Also read: Why aren’t there more G-rated movies?
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My daughter is about to be 4 years old and is a lover of all things princess.
When I heard that a new princess movie was coming out this summer, “Brave,” I was thrilled.
I heard that it showed a more feminist side of a princess and was a great way to introduce your daughter to being a strong, individual female.
However, that strong female presence is hard to see through a PG-rating filled with violence and inappropriate actions between characters.
According to www.parentsreview.com, a website that reviews movies from a parent’s perspective, the movie contains: frequent use of bows and arrows, a man losing his leg in battle, a fistfight and characters bite, pinch, head butt, poke eyes and use objects to hit one another. Characters argue verbally on several occasions. They also break out in a brawl, firing arrows and throwing axes at each other. A girl falls through a roof. A character is smashed by a rock, and the list goes on.
After reading that description, I decided not to go. Once again, the movie industry is failing us as parents.
Where have all the G-rated movies gone?
Don’t get me wrong, I am no prude. I support being honest with children and exposing them to new ideas and the realities of life. However, that doesn’t mean that I want to expose them at age 4 to war, fear and violence.
I want them to see characters being challenged in ways to which they can relate. I think about “Finding Nemo” and how my daughter said, “Nemo ran away from his Dad just like the time I walked into the parking lot with cars around and you were upset.”
Yes, a teachable moment in a film. Where have those gone?
I have to believe that you don’t need to rate a film PG to get a positive message across. Can’t you find ways to show that in a movie where people don’t hit each other?
Not to age myself too much, but I grew up with movies like “Mary Poppins” and “The Sound of Music.” Both included harsher realities such as war and lack of parental involvement, but they did so in a way that left out the visual details.
Why have the G-rated movie lists become so slim to find and the PG-13 rated movies so abundant?
Our family now enlists the help of Redbox, the library, and our personal DVD collection to find movies to watch because the movie theaters just aren’t providing them.
So listen up movie companies: Make more G-rated movies, and I promise your ticket sales will go up. Parents like happy endings even more than kids do.
Danielle Herzog is a mom to two children. You can read her blogs every Wednesday on momaha.com.
