From the WSJ Opinion Archives
TASTE COMMENTARY
'May I?' and 'The Matrix'
Why my kids won't be seeing the latest R-rated blockbuster.
Sure, when it opened last week, "The Matrix Reloaded" savaged a few box-office records as if they were so many flimsy Agent Smith replicates. But it still couldn't beat out "Spider-Man" for a record three-day opening. And that amounts to a notable failure for this movie, considering that it benefited from more advance hype and fevered anticipation than the invasion of Iraq.
One reason the movie didn't completely rewrite the box-office record book can be put in a letter: "R." The flick's restricted rating made parents wary enough that thousands of them simply declined to let their teenage boys go see "The Matrix Reloaded" at least until they'd wrestled down this little problem. Here's hoping that's what happened, anyway.
Why the R rating? Certainly the barrage of elegantly choreographed martial-arts violence is one reason; but that stuff is merely a modern, stylized version of the barroom fighting in a cowboy film, rough but understandable. Besides, without it there's no movie. The real cocklebur is a gratuitous scene near the beginning of this video game--er, movie--that intercuts a paganistic orgy with private, full-flesh sex between the hero and heroine, Neo and Trinity, complete with pulsating drums in the background.
So while teenage boys, religious syncretists and dime-store philosophers might be in love with "The Matrix Reloaded," it isn't all that popular with some parents. The R rating and one sex scene have forced us to make an unpleasant choice: Forbid our youngsters from seeing the movie that their friends are raving about or let the coarser side of popular culture claim one more little victory. Understandably, the topic of movie-going--or not-going--ruined no fewer than three of our dinner hours last week.
"The Matrix Reloaded" is hardly an isolated case. For some time now parents have seen one seemingly harmless movie or another rise to the heights of popular adulation--pulling hard at the teen audience along the way--only to discover that it includes some gratuitous scene or two that makes it objectionable by any traditional standard. (And I don't mean an extreme, "prudish" one.) Needless domestic battle can result.
Remember "Titanic"? When it debuted in 1997, parents of 14-year-old girls were on the spot. The movie's appeal to all ages was strong: a love story and an epic that taught not only fairly accurate history but also the consequences of greed and chivalry and other motives. But there were those dodgy moments where Jack sketched Rose in the nude, not to mention their sexual encounter in the back of a car parked in the ship's freight garage. True, it was a romance, but parents had an implicit right to expect adequate restraint from a PG-13 film.
Lately, the Austin Powers series, a big hit with teenage boys, has been causing the same kind of intergenerational stress. The movies are hilarious, and the protagonist's personality would be incomplete without a little bawdiness and even scatological humor. But naming Chinese sisters Fook Me and Fook Yu seems like overkill, not to mention lines such as, "Shall we shag now or shag later?" Indeed, raunchy innuendo is close to the whole point. And these movies are also rated PG-13.
The latest exhibit may be "Bruce Almighty," which opens nationwide today, starring gross-out champion Jim Carrey. Michael Medved, the conservative film reviewer and radio talk-show host, says that the movie "is very entertaining" and "actually grapples with some serious religious issues." But because of its "unnecessary sexual elements," he won't let his own teenagers see it.
Every parent will draw the line between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" differently, of course. But one wishes that the people making all this entertainment--including not just movies, of course, but also TV shows and radio programs--would draw some lines themselves. Maybe they're just too devoted to their precious creative license.
The Dionysian vignette from "The Matrix Reloaded"--a version of what the Israelites were doing in "The Ten Commandments" before Moses came down from Mount Sinai--is bad enough in itself, but it's even more affrontive for being kicked off with a quasi-prayer, part of the alleged spiritual depth of the movie. (Alas, there is not space to ponder this movie's metaphysical profundities, such as, "We're all here to do what we're all here to do" and "Choice is an illusion.")
The point is that the sex scene isn't the least bit necessary to tell this story. The whole "Matrix" series is supposed to become this decade's "Star Wars" trilogy. But did those epics suffer from the lack of a scene in which Hans Solo and Princess Leia couple in the back of a spaceship while Wookies cavort lasciviously outside?
Naturally, nothing in the limitless pre-opening PR for "The Matrix Reloaded" hinted at this razor blade in the apple. So it caught many parents unawares. I don't remember its being mentioned in the Time cover story, or in the new Heineken ad where Trinity goes airborne in the interest of serving up a couple of cold ones.
The ratings system was supposed to help in all this, but the cultural trend runs against firm judgments. PG-13 can mean R, and R movies are marketed to younger teens ferociously. Of course parents can discern, on behalf of their teenagers, among R ratings. "The Patriot" warranted an R for its violence when the Mel Gibson movie opened in 2000, yet its bloodletting was justified, showing the horrors of war and the price required by freedom. R-rated "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List" were similarly within bounds.
But a great deal is not. There was a time when parents could trust the media's role in the public square. That included an understanding that R-rated movies wouldn't be aimed at kids. If a movie targeted teenage boys, parents could assume that the sexual content might push the envelope--but certainly not burst it open.
Now no such assumption is possible, which means that parents must constantly monitor what their kids are watching or hoping to watch--a task more exhausting than keeping track of them in a shopping mall had been when they were toddlers. Only this week a group called Common Sense Media announced its intention to set up a more reliable ratings system for TV. But it is only the latest in a long line of well-meaning organizations that have tried to do similar things. And as they're making progress, policing movie-going will still be up to parents.
That's as it should be. So bring on the "Matrix" "threequel" this fall: This time, parents will be ready for it.
