Feature: Ticket Booth Tyranny (Part One)

Libertarianism looks better by the day. In case you haven't noticed, America's primary response to violence among the young has been to post the Ten Commandments in schools and unleash a wave of video chain store and ticket booth harassment against kids and their parents. One of two parts.

This week, I took a giant personal step towards Libertarianism and nearly got busted when I injected myself into a fracas between an out-of-control megaplex manager, a harried working mom and five geek kids trying to see "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut."

When it comes to violence, morality and the young, we're the Idiot Nation, the laughingstock not only of the civilized world but of the highly-wired generation of kids we're supposedly trying to protect. (Adults apparently need protection too. Only Europeans can see the sex scenes in Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut," cut out for Americans to avoid an NC-17 rating.)

Perhaps without noticing, you may have seen evidence of this new Ticket Booth Morals Squad, out to protect our allegedly vulnerable kids from dirty words and images. (Violent slaughter is, of course, fine anytime.) Signs posted all over theaters warn that rating policies will be strictly enforced. In some chains, even 17-year-olds aren't permitted in "R" rated movies. And Blockbuster Video announced last week that 17-year-olds can't rent "R" rated movies anymore either.

Adults are being grilled at the box office, informed that they must stay with the children for the duration of an "R" movie, or asked if they understand that the movie might be sexually explicit.

Of course, since most movie chains are owned by corporate fatcats but operated by diffident teenagers seething in their crummy, low-paying jobs, these Draconian rules merely pit kids against kids and sputtering adults. Teenagers are suddenly responsible for the moral policing of kids and films. Loopy but true.

The cultural lives of America's kids have long been uncensorable, anyway. Anything produceable in print or video is available on the Net or the Web.

Kids turned away at the box office will simply watch their movies and TV shows on a smaller screen, as the producers of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" learned last month when they cravenly cancelled the season finale (which featured a giant serpent at a high school graduation) to appease post-Columbine hysterics in politics and journalism.

The decision about what movies kids ought to see is clearly a decision for their parents to make, not Hollywood ratings boards, the video-store managers, discount retailing chains (like Wal-Mart) or movie-theater operators. If a parent thinks that "South Park" - available in bleeped form on cable every week - is appropriate for his her kid to see solo, that should be the end of the discussion.

It's not, though. Now, it's just the beginning.

I knew we were going to have trouble at the theater when the ticketseller refused to allow a dad to buy five tickets for a later showing because one of the kids hadn't shown up yet. "I just want to save him a ticket," the man objected.

"If I sell you an extra ticket, you might give it to some kid who will come in without a parent," huffed the teen behind the glass, in an encounter eerily similar to one in the movie itself.

So the guy gave up and a woman came up to the booth to buy five "South Park" tickets. Her son and four of his friends, all 14 or 15 --- regular viewers of the TV version - clustered eagerly behind her.

"You going in?," a the ticket-seller demanded; he couldn't have been 19 himself.

"No," said the mother truthfully. "I have to get to work. I'm giving them permission to see it, and I'll pick them up during my coffee break. " She stopped herself mid-explanation.

"Wait a minute!," she said suddenly. "Why am I telling you this? I'm their mom. It's okay by me for them to see the movie. What's it your business whether I'm there or not?"

The kid in the booth shook his head. "Can't sell you the tickets," he snapped. "You have to stay there the whole time, too. We have ushers watching for parents who try to leave."

The mother, nervously glancing at her watch, asked to see the manager, who was even more rigid and arrogant.

"It's our policy, lady," he said. "You got a problem? Call the company." He pointed to the General Cinema toll-free number on the wall.

I stepped up to the booth, intending to buy a ticket for "Eyes Wide Shut" - I'd already seen "South Park" twice - listening to this surreally pious claptrap and marveling at how American corporations - Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, the WB TV network, Loews, General Cinema - have mastered the art of appearing pious while being dependably greedy and manipulative.

I said I'd take the kids in. How reassuring, I thought, to know that these companies are making sure that Columbines will never happen again by keeping kids out of "American Pie" because it has some sex scenes.

"Wait! He's not with them," said the kid in the booth to the manager. Meaning me.

"Yes, I am. I'm the pastor of our local church. I'm here to show them "South Park" as an example of evil and immorality in the world. How can we fight Satan if we don't know him and can't see him? I hear he's in the movie. I hope you're not planning to interfere with religious teaching!"

The manager hesitated, said no, then yes, then went to make a phone call. Maybe I wasn't convincing as a pastor. In a minute, a cop sidled up and asked me if there was any trouble. "No sir," I said, "just the eternal battle between good and evil. We are trying to save some souls here."

He blinked, then stepped back. "Well, you have to move along," he muttered, bored. "Otherwise I'll have to ticket you for being disorderly."

I pictured calling my wife and telling her I'd been busted over "South Park;" could she bail me out? The idea kind of grew on me, although I wasn't certain she would bail me out.

The stymied manager and his moral aide conferred briefly. The ticket line was growing longer, the rumblings about the theater chain's intrusive and hypocritical policy getting louder. "Let the kids see the goddamned movie," thundered an enormous man from the back of the line. "Fox News is a lot worse!"

