It's Movie Night!

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was 1982. I was four years old. It was nighttime and I was wedged between my parents on the couch in our living room. We were watching Wes Craven's Swamp Thing. Cue Adrienne Barbeau's topless scene in the swamp. I turned, looked up at my dad and asked, "Why is she naked, Daddy?" Moments later, I found myself in bed, thus ending my late night movie privileges. My parents reached a new parenting milestone that night. Gone were the days when they could watch "grown-up" movies while I was still awake. My little four year old brain was starting to connect the dots and I was asking questions about the adult situations flashing on the television set. In their defense, Swamp Thing was rated PG. They didn't know there was a skinny dipping scene in swamp water when they said, "Hey! Let's watch Swamp Thing tonight! Terese can watch it... it's only PG." (They didn't have the PG-13 rating back then and Swamp Thing didn't meet the R rating requirements.) Besides, who goes skinny dipping in the swamp?! No one does. Well, no one except Adrienne Barbeau.

Packing for swamp trip: Négligée... check.
Photo Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Swampthing.jpg

The Hub and I are movie enthusiasts. Throughout our relationship; pre-marriage, marriage, and before our spawn arrived, we would go to the movies every week. I remember a time or two when we would see every movie playing at the local theater and have to wait several weeks for a new release. We also had Blockbuster cards and would rent multiple movies to watch in the evenings. It wasn't uncommon for us to walk out of a Blockbuster with a comedy, an action adventure, a horror, a musical, and a documentary film in our bag. We watched a lot of great movies. We watched a lot of bad movies, too. We watched animation and slasher movies. We watched everything, no matter the movie rating. 

Photo Credit : http://www.marqueecinemas.com/ratings.asp
For more info about ratings - http://www.mpaa.org/ratings/

It wasn't until the night that we sat down with his parents (before they were my in-laws and the Hub and I were into our first year of dating) and watched Eyes Wide Shut together, that we took notice of the movie ratings. That was the longest 159 minutes of awkward ever. We agreed not to watch NC-17 movies with them again. (The theatrical version of the movie was R and we didn't notice that the DVD featured the unrated scenes.)

I couldn't look The Hub's dad in the eyes for weeks after  this.
Photo Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eyes_Wide_Shut.jpg

Our movie watching has declined dramatically over the last six years. Going to the theater is reserved for special date nights and we probably only go to the movies once or twice a year now. The first movie I watched in a theater after S was born was Peter Jackson's King Kong. S was only a few weeks old at the time. My mother-in-law watched her so we could get out of the house for a few hours. We were so excited. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bust. When I wasn't crying because some of Kong's facial expressions resembled my newborn's facial expressions, I was dozing off in my seat. We decided to stick with renting movies at home until my hormones and sleep schedule got back on track.

Oh! Wook at the sweet widdle gorilla face!
Photo Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kingkong_bigfinal1.jpg

The Hub and I continued to watch movies of any rating for a couple of years after S came along. Most of the time, she would fall asleep in my arms or play with her toys, completely unaware of the movie. Around the age of three, S started asking questions about what was happening on the television and we knew the freedom of any movie, any time was over. It was G/PG movies from then on until the kids were asleep. 

Isn't it funny how that goes? As a child, you are sequestered to the G/PG world. Everything is carefully monitored. Your parents talk to each other using code and spelling out words. Brilliant bad words are replaced with silly alternatives like, "Oh, fudge" and "darn it all to heck!" They cover your eyes to shield you from scenes of violence or nudity. They make you leave the room just when things get interesting. But, don't worry... Everyone lives happily ever after. Then you graduate to PG-13. Oh, the innuendoes! Oh, the explosions! Oh, the slightly colorful language! Oh, the swamp water skinny dipping glory! This is a nice place to hover for a while. You just have to be careful that you don't make a big deal about PG-13 life. The first rule of PG-13 life is that you don't talk about PG-13 life. If you abuse your PG-13 freedom, your parents will think you can't handle it and knock you back down to PG. Then, one fine day, you can proudly show your ID card to the ticket booth guy and buy a pass to the R rated world. Now you can make your own decisions. R stands for "restricted" and restricted you are no longer. It doesn't mean you have to partake in R... but no one can tell you not to now. 

Then you have kids and you're right back to G. You have to sneak your PG-13/R now. You can't be openly excited with anything above a PG around your kids or you'll have some explaining to do. As a kid, I thought my parents were just being lame when they kept me within my appropriate age ratings. Now, I realize that I was the lame one, not my parents. It was my fault that they could only watch campy horror films after I was in bed. I was the weakest link on the maturity chain and everyone else had to suffer. They, not I, should have been the ones to cry, "It's not fair! Just because she can only watch kiddie movies doesn't mean we HAVE to!" Kids don't realize that parents have to follow the rating rules, too. We don't get to pick the movie we might want to watch on family movie night. We have to fast forward through the content that may not be suitable for all viewers, even if it's the "good part." But, we do it because we love our children and we don't want to corrupt their innocent little minds too soon. We don't give them more than they can handle, so to speak. We save it for our date nights. We save it for after the kids are in bed. We are extremely grateful for how amazing the kid movies are now and don't mind watching the latest animated masterpiece from Blue Sky, Pixar, or DreamWorks Studios. We know that one day, the kids will be old enough to join us on the couch and watch any movie, regardless of the rating.

Well, maybe not any movie.

Photo Credit: http://weknowmemes.com/