I didn't. I told my friends that when the prophet himself screened the movies and gave them ratings, I'd stop seeing R rated movies. I think the current Hollywood rating system is useless.
I don't believe in bad books and good books, I believe in good writing and bad writing. I won't read poorly written fiction. I will struggle through poorly written non fiction if the content is useful.
While I always felt it was stupid, (especially in relation to network television) my mother took it seriously. It was annoying. Apparently "Three's Company" was going to lead me to a life of sin.
I didn't, but my DW still does. To this day she has never seen an R rated movie. She was shocked when she found out I watched R rated movies. And then after we got married she told me I was no longer allowed to watch them. And when I did go to some with my dad, she would get pissed.
Back in the 80's I was sitting in a FILM class at BYU. The semester was about half over. The professor begins class with an awkward little speech that had most of us rolling our eyes and offering up sighs of disgust. Apparently some goody two shoes had complained to the administration about the awful movies that we were discussing and analyzing.
From that point on it was forbidden to even discuss any films that were rated R. I could tell the professor was pissed off about it but he bowed his head and said "yes" anyway.
Looking back it seems so fitting. A film class at BYU has to ignore a significant portion of what they are supposed to be studying. Just like the art department wasn't allow to display a famous sculpture(the kiss?) because it was "inappropriate". Some mormons are afraid of their own shadows and try their damnedest to life in a G-rated fantasy where no cuss words exist and nobody has genitals. Or shoulders. Or free will. Or original thoughts.
No, never. In contrast to Koriwhoremonger's BYU film class, at the University of Utah I was fortunate to take a Sundance Film Festival class in 1994. What an experience. The requirements included attending movies in a wide variety of genres, such as drama, documentary, etc., and we also had to watch most of the movies in Park City as that is where we would be swaddled in the ambience. And, this could not have been more the case. The directors dressed in black, Sally Field waving to us, and speaking with young people from Harlem starring in a documentary, were all sights, sounds and smells I will always remember.
I have a few children and acquaintances who let the stupid LD$ Cult dictate what is right and wrong to read, see and listen to. It makes me angry that they let the cult do this......and it makes me feel sorry for them that they have made their world such a dull and boring place to live in.
No. I was a convert and a massive horror movie nerd and rare horror DVD/VHS collector. I kept doing this the entire time I was in TSCC. I was warned it would cause me to lose The Spirit (TM) but I just kept right on going and oops, here I am. Damn, I'm a cautionary tale! ;)
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/24/2014 12:55PM by safetynotguaranteed.
I DID- and here's my really embarrassing uber-TBM story. I was 18, and infatuated with the movie Dirty Dancing. I watched every day for weeks after school. My boyfriend at the time was wrestling with feelings of unworthiness because of his music collection (Alice Cooper, Rammestein, and the like). We made a deal that I get rid of the movie, and he gets rid of his music. I didn't want to give the movie away, lest I be responsible for the base, dirty enjoyment someone else would have, so I put the DVD in the garbage. Not the garbage can in the kitchen, no, the OUTDOOR GARBAGE. THAT IS SERIOUS, FOLKS. Once something is in THE OUTDOOR GARBAGE, it is never to return. Then I made a promise to Jesus that I would never watch Dirty Dancing again. I broke that 15-year streak by watching it last fall. You should have hears my exmo sister laugh when I confessed this!
Many years ago, things crept into the R and PG films that didn't used to be there. I remember Kramer vs Kramer caused a stir as an R rated movie with full female frontal nudity.
Dragon Slayer was a disney production and had nudity as a PG movie as did Clash of the Titans. (The old one from the 80s)
After that I think they started to crack down on R movies.
As far as letting them decide what I watched, never did, considered it freedom if speech.
I sure did! Ugh. But I gave that up long before I got myself 100% out of TSCC. Most of my TBM family members and high school friends continue to let TSCC dictate to them what they can and cannot read, watch or listen to. It's insane. My TBM Father told me a few years ago that even though he is aware that the MPAA rating system is deeply flawed and is not a reliable guide, he will not go to an R-rated movie because he is genuinely fearful that if another church member saw him entering or exiting said hypothetical R-rated movie, they might lose their testimony and apostatize from TSCC. My father is a very intelligent, educated, well-traveled person, so this disclosure stunned me.
My TBM hubby and I had been watching R-rated movies since we were dating, if they had gotten good reviews and sounded interesting.
So in class - the topic of putting stones of remembrance on graves came up. DH said "you mean, like in 'Schindler's List?' " You could tell right away who had seen the film and who hadn't. We got nods of thoughtful approval from the ones who had, and shocked disbelief from the goody-two-shoes types.
