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Rated PG13 for Brief Strong Language,Some Sexuality + Historical Smoking

posted 9 years ago by printsofdarkness
3 replies | jump to latest

"Historical Smoking"? 

- The content descriptor on the poster.

Taking the panties in a bunch over onscreen smoking to a new extreme, no?

So, the MPAA is saying because prevalent smoking was the accepted norm in the setting of the film, it's contextually correct and not an endorsement of cigarette smoking. Doesn't the rationale make the inclusion in the descriptor redundant, since the inference is that any other context should merit a content warning?

Thanks for the heads up, guys. Had it not been for the warning, I would have completely misread the film's tobacco use, and taken up the filthy habit. Because, as we know, suggestible filmgoers frequently emulate socially maladroit introverts.

- Do you want to know the nature of evil?
- No man, cause if I did then I'd be out of a job.

[–] auntijoan1 9 years ago

I don't usually bother looking at the reasons for a film's rating, but "historical smoking" caught my eye too, and I laughed. It's like those notices in ending credits stating there was no monetary compensation, or whatever, paid to the filmmakers to show smoking in a film. Really...!

[–] mathew5000 9 years ago

The MPAA's annotations are for use by parents; some parents may choose not to take their kids to movies with gratuitous smoking, but believe that historically accurate smoking is not gratuitous.

The scientific evidence is summarized here:
http://smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/research/about-evidence

[–] printsofdarkness 9 years ago

I never liked the term gratuitous, because I find its application subjective and well, gratuitous. I see the word used more often than not as code for objectionable content, irrespective of the context in which it appears in a film.

That aside, it's more probable that parents predisposed to take their child to see a film about chess players do so deliberately, as their child is thoughtful and precocious, and not because they couldn't secure a babysitter and stumbled into this particular film, kid in tow, unaware of its subject and content. That has occurred to me at screenings for movies with mass appeal and pointedly not for young children, like for instance Deadpool.

The eleventh hour is 10 o'clock and the end of the day has sweet FA to do with your opinion.