"I've already got the movie off the Net," one of the kids whispered to his friend's mother. "I just wanted to see it on the big screen. We can watch it at home if we have to."

I wasn't budging. The cop didn't seem anxious to get too involved with this particular kind of law enforcement. The manager, flushed, relented. "You can take them in, but you have to stay with them the whole time," he told me.

"Can I go to the bathroom?" I asked. "Is it okay with you if I stretch my legs? Can I come out for popcorn. Can I call my sick mom in Boise?"

The mother's jaw was open, but then she smiled, said thanks. "I've got to get to work," she said. I was going to reassure her, tell her that I watched "Beavis & Butt-head" with my daughter when she was eight or nine, both of us howling with laughter, but I thought better of it. "Good luck," she said. "Kids, call me if you can't get in or something happens."

So I marched in with the five boys, who were looking at me warily, hoping I wasn't actually some preacher. A teenaged usher followed us inside and stood nearby with folded arms. When I got up to go see my movie (I'd bought tickets to both), she stepped in front of me. "You have to stay," she said.

"I've got a rare kidney disease," I told her. "I have to go to the bathroom a lot. You can come with me if you want, but it takes a while. Is that okay with you? Do you want a note from my doctor?"

She didn't really know what to say, and we both knew she wasn't doing this voluntarily. She smiled and sat down, and I sent to see "Eyes Wide Shut." Every fifteen minutes or so, I popped back to check on the kids, at one point catching the great "Uncle Fucker" song. They were convulsed, but seemed other unchanged, morally speaking.

But this was a small and temporal victory. It's time to start fighting back against Ticket Booth Fascism. Who put these arrogant movie chain execs and clerks in charge of our movie-making decisions? What gives them the right to interfere with our ability to decide what our kids can see? How can movie chains - of all institutions -- buy into the profoundly stupid and demonstrably false idea that movies featuring explicit language and sex contribute to tragedies like Columbine?

In practical terms, don't they grasp that they are simply teaching a whole generation how to get their movies on the Net and the Web - something that will be quite simple in a year or so for millions of Americans -- rather than go to theaters and subject themselves to patronizing, humiliating - and completely pointless - hassles? Haven't theater chains ever ever heard the term "MP3?"

Monday, Part Two: a proposal: Take a Geek Kid To A Restricted Movie Day.

Comments

Hypocrisy and the MPAA

[Anonymous Coward]

I think one of the greatest things about South Park: Bigger Longer, and Uncut, is that one of the main themes is exactly what Katz is talking about here. I saw an interview with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and they had a lot to say about the Motion Picture Association of America. For those of you who don't know, the MPAA is the agency that rates movies, and all that fun stuff. One of the best quotes about them goes something like this [not a direct quote]:

"What we did was create a movie with all the gore we possibly could, with a huge war scene, people dying left and right, and immense amounts of death, destruction, blood, and all around violence. We showed it to the MPAA, and all they said was 'take out the rimjob joke, and it's ok'."

The hypocrisy that is prevalent in today's morality movements is ridiculous. You can turn on cable TV (sometimes even good old network tv!) and see people being eviscerated, but if a program contains a "dirty" word, or (*horror!*) a breast, it is relegated to pay-per-view or a premium channel.

Another non-direct (but close) quote from Kyle's Mom:

"As you go into battle, just remember what the MPAA says: Horrific, deplorable violence is OK, as long as nobody says any naughty words!"

The morality pushers are mostly hypocrites, and usually hypocrites who are too lazy to raise their own kids, and want the government to do it for them. It is not the governments job to make sure your children don't watch movies you feel are inappropriate. It is YOUR job as a parent to do so. If you don't want your kids watching porn on the playboy channel, DON'T ORDER THE PLAYBOY CHANNEL. Or how about actually talking to your kids about things, or making an effort to raise your kids yourself?

Of course, you could just bitch and moan and take freedom away from everybody in the name of morality so that the government can police everything you watch because you're too lazy to watch your own kids. That would be the easy thing to do. Sounds great. [/sarcasm]

It's painful, I tell you...

[jht]

I saw "South Park" this Friday at my local Lowes googleplex - it was a riot. There were a few young'uns there, but it was mainly college-age kids and thirtysomethings with a sense of humor (I like to put myself in that category). It's outrageous how the fallout from Columbine has triggered such a knee-jerk reaction on the part of the Clinton administration ("You really _should_ ID kids - we wouldn't want to have to regulate you, would we?"). As if a potty-mouthed crude cartoon (and it's 'R' rated competition) is going to be the one influence that corrupts our "precious youth"!

The truly disgraceful thing here is that we're gradually giving up our freedom of speech, and we're doing it voluntarily. I guess if "adult" themes like sexuality and language now must be kept from our impressionable youth, we'll just have to send them to see good, clean violent PG-13 movies. I'm so glad that we're protecting our young ones...

When I was a teenager, I worked at an "alternative" cinema in Connecticut that showed all sorts of fare, mostly unrated. I remember 14-year old kids going to midnight Rocky Horror screenings (I didn't go to one of those until I was 16!) - underage kids seeing foreign films with extensive nudity, teenagers filling the place for the annual "splatterfest" (with movies like Basket Case, 10,000 Maniacs, and the original TCM), and all the classic John Waters films like Female Trouble and Pink Flamingos.

