Welcome to the multiplex where underage fourteen-year-olds buy tickets to an animated PG Disney movie and then sneak into the hottest adult entertainment they can find. Exposed to breasts, sex, violence, trysts, infidelities, mass murders and more, teens return home to join in virtual combat on their X-boxes before getting their soft porn fill from MTV. Somewhere in the middle, way below shock level, is the verbally suggestive Gossip Girls which fell into moral line, or closer to it, in 2006 after the FCC fined CBS affiliates $3.6 million for airing what they deemed was an indecent teen orgy scene on Without a Trace. The wake up call has forced the writers of Gossip Girls to push the envelope as gently as possible.
But for teens the flap over the CW show is a drop in bucket. Swimming in the lewd, the crude and the eyeball popping, they're left to navigate the moral playing field on their own. After the success of Borat, kids lined up to see Sacha Baron Cohen go sexual and wild in the R-rated Brüno. For those who never made it in, they can count the years on one hand that it will take before they turn 18 when they can finally have a movie marathon with all those steamy, erotic and provocative films that flunked the PG-13 test but were pandering to teens all along.
Weaned on lots of PG-13 violence,
teens may find a sexually charged flick to be the
ultimate escape.
Since they weren't allowed to watch the R-rated Amélie (2001), a tender, comedic and quirky character-driven film about a hopelessly romantic waitress from Paris, they might be dreaming about it. Ditto for a host of other films. The French hit, which starred Audrey Tatou and garnered five Oscar nominations, flunked the PG-13 test for female nudity, a scuffle and nude artwork. Instead, 2001 was the year they were invited to watch The Mummy Returns, A Knight's Tale, Pearl Harbor, Tomb Raider, The Fast and the Furious, Rush Hour 2 and Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The collective body count from these PG-13 films was certainly in the hundreds if not higher given the epic battle scenes in Lord of the Rings alone.
