My 11-year old daughter has a crush on Johnny Depp. I’m sure she’s not alone in her demographic; Depp has successfully infiltrated the hearts of kids, pre-teens, teen & adults with his roles as pirate, nutty candy factory owner, shear-handed boy and more.
About a year ago, Miss D (my daughter) was at a family friend’s house. While we four parents went out to dinner, the kids– a responsible lot, watched over by a 16-year old sibling– made dinner and then settled down to a movie, a Johnny Depp/Tim Burton flick entitled, Sleepy Hollow. That was cool wiith me. I mean, Tim Burton, spooky fun, great folklore… But then when we came home and I idly looked over the DVD box, I noticed that it was rated R. My daughter had NEVER seen an R-rated movie before. I spoke before I thought and said, “This is rated R?” Well, my wife and the other parents were like deer in headlights, then the other mom, playing her role as she felt was expected, turned to the 16-year old. “You let them watch an R-rated movie??” I knew she was doing this for our benefit. Yes, our friends are LDS, but they don’t have quite the same constraints on films as we do. Not that they let their kids watch anything, they just look for content, not ratings (I secretly agree with them, but don’t like getting the stink-eye at home). O n the way home, Miss D assured us over and over again that there was nothing wrong with the movie, that the the rating was probably R because a lot of heads were chopped off. She loved Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane and she really wanted that movie. Oh, and she has a second new love now– Christopher Walken.
Well, one day when I was alone in Target, I secretly bought the DVD, took it home and watched it. Miss D was right: No swear words, no sex, just a lot of lobbed off heads delivered in very cartoony Tim Burton-fashion. Something else struck me about this experience. Jaws, Poltergeist and other movies we’ve seen as a family were rated PG-13 and far more intense than Sleepy Hollow. The rating system, after all, was created by humans and the films are sometimes inconsistently rated. So now, Sleepy Hollow is the one R-rated movie we let our daughter watch. However…
This Christmas Depp & Burton are coming out with yet another gruesome, fun film, Sweeney Todd. Gleeful, dark, bloody… and another dilemma to face. Go to sweeneytoddmovie.com and watch the trailer– I want to see it! Now how tell my daugther she can’t…
2 responses so far ↓
1 Fulano Detal // Nov 11, 2007 at 9:06 pm
So are you saying this kind of violence (in Sleepy Hollow) is just fine to watch?
“Inside the church, a man hits another man with a cross (drawing blood), causing another man to shoot him and then wave his pistol to ward off the others who now come after him. The horseman then throws a stake that breaks through a window and impales this man (with bloody results). With it tied to his rope, the horseman then pulls that man from the church and drags him across the ground until he runs into a fence. The horseman then comes up and beheads the man. We then see the two dead men in the church with some blood on the floor around their bodies. ”
“The horseman breaks into a home and comes after a man inside. The man throws a chair at him and then fights him with an ax until the horseman lops off his head. The horseman then approaches the man’s wife (while carrying the man’s severed head). We then hear the sound of him striking her and then see her head roll across the floor (and her son, hidden under the flooring, sees her dead gaze looking down at him through the cracks in the flooring). The horseman then hears the boy underneath the floor and we then see him breaking through the flooring to get to the boy. He then grabs him and pulls him out.”
“Cutting open a hole in a tree that bleeds blood, Crane and the others are suddenly surprised by the sight of many bloody, severed heads inside it. ”
You say, “No sex” in the movie..
“Crane comes across someone on top of Lady Van Tassel having sex with her in the woods at night. We briefly see (from above and from a bit of a distance) some movement (but no explicit nudity) and then see his head move down her body (but not quite to her crotch). She then takes a knife and slices her own hand with it (in something of an S&M moment) and then smears blood on him. ”
Are you sure you’re not a little desensitized?
Would you really feel comfortable watching the above movie with President Hinckley or the Lord?
As you mention, the prophets counsel to not just look at the ratings, but also the content. But the results — if you review the content honestly — is that you’ll see fewer PG-13 and PG movies rather than seeing more R movies.
Before watching a movie, I’ve always found it helpful to look up a movie at sites like www.screenit.com (which list every objectionable item - profanity, sex, violence, etc. — in a move) so I can make an objective decision about a movie’s content.
2 David // Nov 12, 2007 at 7:53 am
Thanks for the website referral. I will definitely use it when puzzling over a movie for my daughter.
I agree I’m probably a bit desensitized, having grown up loving horror movies as a kid. The movies I watched were on the order of Frankenstein, The Pit & the Pendulum and Taste the Blood of Dracula. That said, I have no stomach for the latest stuff like Hellraiser, Hostel, Saw and those other “bucket-o-blood” and “let’s see how much we can gross you out” pics. So even my desensitization has its limits.
It sounds as if you grabbed those descriptions from somewhere (perhaps the referred site) rather than recalled what you watched yourself. I’m sure by itself the written description made it sound horrible. But if you had seen Sleepy Hollow, you would have realized how cartoonish it was– sort of like Beetlejuice does Washington Irving. The so-called “sex” scene you recounted was as tame– if not tamer– than the scene in Young Frankenstein where the monster takes Elizabeth.
As for feeling comfortable watching the movie with the prophet or the Lord, I’ve always found that question to be a parochial guilt trip. I wouldn’t be comfortable watching Spongebob Squarepants with the prophet or the Lord.
I don’t claim to have the same video taste as the General Authority, but after a lifetime of movie-watching and a daily lifestyle of prayer and LD Sainthood, I’ve got a pretty good internal barometer of what makes me feel “icky” and what doesn’t, and I’ve got a sense of what Miss D can watch, too (hence, no Sweeney Todd, regardless of Johnny Depp & Tim Burton). For what it’s worth, a year later, Sleepy Hollow is STILL the only R-rated flick she can watch. I’m in no hurry to expand her horizons.
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