Interestingly enough, we had no age policies at all, yet somehow our patrons didn't emerge from the theater to rape and pillage downtown Norwalk on a nightly basis. Go figure.

Bottom line: people who are doomed to be the nutcases of society will find a trigger - regardless of our misguided efforts to protect them. If there are more of them nowadays I'd look first at the trend to absentee parenting and easy access to weaponry before I blame the media - though that's the "easy" answer. But this is a society that doesn't like to look any deeper than
the surface.

Remember - those who would willingly exchange liberty for security deserve neither.

- -Josh Turiel

Re:Don't know what to say...

[arthurs_sidekick]

And about the "Ten Commandments" comment in the first part of your story - give me a break. Our country is closer now to "religious discrimination" then in ever has been - but only in the context of restricting prayer in school and the like.

Sorry, but I can't buy it. Christianity -- or, I should say, Judeo-Christianity, since the New Testament is the only one that has to do with Christ and the TC are in the Old Testament

(kids, always, always pay attention to the difference between the New and Old Testaments, they really paint quite different pictures of the moral life)

-- has a very loud voice in this country and I really can't buy the claim that it is unfairly marginalized (interestingly enough, and I don't necessarily include you, ultrapenguin, many of the same people who seem to demand special rights for christian viewpoints -- such as having schools give christianity a 'leg up' in publicly funded schools -- often scream the loudest about according human rights to homosexuals as "special rights").

I tell you, I get outright offended by some of the Ten Commandments. As a non-christian, I feel marginalized when they are thrown at me; the idea seems to be that I can't really be a moral being just because I don't go to church. This is not only false, it is perniciously so.

I heartily object to the one that tells us to have "no other gods" before the Judeo-Christian one. Not to mention other tidbits such as the one that says "thou shalt not kill" really says "thou shalt not murder" which is about as helpful as "thou shalt not do things which are wrong." Honor thy mother and father? No problem, as long as they deserve it. The absolutistic tone in which the TC are revered and understood by some is also positively detrimental, stifling honest moral thought.

Everyone accepts moral limits, even libertarians -- they just accept different ones than the "legal moralists" and cultural conservatives. The libertarian thinks it is immoral to interfere with others pursuits of their goals, so long as those pursuits do not interfere unfairly with others' pursuits of their goals. Vague though this principle may be, it is still clearly a *moral principle*. While I don't agree with the libertarian conclusions, I at least applaud them for attempting to come up with a mutually justifiable framework in which every individual can pursue his or her own conception of the good life.

I am not opposed to moral education or moral discussion in public schools; I am opposed to moral education that does not inquire after the *justification* of moral principles, and the "ten commandments" idea is just such a proposal. You can't justify some of those commandments, at least not as they are usually interpreted (i.e. as absolute rules); and the second you allow exceptions to them, you're in the game of providing reasons for allowing them.

great article

[PollyJean]

Wonderful article as usual. It's really sad to see so much buck-passing going on in the wake of Columbine.

Everyone turns into a pundit after something like Columbine happens. We all had our $0.02 to contribute. Mine consisted of talking about parental responsibility. It's sad, however, when parents aren't allowed to take responsibility. The kids Katz mentioned in his article all seemed to have responsible parents. They knew what the kids were seeing and approved. And yet they weren't allowed to parent. That's just stupid.

I'm personally not a big fan of bootlegging. I think it's wrong to not pay the artists for their work. But I'm not a fan of censorship, either, & I think it's great when people use their resources to overcome censorship. The kid with the downloaded copy of the South Park film was great! Thanks to the Net, I got to see the season finale of Buffy before it aired. I've also got in my grubby little hands a video tape of "Earshot," the episode WB has yet to air, which, as it turns out, was one of the best episodes they made last season &, oddly enough, had a message very appropiate to the post-Columbine atmosphere. It was supposed to air the week after Columbine, but WB got scared. Ironically, it could have been shown as an anti-school violence episode with the message of "everybody hurts so don't kill people 'cause you're hurting, too." Instead, they chickened out.

I'm hoping that the neo-Puritanism through which this country is going is reaching the end of its swing and the pendulum starts to head back the other way. If not, we're going to continue to have kids not being able to see South Park, but we are going to continue to see kids being abused by their peers in schools, ignored by the pundits (I'm still pissed that the kids in Columbine got front-page coverage and people writing songs about them and the like, but black boys like my cousin who get shot down in the street continue to be constantly ignored as if their lives weren't of equal value to those of suburban white kids) & ignored by their schools' administrations. Things aren't going to change as long as people continue to avoid taking responsibility.

Geeks getting abused in school is old-news, now, I suppose. I was one of them, so I know. It just a shame that the things that make us geeks (i.e. infatuation with silly things like South Park) are being taken away from geek kids, but the real problems continue to be ignored. Kudos to Katz for getting those kids into the movies. Unfortunately, getting into movies seems to continue to be the least of geek kids' problems.

Sorry for the long post.