Labels are for Soup Cans

[bcholmes]

I rented some DVDs this weekend. One of them is The Missing with Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett. Rogers Video has put the following information on the DVD package:

Sex/Nudity: mild innuendo; male bare buttocks
Drugs/Alcohol: social/casual drinking; people are drunk; someone smokes
Violence/Scariness: fatal gunplay; dead and bloody bodies seen; kids are kidnapped; someone killed with mystical dust; someone kills herself; kids are physically assaulted; someone forced to eat dirt; an attempted rape; people killed with arrows; people fight; someone beaten to death; horses are shot; a horse shot with flaming arrow; people fall to their deaths
Objectionable Words/Phrases: approx. 5

Am I the only one who thinks that this is weird?

Comments

[sara-wolfe.livejournal.com]

they just gave away the plot of the movie. Weird descriptions.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I notice that they forgot to mention "people poisoned with chicken foot."

[sara-wolfe.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a movie I gotta see!

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Rogers does that on all their movie pkgs now, to alert parents to things they might not want their chidren to see.

I find it irritating, but then again, I hold the unpopular opinion that parents ought to do their own research regarding what their kids read, watch etc., instead of relying on other people to do it for them.

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the review of Return of the King that closed with, "Rated R, for some scary sequences, epic battle scenes, and one severed finger."

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

I find it mindboggling that there are people out there that would be upset to find that they were not warned that they would see someone forced to eat dirt, social drinking, smoking, and a bare bottom, that the gender of the person that the bottom is attached to would matter much in the decision whether to watch or not. That level of sheltering cannot be good for anyone's development.

[purplepaisley.livejournal.com]

I find it hilarious. I'm wondering who gets paid to count rude words.

There is often more entertainment value in reading the warning notices than there is in watching the videos. This is particularly true for dramatic readings given while standing in the aisle.

[starstraf.livejournal.com]

I used to help maintain a list of movies with Suicide in them for the suicide survivors group - for those people that are still trying to recover from a recent family members suicide it is often best not to see suicide when trying to relax and socialize

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. Thanks for bringing it up.

Re: Labels are for Soup Cans

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

your subject header is going into my quotes file, *grin*.

yeah, i think that's weird. it's irritating because i think people sweat a lot of this stuff way too damn much. but i also think it's neat in a geeky classification way. i would want to add categories! such as gender -- does it qualify under the bechdel rule? how about entries under the seven deadly sins? (ok, so first i want to redefine which sins those are, but that's another story.)

oh, and i'd love to see their list of objectionable words. is "republican" on it? i wonder who has the job of counting the objectionable terms -- can you just imagine being asked in school what you want to be, and saying "i want to grow up to count objectionable words in movies for a video rental service".

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I've always found those summaries odd.

It's kind of funny when they count objectionable words/phrases in really foul movies, though.

I'll occasionally come across ones that have things like: "Objectionable words/phrases: 372." Who counted that?

I find the specific descriptions a little weird, too. Like, are there a lot of people who think, "Well, if someone gets shots, that's okay, but if they get shot *with an arrow*, that's out of the question," or, "I'm okay with people being blown up, but there's no way I can abide someone being forced to eat dirt."?