The "R" Card

[Ash]

I was recently reading Roger Ebert's "Movie Answer Man" column and a reader wrote to him asking about an 'R' card that some theater chain was using.

Here's the letter:

Q. "A theater chain in downstate Illinois is promoting something called, I think, the "R Card." Here's how it works. Parents can sign a statement authorizing their under-17 children to attend R-rated movies; the children are sold a card with their photo ID on it, and can show it at the box office to get into R-rated movies without a parent or adult guardian. What do you think?"

Charley Smith, Chicago

Here' s Ebert's response:

A. "As it happens, I was in downstate Urbana last weekend for my Overlooked Film Festival at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and one of the guests was MPAA President Jack Valenti, architect of the ratings system. His opinion of the R Card: "Just about the worst idea I've ever heard of." My opinion? This sounds like a ploy to increase under-17 ticket sales for R-rated movies. The ratings system works on a voluntary basis because theater owners enforce it. The theater chain should not have acted without MPAA approval."

I'm not sure where I stand on this personally.
Since I am not married and have no children I really have no position on it...I'm pretty much neutral.
I suppose this is more geared towards parents.

Since the majority of you here are married with children I was wondering what your position on this was.

Do you think it's a good idea?



Post Edited (05-07-04 21:03)

[jmc]

I wouldn't mind it if there was some cutoff age for kids to get the card, like 15 or 16 years old.   I don't know if kids younger than that should be able to see R movies by themselves.  But I don't think that there's much difference between a 15 and 17 year old as far as maturity and moviewatching.   And if I were a parent, I don't know if I'd care to be dragged to some of these movies just because my kid wanted to see them, so I can see why a parent might want to do it.  

But the key word in this is voluntary.  The MPAA recommendations are voluntary, so there's nothing wrong with theaters that decide to do this.  And it's not really the theaters who want to increase underage R attendance...they don't get a significant cut of box office profits [actually, I'm not sure if they get one at all] though I guess teenagers might be more likely to buy concessions.  I don't really get Valenti's reasoning.  "It's voluntary because everyone does what we tell them to do" just seems like classic doubletalk.

[BeyondTheGrave]

i dont have kids and not married either but i think thier a lot of loops holes to this "R" card. someone could get a adult thats not a parent to sign it or forge a signature on the statement themselves. the movie theather isnt going to check if thats thier really parent or really handwriting. are they?

"Dont be a fool for ur tool"

[Desslar]

jmc wrote:
 I don't really get
> Valenti's reasoning.  "It's voluntary because everyone does
> what we tell them to do" just seems like classic doubletalk.

I think the point is if the industry doesn't "voluntarily" self-regulate then the government will do it for them, and no one wants that.

[Mr. Hockstatter]

I guess I don't see anything wrong with it.  I've always thought the ratings system is a joke anyway.  I've seen plenty of R rated movies that really should be PG, while others have all the stuff you expect in an R rated film.  They make studios cut out 2 seconds of something here and 1 second there in order to get an R...it's silly.

[Ash]

To make the R card work even better, parents could research films on the IMDB or another site and then approve only a select few films for their kid/s to view.

Maybe they could make these cards swipeable and pre-program only certain films that are allowed.

The kid could just hand the card to the person in the box office, they would swipe it and the list of films the kids are allowed to view would pop up on a p.c. screen.

That combined with a photo I.D. on the card would allow parents to have strict control over what their children watch at the theater.

It would probably be expensive to implement though.



Post Edited (05-08-04 21:41)

[jga5000]

I know some 15 year olds that are wiser than a 19 year old. It might not be a bad idea. R movies these days in the theaters aren't as graphic as the unrated DVDs which kids still  manage to get.

The potential problem is if the kid has lazy parents who just sign whatever. My dad was like that, he'd sign permission slips without even knowing what it was for.