It was about half and half. I thought that was progress. The brighter ones seemed to be the ones who crossed over the line.
Most emphatically NO!!!!..and a directive from the church or any other stupid rule enforcers NOT to watch, read, eat, drink, smoke listen or do something was a gold plated invitation to do just that to my apostate contrarian brain...so I fuckin' did e'em all...and still do..most of 'em.
It tried to capture my attention, which was usually on things that mattered most/more important things: life (outside the closed Mormon box) and the people and things that lived and breathed and made sense.
If it said you have free agency, and meant it, it would be one thing, but it said one thing and did another.
I wanted to see things, touch things, feel things, go places, not be told what to do, how to think, how to look. Most of all I am an authority on me. It can sit and wait it's turn.
I went in waves of trying and not caring. I remember movies like Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List being movies I felt moved by my conscience to watch, even though I was a TBM. I realized that there could be so much value in a piece of art beyond a stupid, arbitrary rating.
I did my undergrad at the U and had a professor who wanted us to watch an R rated movie in class. He told everyone on the very first day of class that this assignment was coming up but that no one would be required to watch it and there would be an alternate assignment for those who felt uncomfortable. He also mentioned that he always got official complaints filed on him, even with the alternate. That year was exactly as every other year. Grown ass adults felt the need to call the school and complain that he showed an R rated film they weren't required to watch. SHFH
I intentionally took our oldest son to an R-rated movie the week before he went in his mission, or maybe it was earlier and it was R-rated because it showed in one scene, a naked woman from the back.
I did. But when I started to doubt, I allowed my husband, who is a huge movie buff, to run to blockbuster and pick up all the vmajor movies I'd missed over the years. We had a movie marathon over the weekend.
Some of the movies, like Schindler's list were incredible. Some, like pulp fiction, shocked my sensibilities. I still don't like that level of violence in films.
As a patron of the arts and a film nerd, I never did take it seriously. When I was 16, my Dad told me that it was up to me what movies I decided to see. He would not forbid me from seeing a movie just because it was rated R. And, I was an avid reader of romance novels. LOL The Silloutte Desire books had love scenes in them that were just shy of being soft porn.
What I think is interesting is that even TBM's were a lot more lax about R rated movies with violence than R rated movies with sex. Frankly, seeing a pair of boobs doesn't bother me at all (since I have them myself...LOL), but blatant violence, particularly toward children, does disturb me. My daughter and I walked out of the theater during "AI" because the scene where the human-like robots getting tortured and killed was just too disturbing. That was a PG rate movie!
There are a lot of really quality rated R movies that I think should be watched, and it is a shame that anyone would keep a rating from experiencing them. "Schindler's List", which others have mentioned here, is one of those films.
My husband's family was extremely TBM. His folks wouldn't even let them watch "MASH" because of Klinger dressed up in girl clothes!
My folks were much more liberal...maybe because we are Californians. I grew up watching "Love American Style", "The Loveboat", "Fantasy Island", "The Odd Couple", "All in the Family", etc. (Yes, I'm old. LOL)
I grew up in the bible belt and when the mel Gibson movie The Passion came out all churches bought tickets and gave them to there congregations for free no big deal. BUT the old LDS church said you shouldn't go and a lot didn't because it was rated R at the time I didn't pay it much attention and went anyway but looking back it made a lot of Mormons from my area look stupid.
I was an incorrigible convert and no one was going to tell me what to see or read. It took thirty years before that disobedience kicked in and I left the controlling church behind.
My family did. Even now, my TBM parents only watch R-rated movies if they're the censored version on network TV.
I can't tell you how many times my mom has said she wished she could see a particular film, but decided to wait for it to come on TV in order to comply with the rules.
Once, my mom wanted to invite some TBM friends over to watch a PG-rated film, but my dad refused because of one NON-sexual nude scene. His suggestion? Disney's Snow White because "it's such a classic". My mom flat-out told him that she was NOT going to invite a bunch of 60-year-olds over to watch Disney movies. Ultimately, they decided to just not have anyone over.
That's about what happens anytime they try to plan anything with other TBMs, to be honest. (If they're watching with non-members, they don't stress about it near as much.) Consequently, they don't have many friends in the ward.
Censorship was there, but mostly just for TV programs. I read anything and everything I could. My TBM parents were too lazy to look at my books. They heard my music and hated it, but didn't understand it.
Funny examples:
"Easy to be Hard," was a Three Dog Night song about cruel people. Daddy thought it was about erections and banned it.
"Hell is for Children," was a Pat Benatar song about child abuse. Though an abuser himself, Daddy thought it was a satanic damnation for tots.
Also, he didn't like Cheech and Chong. He'd been told that they performed black humor, and he thought their jokes were only about negroes.