's a literal meaning, but, in context, it's usually just another way to say "Drop dead!" or "Go to hell!"
"You might as well confess now. We'll get a warrant if we have to."
"Go fuck yourself!"
Nothing sexual about that exchange at all.
There's a great book called Disney War by James Stewart (no, not that James Stewart) that covers Michael Eisner's tenure at Disney, which began just after Splash, and the early parts deal a lot with his struggle to keep the company from seeming hopelessly old fashioned without destroying its family-friendly brand.
(The later parts deal with Eisner losing all touch with reality (The Sixth Sense? It'll never fly! Survivor? CSI? Who would watch that crap? Put Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on for three hours every night!) and are far more entertaining.)
To split hairs, the meaning of the expression is still sexual, but employed in a figurative way.
It is one of the weirdnesses of modern life that people can say something "sucks" in a G-rated TV program. It's a homophobic reference to fellatio, people!
Hardly the first innocuous word with a sexual origin. "Punk" used to mean "prostitute." And it's possible that "jerk," as in a mean or unpleasant person, started as a masturbation reference.
Still, being able to get away with "sucks" on commercial TV is a comparatively recent development. Broadcast standards with regard to profanity, sexual content, violence, etc. have relaxed enormously over the past few decades. Sometimes farther than I'd like, at least where depictions of violence or disgusting/scatological references are concerned. Those are the sorts of things I'd like to be given the option to avoid seeing. Sometimes I miss the restraint of older TV, though in other ways I don't.
For the record, "jerk" still gets used as a masturbation reference on occasion. Whether that was its original definition, I do not know.
^Yes, of course it does as a verb, but I mean as an epithet for describing a person, as in "You stupid jerk!" In that context, it's considered a harmless, kid-level insult, the sort of thing that censors redubbing an R-rated movie for television might put in place of "dick," say. And the irony is that the "harmless" use as an insult may have descended directly from the more adult use as a masturbation reference.
Also why kid cartoons can sometimes get away with things by using words to their advantage. The adults know what the character probably means, but the kids don't, and the censors probably missed it. Though sometime you wonder when the characters sort of acknowledge the words other meanings directly. Looney Toons and its successors in the late 80s and 90s does quite often.
By the early 90s, my father was amazed that a 4:00pm afternoon cartoon on FOX could get away with using the word "anal" on TV. In the context of the line "Lets not be anal" said by one Slappy Squirrel. That and others got him into watching some modern cartoons.
I got him into Animaniacs (Slappy Squirrel in particular), The Tick, and somehow South Park and Futurama (the later two he still watches much more than I do, and I watched them out of curiousity early on, and he liked them more).
By the early 90s, my father was amazed that a 4:00pm afternoon cartoon on FOX could get away with using the word "anal" on TV. In the context of the line "Lets not be anal" said by one Slappy Squirrel. That and others got him into watching some modern cartoons.
I got him into Animaniacs (Slappy Squirrel in particular), The Tick, and somehow South Park and Futurama (the later two he still watches much more than I do, and I watched them out of curiousity early on, and he liked them more).
Animaniacs... the champion of innuendo... "Good night, everybody!"
"I am a pianist!"
"We've gotta do something about your potty mouth."
One of my favorite scenes from Pinky and the Brain was when Brain was trying to conquer the world through subliminal messages in country music. His song is such a big hit that he (as Billy Bo-Bob Brain) lands an interview on the Ralph Emery Show.
Animated versions of Garth Brooks and Dolly Parton appear on the show with Brain. Dolly is leaning over Brain as she makes a comment or asks a question to him, and Brain replies with: "I would say puberty has been very kind to you."
I was watching that in a hotel room, and fell out of my bed laughing till breathlessness.
Have to say though, funny as Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain were....ya' just can't beat the original Warner Bros Looney Toons.
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