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

...and nudity in front of children, right? I mean, as long as it's funny? As long as get our yuks?

I am absolutely not opposed to crudity, anti-PC humor, the whole nine yards, as long as it's all kept between adults and adult characters where it belongs. Sometimes crude and vulgar can be hysterically funny (although the mere fact of something being crude and vulgar isn't necessarily funny, which a lot of writers and directors seem not to know).

But are we really OK with child actors getting "f@#k" and "sh$%" and various other kinds of profanity hurled at them, or even with having the words in their own lines? Or with an adult woman baring breasts in front of a 10-year-old? This has gotten to be a habit so common as to be both banal and tremendously inappropriate at the same time.

Yes, there are ways you can shoot around it without the child actor actually being exposed to it (although substituting near-profanity and dubbing later is just a cop-out, since the kid "hears" the word he knows is supposed to be there). And I suppose there's a difference between creating the illusion that a younger child is being subjected to this stuff while not actually subjecting the child actor to it, versus having a real person (the child actor) in the middle of it.

But even then, how far can you go with it? Or not "can," but "should"? If you depict an adult woman making sexual advances to an 11-year-old character, is that alright as long as you don't actually make the child actor do it -- if you use various techniques to put it on screen for audience consumption? Point is, either way, isn't there something more than a little bit wrong with using the shock value of children in situations like this to get our entertainment jollies?

And before anybody starts with the "parents were OK with it" argument, that's not an argument that washes. At all. If a parent is OK with a 10-year-old having sex or simulating sex on camera, should we be alright with that? I seriously wonder whether something like baring breasts in front of a 10-year-old for humor and entertainment value isn't illegal under some law. But whether it is or not, have we really gotten to the point where we'll sacrifice anything for another laugh? What is the limit?

And as for the "people freak out about nudity too much" and "films get an R rating for nudity but PG or PG-13 with heads being chopped off," I agree. But the alternative to freaking out about nudity is not to have a child actor staring at the bare breasts of an adult woman who is only a co-worker. If you're OK with nudity in the home and nothing weird is going on, your business. But in the workplace, to be depicted on film and put up on huge screens in front of millions of people? Come on. You know there's a difference.

I mean, am I crazy here? Don't think so.