I think it’s sort of funny (if pathetic) the way people’s children are apparently raging pussies about fairly tame ads. There is no “graphic violence” in these ads. None. There are flash frames and loud noises and quick cuts and scary music. They can’t show graphic violence in an ad. It’s simply not there.
I don’t know, maybe kids are different these days, but I loved that kind of shit when I was a kid, and so did just about everyone I knew at school. I was one of the “turn away and hide in my hands” kids (there’s an incident at a theatrical screening of Jaws 3D that is still not discussed lightly in the family) until I saw Alien when I was 8, after striking the deal with my dad that if I was allowed to see it, I wasn’t allowed to wake my parents up if I had nightmares about it (I was a pest about seeing the movie for months after finding the comic book adaptation on my dad’s bookshelf). My dad watched with me and explained how they did the effects and such, and no movie ever scared me ever again.
I guess all kids are different. As a preteen I loved bloody war movies and karate movies and whatnot, but as a younger kid, the (pretty tame, honestly) Something Wicked This Way Comes gave me about a month’s worth of vivid nightmares that were really traumatic for me at the time. Hell, just thinking about that movie still gives a bad feeling.
As a parent, I don’t think it’s my job to shield my kids from all of life’s unpleasant experiences but I sure as hell am going to do what I can to avoid exposing them to shit that will make them wake up screaming for an entire week (or month).
Wow, sucks to be your kid. All I know is that while the trailers for the New Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw III and Black Christmas might not have had true graphic violence, that imagery is CLEARLY not appropriate for an 8 year old that may still like football because they play Pee Wee or Pop Warner.
It doesn’t have to be exposed brains and entrails to be fucking scary and scarring as hell. I’m sure we all have vivid graphical images from our childhood years that, today, are tame, but which really affected us at the time. I have a bunch of disturbing images that haunt me:
horsehead full of eels in “The Tin Drum”
carousel scene in Something Wicked This Way Comes
end of Indiana Jones (face melting)
the wicked witch in Snow White
a picture of a head on a stick in a Time/Life book on WW2
beheaded Medusa in “Clash of the Titans”
just about anything from Poltergeist
just about anything from Amityville Horror
or the Shining
or, for fuck’s sake, the original Salem’s Lot TV movie
I guess I was a pussy, but at age 7 or so a lot of the above freaked me out.
They cared so much that the Housewives promo ran. They cared so much that AFTER that their response was “Yeah, it was inappropriate and we wish they hadn’t shown it” Uh, duh.
My point (which I thought was pretty clear) was that contacting the NFL instead of the network was the less effective of the two options. There’s piles of cases where contacting the network resulted in change, and pretty much 1 case where the NFL pushed for change. That 1 case involved an incident ON THE FIELD during the Super Bowl halftime show. Not ads, graphic or otherwise.
While there’s not indication that there’s a direct relationship, I’ll point out again that the last negotiation resulted in Disney deciding to move MNF to ESPN, sacrificing viewer access in the process. Also, the FCC doesn’t regulate ESPN.
There’s nothing to indicate that the NFL did anything to enforce any kind of content control over ads in this recent round of negotiations. Even if they did, it was likely related to sexual content (the Housewives skit), because they clearly didn’t do anything about violent/graphic ads (again, keeping with general societal feeling which tends to debunk that “middle america is upset” theory).
But look at you now. You’re like some kind of deadly MMA machine. It all worked out. :)
Lay off the crack pipe. The NFL clearly does care about scandals and tries to address them. If they feel their brand is threatened by stuff that really does rile up their fans (hint: a few whiny posts on QT3 doesn’t count) they will damn skippy act.
If you’re going to have a discussion on a message board that houses a variety of readers, don’t whine when people who don’t agree with you post on your threads. If you want a thread where all you get are “me toos,” then I would suggest you go post on a specifically sports related message board.
I’m glad someone said it.
I didn’t because part of me thought - however unlikely - that the US ads for these movies must be more graphic than the ones we get, since people reacted like that.
I was the kid who loved Quincy MD, but hated that they never showed what the fuck could make a room full of police faint.
(and I cured my fear of sharks by jumping in a cage in front of a 7-8 feet great white)
But the links to articles above clearly shows that the majority of the NFL fans care deeply about something sexually suggestive, but only a bunch of gamers care about scary sounds and quick glimpses of pointy powertools.
The idea isn’t to get a bunch of “me-too’s.” It’s to have a discussion about whether or not the sort of ads run during games are appropriate. People like Matt Keil have made great dissenting posts that managed to actually have something to say about the topic rather than your lame “DUR I HATE FOOTBALL” stuff.
So my post pointing to an article that describes just how brutal a sport it really is, with a legacy of lifelong pain and hospital bills is just DUR I HATE FOOTBALL?
The ads for Saw and other films are hardly violent or inappropriate, considering the sport during which they’re shown. A sport which involves debilitating injury and death, the whole point of which is to watch bodies collide into each other on the field. It is a blood sport, just like boxing, and just as much as bear baiting was 300 years ago.
When I have kids, the last sport I am going to direct them to is football.
Catching a TD pass, running for a first down, sacking the QB (even in two-hand touch), or making a great defensive play to breakup a pass. Those are all reasons pretty much every little kid likes to play football. Sounds as if you not only haven’t played it, but never even followed a game as a spectator. Yeah, there’s an element of violence, but when you’re rooting for the home team, you care jack about “punishing” the other team, as opposed to outscoring them, and shutting their offense down. You’re really off base conflating football and boxing or bear baiting, let alone violent slasher flicks here Athryn.
I have personally seen footage of Tyrone Prothro’s leg snapping in half about 50 times since he broke it in 2005. I don’t go out looking for that stuff either. Someone’s putting it on the air over and over to titillate sports fans.
I actually know quite a bit about football, having watched it with my father for as long as I can remember, and being taught the strategy, and watching some good games, but I hold no illusions about it being anything other than brutal. I’ve seen 2 different residents of the town I grew up in, both NFL Football players, and how it’s aged them, walking around like old men in their 40s and 50s.
Go read that article about the sad and sorry state that the 81 team of 49ers is in, and please try to tell me that it isn’t a violent sport. Dwight Clark, who made that gorgeous touchdown catch … he can’t even lift his arms above his head. One guy commented that if he were left to stand on bare concrete, he would likely burst into tears.
It’s the dirty little secret the NFL doesn’t want you to know about. They have been fighting tooth and nail for years to prevent paying money out to players, and the players union itself tries to hide the problem. Those guys didn’t all make millions of dollars in lucrative contracts either, many of them made less money than most of us.
I don’t think anyone believes that football isn’t violent. But to me, there’s a really big difference seeing someone get hurt on the football field, which usually results in the fans, announcers, and even the opposing team showing support and wishing the injured player well, and an actor looking malevolent and threatening someone with a power tool. One of those things will not lead to children having nightmares, the other one will.
What happens to players after they retire certainly sounds like it’s tragic sometimes, but it’s not an issue for parents whose children are trying to watch a sport.
You’re an imbecile. Their attempts to address things indicate how much they care (or how much they think people might get riled up). It’s pretty clear that commercials run during games (the original topic I addressed) isn’t something they care about.
Most of the reason they don’t care is that the brand is about as close to invulnerable as it can get. Their response to most scandals is just to shake their head and say “we wish it didn’t happen”, which equates to “We don’t really care, because this won’t hurt our ability to make money but we can’t say that so we’ll act concerned.”
They don’t need to worry about acting on ads because (shock!) there’s another entity that has to worry about it more than them. The network.
