so...we're all okay now with f-words...

It has nothing to do with political correctness, you f@#$ing moron. Go f@#k yourself.

I mean, how to even answer such a post? The question "am I crazy?" depends on the substance of what precedes it, nothing more or less. It has not a goddamned thing to do with sanctimoniousness.

I just love how almost all the initial responses here avoid any discussion of the substance of the post entirely.

Sometimes, I have had more problems with how scenes of death are pulled off in a comedy (Scary Movie, for instance) much more than the stuff depicted in Bad Words. I am just lucky I don't have kids of my own, or at least kids the age where the V-chip would be put to good use regarding this movie. All I'm saying is the genie was let out of the bottle a long time ago, and regardless of the genre of movie/TV show/video game/music, it aint going back in.

There's a lot more to worry about than a boy seeing a woman's boobs. The parents who let their kids see anything like this alone, for starters.

I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic.

Did I argue that it was new?

I think it would be 'wrong' for some kids, and not wrong for others, based upon factors like background/parenting, etc... I have no idea which category this child fits into, but making a definitive judgement without accounting for many variables most often results in bad law, so I would err on the side of 'not wrong', since it's less censorious.




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"Your mother puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?!"

Furthermore, and again IMO, Americans are far too closed-minded when it comes to nudity.

But the kids in a Stephen King novel aren't real. They're not actors. They're completely fictional.

Yeah, of course kids use language like that and do things like that. But now we're into the "it happens in real life, so it's OK to be depicted on film by child actors" thing. If I pushed that rationale a little, I'll bet you'd see it can't possibly hold up. The point is that we're really talking about degree, not kind. Every rational person I know -- and you certainly sound like one -- would say there are certain things that happen to real kids in real life that would be wrong to depict onscreen, especially when using child actors. So the question is where the line is. If "damn" and "hell" are OK, how about "sh!t"? How about "f@#k"? How about "motherf@#ker, get out of my motherf@#$king way, you little c$%t"? How about that with a 10-year-old? How about we go up two or three notches from that? Somewhere along the line, nearly everybody is going to bail out.

As for the breast-exposing scene, I think I can say with fair certainty that that sort of thing doesn't happen to a majority of 10-year-olds. Will it cause that actor to be scarred for life? Probably not. But do we really want our moral sense to depend only on damage or potential damage? I just used this analogy with somebody else: If you have a rape victim/survivor who gets through that horrible experience with not much long-term damage, or not any (there is such a thing), does that make the rape morally neutral? I'm pretty sure you'd say no. If so, then "damage" can't be the fundamental or sole reason for a moral and ethical system. With some things, the act of doing them is inherently wrong; damage is only a secondary question.

I actually am not opposed to some level of this sort of thing in films or stories about children or that have story aspects about children. I just think that there ought to be a limit to what a child actor is put through in that regard, and a limit to what age and developmental level of child would rightly see a film like that. I'll bet you know that among the kids you knew at a certain age, they really had no understanding at all, certainly not the understanding a rational adult with good judgment would have, about the things they (and you) were talking about or doing. Certainly that was true in my case. If those things are depicted onscreen, and you take kids of about that same age to see them, and if a child actor has been made to do them, what about the fact that it's a film (or a book) would make all those kids suddenly able to view or read these actions and words in a way that was artistically and intellectually balanced, valid, in the right context, however you want to put it?

Anyway...your reasonable, thoughtful response is much appreciated in the middle of a whole lot of mindless flaming. ;-)

Is this how you argue?

That's great that you have children. The world needed more a$$holes. We were starting to run short.

I bet you swear in front of them (even though you went on your little rant about the F word, lol).

You are way out of your league. You should stick with the people who already believe what you believe and who also won't address the substance because they can't.

It's kind of hard to take you seriously. Did you ever stop to think that people are riding you about this because you are acting like such a *beep* You say it's bad to show tits to kids and make them say *beep* but your attitude and your language in this thread makes it very difficult for me to take your supposed outrage seriously. I'm thinking at best "troll" albeit a successful one, or at worst borderline personality disorder. Based on what I've read from you in this thread alone I'd have to guess you are OK with your kids hearing profanity. Either that or you have very good self control around them.

Lets see how many expletives and insults you can throw at me now and further prove my point.

I have been trying to follow the discussion here -- it's not always clear to me who is responding to whom and the indentations don't make it much clearer -- but I thought that you, emncaity, were keeping your head when many about you were losing theirs but now yours suddenly pops off too and you start cursing in the worst way (i.e. wanting to make it clear just what naughty word you mean but not daring to spell it out, thus giving it the extra respect that an orthodox Jew gives to G-d) and then going on to make an ad hominem assault on whomever you were addressing. Your hard-won credibility just went up in a puff of smoke, at least for me.

My own position on these matters is that the decision on what words should be put into a child actor's mouth should be left to the child. I recall hearing an account (whose truth I cannot vouch for) about the dialogue for the amusing film 'The Last Action Hero' in which Arnold Schwarzenegger shared the screen with a 12-year-old newcomer named Austin O'Brian. The boy supposedly balked at uttering some word or phrase and was told to stick to the script or he would be replaced. According to the tale, Schwarzenegger said in that case the director would have to replace him too so the script was changed to include a comic reference to words that no one could say in a PG film. As I said I can't vouch for the authenticity of the tale but I would like to believe it was true. (PS: I don't know whether to apply the same standard to the question of nude boob display; I suspect most 12-year-old male actors would find that an acceptable part of their work.)

Aha! I just stumbled again on the unemncaityish post I referred to. And the hominem you ad-ded was that guy, the "goddamned self, idiot." Glad we got that cleared up :-)


And now that I have read more of your posts I'm afraid I will have to retract part of the praise I gave you for being generally cool-headed and refraining from invective. I see that you have in fact lashed out at a number of posters -- to the troll types who post two-liners spitting at you but also to some who have taken your arguments more seriously. I guess 'homines' would in fact have been a more accurate case to use in my rebuke ;-)


I hope to get to some of your substantive points and my somewhat differing views but that is going to take a while. (As I'm sure you know and as any writer would tell you, it takes a lot longer to write a short piece than a long one.)

So one question at that point is this: How simulated is it?

... because all of your questions here apply to that film as well. You could have folded it into one thread. The same question doesn't really need asking twice. Not to mention that you already had a representative sample of most people's feelings, and are pretty firm in your own views, so it's unlikely anybody's mind would be changed.

[That's in addition to the fact that your "simulated" exception certainly doesn't apply in Moonrise Kingdom.