Boobs and Murder: The Irony of TV Ratings

Is it more inappropriate for children to become desensitized to boobs than violent murder?

I don’t have children, don’t plan on having children, and I don’t know shit about parenting. Sure, I read and took tests about it in college, but I would never suggest knowing what’s best for anyone’s kids. I’m not going to write about what is or is not best for America’s children because I don’t know. What I do know is that I saw something very disturbing.

I was watching Season 4 of Stranger Things on Netflix with my eight-year-old nephew and then had nightmares about violent death for the first time in as long as I can remember.

This season, as described by Rotten Tomatoes, is darker and denser than its predecessors. But it received a very high score of 88% by both the Tomatometer and audience score. Just in case you’re not familiar with the show, it’s set in Indiana in the 1980s, and it’s about a group of kids who try to find answers and make a difference after they witness supernatural forces and shady government projects. It’s honestly adorable and entertaining, for the most part. A few monsters and villains keep you and the children watching, engaged, and waiting to see what happens next. They did such a great job that 96% of Google users have liked the series.

To explain what about it blew my mind, you should know it’s listed as a horror, horror fiction, drama, thriller, supernatural, mystery, and historical drama. Netflix rated Stranger Things TV-14 and details that ‘fear, language, disturbing images, gore, and smoking’ determined the rating. Horror movies are usually rated R because kids and teenagers can not adequately deal with adult themes like death, loss, violence, and gore inherent to horror movies.

I should say SPOILER ALERT, but I will try not to give anything away. For my argument, it will suffice to say that at least one kid gets possessed by a monster trying to take over their town and dies. This happens in all three previous seasons but not to the graphic, morbid extent of season 4. It is fucking horrible, so TRIGGER WARNING, their deaths are gruesome and grotesque.

To my unnecessary defense, I’m a big fan of true crime and can usually watch anything at night and still sleep like a baby. But the thought of children watching what I just had, terrified me. The kids’ deaths start when they become possessed. They float a few feet up in the air, and while at least one other child looks, their eyes roll to the back of their heads and turn gray. They start bleeding from their eyes and noses, and their bones start to break, starting with their fingers. Watching my eight-year-old nephew munch on his popcorn while a kid’s elbows and knees break and bend unnaturally terrified me.

The image of the distorted, mutilated, dead kids was shocking, but my nephew seemed unimpressed. I asked him, trying not to shake him while screaming what the fuck!?, if seeing that graphic scene was scary to him, and he said no. He told me he sees things like that in his video games… ‘Don’t tell mommy,’ he said. Maybe I’m just getting old and remember the good old days when the best bits were left to the imagination because the technology was a few steps behind what it is today. Why ruin a great horror film with a terrible quality scene?

“The Classification and Rating Administration ("CARA") and the Classification and Rating Appeals Board were established by the Motion Picture Association, Inc. ("MPA") and the National Association of Theatre Owners, Inc. ("NATO") as part of a voluntary system to provide information to parents to aid them in determining the suitability of individual motion pictures for viewing by their children. CARA is operated as an independent division of MPA. The CARA Rating Board issues ratings for motion pictures exhibited and distributed in the United States.”

The Rating Board doesn’t have the authority to determine what content can be included in films and TV, and it doesn’t evaluate the social value or quality of the content. It doesn’t aim to prescribe what values are socially appropriate but to reflect the current values of the majority of American parents “so that parents benefit from and feel fairly informed by the rating system.”

If the material being rated has more than brief nudity that is not sexually oriented, realistic, extreme, or persistent violence, has drug use, and/or has the single use of “harsher sexually derived words,” the rating must be at least PG-13. An R-rated movie can include adult themes, adult activity, hard language, intense or persistent violence, sexually-oriented nudity, drug abuse, and other elements. Every member of the Rating Board that reviews and passes judgment on the content must be a parent of a child between the ages of five and fifteen when they join and must leave when all their children have reached the age of twenty-one.

FACT: There were 288 school shootings in the United States from Jan 2009 to May 2018, followed by Mexico with eight school shootings.

FACT: In 2020, the United States experienced the most significant rise in murder since the start of national record-keeping in 1960, according to the data gathered by the FBI for its annual report on crime.

I don’t know if watching violence in movies and TV can cause crime. I know that we develop a tolerance and become desensitized to things we are exposed to. It is terrifying to think that we live in a society where non-sexual nudity for more than a few seconds is considered explicit and obscene enough to only be appropriate for adults, but horribly mutilated death scenes are ok for kids. Do we really live in a world where murder is easier to explain and emotionally process than sex? We, sex workers, have the responsibility to bring awareness to the irony of how sex is taboo and ‘for adults’ while kids are watching suffering, violence, and murder right under our noses because it’s deemed appropriate for them by rating boards.