Violent films should be monitored for children | Letters | Sept. 3

Published 5:06 pm Thursday, September 9, 2010

We’re fortunate to have at Lynwood Theatre manager who warns parents when an R-rated movie is too graphic for children.

She does this by email or when she spots a parent and child entering the theater. I believe she is in the minority of theater managers.

I stayed up many nights reading the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson.

I also enjoyed the movies as I had the stability of having first read the books.

The films only had time to thinly thread through the complicated plots and characters of the book – though they picked up all the violence.

The Swedish actors and the authentic location is what made the movies for me.

During the horror I looked away and whistled Dixie!!

If accompanied by an adult a child may attend an R-rated movie depicting extreme violence as in the most recent Larsson movie.

That violence includes: graphic rape scenes (of all orifices); a brother shooting and then burying his sister, with their father watching; a child lighting her father on fire; and pedophilia, torture, mutilation, and so forth.

Not the scenes on which a child should build her (his) dreams.

The movie, “Girl Who Played With Fire,” was ruined for me when I looked down at a 10-year-old exiting up the aisle beside me.

”I only watched the good parts” she replied when I hastily asked what she was doing “here.”

She was more astute than her parent to whom I spoke next.

The ratings must be changed. We don’t allow children into bars even with a parent; we try to protect them from pornography and child abuse; we do not allow adults to provide children with cigarettes.

Movie ratings should likewise protect children from exposure to the extreme acts in some adult-rated movies, even when parents are unaware of, or unconcerned by, the harm done through viewing such graphic violence.

But until the ratings are changed it will take a clear message from the community and from theater managers like TJ to let these parents know that we – as a society, a community, caring humans, and people who respect children – will not accept this behavior.

Parents rights vs. the protection of our children? That’s not debatable.

Marilyn McLauchlan

Bainbridge Island