As CNN reports, the PG-13 rating turns 20 years old:
“It has been two decades since the summer of 1984, when “Gremlins” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” caused an uproar among some parents who took their young children to the PG-rated films and walked out wishing the rating had suggested more guidance than just “parental guidance suggested.” The solution became the PG-13 rating.
The genesis of PG-13 is directly linked to Spielberg, who in 1984 became a lightning rod for parental ire. “I created the problem and I also supplied the solution … I invented the rating,” Spielberg, the producer of “Gremlins” and director of “Temple of Doom,” said in a recent interview.
With no middle-ground between PG and R, the ratings board of the 1980s frequently wrestled with the right way to classify movies that should and should not be viewed by children. The flaw in the Motion Picture Association of America’s rating system was that it lumped all children — from infants to 17-year-olds — into the same group.”
As for Indiana Jones and the KALI! KALI! DUM DUM SHIHVAI!!!! Temple of Doom, Spielberg, who also probably claims to have invented many other things, said: “Everybody was screaming, screaming, screaming that it should have had an R-rating, and I didn’t agree.” He also said: “I went to Jack Valenti, who’s a friend of mine, and I said, ‘Jack, why don’t we do a rating called PG-13, which would suit films like “Gremlins” and “Indy 2″?”‘ Spielberg said. “So I called Jack, and Jack said, ‘Leave it to me …’ ”
“Sometimes PG, unless it’s for an animated movie, it turns a lot of young people off. They think it’s going to be too below their radar and they tend to want to say, ‘Well, PG-13 might have a little bit of hot sauce on it,’” Spielberg concluded, before disappearing into the Heavens.
On a related note:
Parents Divided Over Practice of ?Hot Saucing? as a Form of Discipline
Lisa Whelchel, who played Blair on the popular 1980s TV series Facts of Life, is an advocate and practitioner of “hot saucing.”… “It does sting and the memory stays with them so that the next time they may actually have some self-control and stop before they lie or bite or something like that,” Whelchel said…
The actress-turned-home-schooling mom suggests using just a dab of hot sauce, placing it on your finger, then touching your finger to the child’s tongue.”
Spielberg’s solution would be for them to watch a PG-13 movie, preferrably the Indiana Jones movies, now available on DVD. Buy yours today.
When my brothers took me to see Red Dawn, the world’s first PG-13 movie, me, my brothers, and the two other people in the theatre on opening day did not notice anything different other than some of the on-screen characters cutting up a deer and drinking deer blood. According to the Internet Movie Database:
“This film was entered into the Guinness Book of Records as having the most acts of violence of any film up to that time.”
John has a long mustache.
Red Dawn may be one of the greatest cinematic masterpieces to hit the silver screen since “Citizen Kane.” I own it on DVD. Regrettably, it doesn’t have hot sauce in it or on it.
I’ve never heard of “hot saucing” as a punishment. Depending on the SHU (Scoville Heat Unit) rating of the sauce, this may indeed be a dangerous thing to do to children. I suspect that if a particularly naughty child were to be hot sauced often enough, he/she would build up a tolerance to it. You’d eventually just have to pepper spray the kid and hope for the best. Would this punishment work for Mexican children or children from India?
What happened to washing the child’s mouth out with soap?
The chair is against the wall.
By the way, is “hot saucing” considered torture according to the Geneva Convention? Did Lynndie England hot sauce anyone in Abu Ghraib?
I’m not sure what “best” can be hoped for after pepper spraying a young child. Perhaps the tot will build resistance to pepper, in which case a taser is the last and only available option.
Lyddie England DID use Lousiana Hot Sauce in copious amounts to Iraqi prisoners, all on the night shift and with the full endorsement of Rumsfeld. In Directive Order 666: Operation Tabasco, “…any and all SHU degrees of hotsauce, including the kind that after using it and then sitting in a tub of cold water will blast you and your burning colon into outer-space, is both permitted and strongly encouraged. If that doesn’t work, put a bag over his head. That’ll get ‘em to talk.” I’m sure Pvt. England was hot sauced as a child and forced to write out every line of dialog in Red Dawn.
JOHN HAS A LONG MUSTACHE.
THE CHAIR IS AGAINST THE WALL.
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0087985/quotes
The Colonel : All that hate’s gonna burn you up, kid.
Robert : It keeps me warm.
[At an execution.]
Jed Eckert : Do you want blindfolds?
Stepan Gorsky: This violates the Geneva convention!
Jed Eckert : I never heard of it!
Stepan Gorsky: Dogface! I show you how Soviet dies.
Robert : I have seen it before, pal.
Rumsfeld needs to pay. Operation Tabasco is clearly a human rights violation, and no amount of information gained through its use is worth the horror suffered by Iraqi prisoners who were forced to wear Pvt. England’s hot sauce-stained panties on their heads.
At least they weren’t hot sauced on their peepees.