Two hit films raise new concerns about protecting children
Ah, summer: that blithe season when the latest Steven Spielberg movies are in full bloom at the nation's theaters. Fantasy, fun and lighthearted adventure for all, right? Well, this year it depends on one's idea of fun. In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg's slam-bang sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, a man's heart is ripped out of his chest in a ritual sacrifice, and he is lowered alive into a pit of molten lava. In Gremlins, a fantasy co-produced by Spielberg and directed by Joe Dante, a boy's cuddly, otherworldly pet spawns a generation of vicious creatures that, in one scene, terrorize the boy's mother in the kitchen. She retaliates by churning up one gremlin in a food processor and exploding another in a microwave oven.
Grisly scenes like these have not hurt the box-office receipts of either picture. Indiana Jones earned a phenomenal $94.5 million in its first 23 days, and Gremlins grossed $ 12.5 million in its first weekend. But they have incited a torrent of complaints that the PG rating given both movies fails to warn impressionable young children. The outcry has come not just from peevish movie critics but from theater owners and parents as well. Carl Hoffman, a film buyer for the Dubinsky Brothers movie chain in the Midwest, says that 50 people stalked out of a screening of Gremlins because of the violence. Milwaukee Journal Movie Critic Douglas Armstrong, who does a radio call-in show, has been deluged with calls from unhappy parents. Says he: "Their faith in the movie rating system has been shaken."
Similar sentiments are growing in Hollywood. Last week the Motion Picture Association of America (M.P.A.A.) seemed close to making perhaps the most sweeping change in the rating system since it was established 16 years ago. Ready for unveiling is a new rating, known as PG-13, that would prohibit children under 13 from being admitted unless accompanied by a parent or adult guardian. The rating would presumably be used in the future for movies like Indiana Jones that are deemed acceptable for teen-agers but potentially harmful to younger children.
The PG-13 proposal has been endorsed by a number of studio chiefs and theater owners and by the chairman of the M.P.A.A. rating board. Even Spielberg, confessing in a TV interview that there were parts of Indiana Jones that he would not want a ten-year-old to see, advocated the creation of the new rating. The proposed change, however, has been opposed by M.P.A.A. President Jack Valenti. He argues that the current system is working well enough and that adding more classifications would cause more confusion. "Who is smart enough to say what is permissible for a 13-year-old and not for a twelve-year-old?"
Valenti asks. "Who can draw that line?"