Feature: Ticket Booth Tyranny (Part Two)

Part Two: Time to fight back against ticket booth tyranny. Some ideas for circumventing fake piety, including making Labor Day "Take a Geek Kid To A Restricted Movie Day". This could be an annual event in the ascending Geek Nation.

How to strike back against the petty harassment of kids trying to see movies like "South Park?, " and the usurping of decisions that should be theirs and their parents?

- Hit them in their pocketbooks. " If movie chains are going to refuse admission to movies that contain explicit sexual imagery or profanity, MP3 them. Download the movies on ICQ or Hotline, or other sites where they are becoming readily available, just as many kids did with the postponed "Buffy" finale. Watch how quickly they'll lighten up on ticket-booth vigilanteism. Harmless, funny, or overtly rebellious and political movies - "South Park," "American Pie," " Something About Mary" - are not in any sense dangerous to kids over the age of nine, or probably, even under. They are bristling with outsider geek humor and nerd sensibility.

- Squawk. Complain to theater managers; call and write movie chains. Tell them we don't want them making moral judments about what kids should see, that adults ought not be forced to intrude on their children's privacy or buy tickets to movies they don't want to see because theater chains and film studios are too dumb or cowardly to stand behind the things they make and sell.

- Improvise. Remember that the restrictions on young moviegoers are usually led by teenagers themselves, the employees of the movie chains. No studio CEO would be caught dead near an actual ticket booth talking to kids who see movies. These adolescent guardians and the movie theaters they work at can be hacked. Tell them you're a priest or minister demonstrating the pervasive reach of evil. Tell them you have a stomach disorder and have to leave the theater frequently. Tell them you're a Balkan refugee who speaks no English and doesn't dare leave the theater alone.

Also remember that, being teenagers, they are easily distracted. The kids stationed outside theaters to keep children out invariably drift off, get a snack, yak with their friends. They don't really care about the dumb rules they're enforcing.

- Kids: Be patient. Hang near the video game and wait for your chance. Ask adults leaving the theater if you can borrow the ticket stub for the movie you want to see, so that once inside, you can show it if an usher demands it. If they notice it's for the wrong time, burst into tears, whine, howl. Demand that they stop picking on you. Businesses hate scenes, especially with kids. Or buy tickets for "Tarzan," then, when the ushers stop paying attention, dart into the verboten movie. If you get caught or expelled, tell them you made a mistake, go back into "Tarzan" and try it again.

- Or get a few of your friends together and demonstrate against especially rigid theaters. Write nasty letters about them to the local paper. The very idea of protesting these silly restrictions would make news. There is no publicity a movie chain wants less than to have local kids picketing them, charging violations of their freedom.

-- Adults: Fight Ticket Booth Tyranny. Observe Take A Geek Kid To A Restricted Movie Day this Labor Day. Find a smart 13-year-old who wants to see something off-limits and take him to a movie, or, once during that long weekend, go to a nearby movie theater and help kids trying to get in. Even better, volunteer to take kids you know, too. Buy a ticket to "South Park," walk them in, then watch for a half-hour. It's a funny, biting movie, and the ushers have usually wandered off by the time you want to leave. If they haven't, tell them you're a physician, you got paged and you have an emergency appendectomy to perform. Big corporations like movie chains and video stories (studios, too) hate trouble. They're restricting access to movies because they think it will shut block-headed politicians up. If movie-goers make more noise than the politicians, they'll fold, and quickly. If all else fails, then the Web will become the world's biggest movie chain, a process already underway. Note to entrepeneurs: Time to sell popcorn and Twizzlers online.

Comments

Lame activism

[CaseyB]

- Hit them in their pocketbooks. " If movie chains are going to refuse admission to movies that contain explicit sexual imagery or profanity, MP3 them. Download the movies on ICQ or Hotline...

So, because the theatre won't let them in to see this great South Park movie, they should punish the creators of South Park financially. Am I missing something?

-- Adults: Fight Ticket Booth Tyranny. Observe Take A Geek Kid To A Restricted Movie Day this Labor Day. Find a smart 13-year-old who wants to see something off-limits and take him to a movie, or, once during that long weekend, go to a nearby movie theater and help kids trying to get in.

If you're got the time and energy fight for a "cause", then PLEASE use that valuable initiative to do something USEFUL, instead of annoying minimum-wage employees while they're working. Go volunteer at a shelter, pick up litter, anything.

This is the lamest rant I've ever seen. Did venting some frustration over silly policy at a theatre really require a two-part article on slashdot?

A parent's side

[lar3ry]

I may not be as eloquent as Jon, but as a parent, it is *I* or my wife that makes the decision as to which movies my daughters (ages 10 and 11) can see. Right now, they'd love to see South Park, but my wife dislikes the show, so we'll wait for it to come out on video. They have shown no interest in American Pie, and they laughed at Something About Mary last year (they didn't understand some of the scenes).

Right now, we are kind of lucky in that whatever intrigues the girls is something that either my wife or I would like to see. Otherwise, we try to convince the kids to wait until it comes out on video... this is usually a short wait.

Will I take them to see Eyes Wide Shut? Perhaps not. We made a similar decision years ago with Sliver.

But in each and every one of these cases, it was my wife and I that made the decisions as to the suitability of a movie for our children. We don't necessarily trust an MPAA rating; they are inconsistantly applied. There are other services right here on the web such as Screen It which gives a lot more information about a particular movie than any single R or PG13 could do.

Perhaps Clinton and Congress are bemoaning the lack of parental responsibility in this country. I may be the exception rather than the rule in how I make my judgments; I cannot talk for other parents.

Having the MPAA's rating system "enforced" by theatre managers is silly, and is deserving of all the contempt you can give it.

However, Jon's suggestion that adults hang out and pick up minors to "escort" them to see a movie sends chills up and down my spine. If I were to see that, I'd probably alert the authorities.

That's just my opinion.
--

but there are two sides

[gnarphlager]

What about the non-consenting parents? That's the issue at hand here. Everyone has to suffer because no one wants to parent anymore. I snuck into movies when I was a kid. I saw alot of stuff I prolly shouldn't have, or should have had a parent there do discuss it. But my parents didn't care, and I ended up an anti-social geek posting irrelevant comments on /. ;-)

Sure. Take a geek kid to a movie. But make sure the parents decide they should see it. And make sure they understand what they saw. Some 13 year olds can handle it. Some cannot. It happens that way. I wish it didn't, but it does. And I couldn't morally be in that position to say.

Take for example, Eyes Wide Shut (ha! I knew I'd get a chance to discuss it!!!). If Kubrick was alive it would have gotten the NC-17 rating in the States because he was very adamant about not editing the film. But it was edited. Because theatres don't want to be responsible for 13 year olds with tickets to Tarzan sneaking in because of the higher rating. They don't want to be responsible for children watching it WITHOUT their parents consent (you remeber the Showgirls mess? That was icky EVERYWHERE). I saw the movie and I loved it. Alot of 'adults' didn't understand it, and I can see how the symbology and metaphors would be LOST on a 13 year old. So what would the point of them seeing the movie be? It was a film written for adults.

South Park is an exception. It was written with 13 year olds in mind. The humor, despite it's wide appeal is very juvenile. And the vulgarity was thrown in to appeal even MORE. The point is, a 13 year old could get MOST of it. But I still maintain that the responsible parent should discuss the movie; see what it means to the child.

I don't mean to sound preachy (I realize I do). Take the geek kid. I'm behind that. But be sure it's not behind the parents back. And if the parent doesn't want to discuss it with the kid, take that role too. Who doesn't like discussing movies? It's not the film that causes children to shoot thier classmates; it's the presentation.