Is Sony to Blame for Kids Seeing Sausage Party?
While I didn’t get a chance to see it this weekend, Sausage Party over-performed at the box office, grabbing an estimated $32 million. However, I heard from multiple friends who got a chance to see it that when they went there were families present. While I wasn’t necessarily surprised, they were all shocked at the negligence of Sony studios. Of course, I don’t point the finger at them. True, they did play a less-vulgar version of the trailer in front of kid-friendly films, Sony did not mandate that. So who should be held responsible for children getting into the heavily R-rated film?
I think the blame comes down to parents, plain and simple. It’s not like the kids saw the film advertised and drove themselves to the theater; they need parents to let them in. When it comes to knowing in advance what films are appropriate or inappropriate for your kids, parents are the only ones who know for sure. Maybe they can handle a grittier film, maybe they can’t, but who’s the best judge for that? It’s definitely not the MPAA, that’s for sure. So why the parents got into the theaters with their kids comes down to one of two things: ignorance or laziness. Either they just ignored or didn’t pay enough attention to the advertisements or poster that stressed the R-rating, or they just really wanted to see it but didn’t want to hire a babysitter. While I may not be a parent, I want to stress that either way, you don’t have any grounds if you want to sue Sony. You might have better luck suing the theater, though, as the cashiers and staff are supposed to stress from the start that the film is R rated and may be inappropriate for younger audiences. While the two friends I heard from did say that the staff did have to say it to the teenagers who were trying to get into the movie. If the staff did not stress the R-rating, then sure, I can understand how someone who hasn’t necessarily been paying attention to the marketing and who has more or less come to the theater not planning on seeing Sausage Party but who ends up seeing it anyways can be saying they’re unhappy. Still though, this is your children, or your sibling’s children, and R-rated material can damage kids, so before you go out to the cinema check and see what you’re seeing and if it will or will not be appropriate.
Then for the parents who just plain didn’t care and who took their kids fully aware of the raunchy nature of the film but who just couldn’t find the time or money for a babysitter, all I can say is you are kind of failing as a parent when it comes to proper entertainment for the kids. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? It’s not necessarily funny to hear you five year old shouting profanities at home after the movie’s over, because you know they don’t have the sense to use the word(s) only at home, and they’ll get in big trouble for it in school or day-care or wherever it is you dump them while you, presumably, go to your 9-5 job. And when the teacher or whoever calls and asks where the child heard the word, what answer will you give? Will that excuse you? Of course not! It’s plain and simple, easy, you need to, I will say that again, need to be aware of what exactly you’re doing to your kids when you present them with raunchy, sexually charged, or violent content. It can seriously damage them, rot their brains, you name it, it’ll hurt them. Of course no parents who aren’t locked up somewhere want to go out of their way to present this content to their innocents but still, you’ll thank me later when they’re going off to business school or to become a doctor the fall after their senior year instead of asking me if I want fries with my burger.
While I might paint an in-appropriately gloomy picture, we have to remember that the responsibility of raising your children comes down to you alone. You can’t blame anybody else for why your kids are the way they are. I’m not saying shackle them to a desk and make them read Charles Dickens, but just try and monitor their entertainment more frequently. If they’re glued to a tablet or iPhone for hours at a time, make sure they’re not looking up anything nasty on YouTube or Netflix, and try and get them off the damn thing and run around and play. Again, I am not a parent and of course I have no business saying that everybody who becomes a parent needs to be a perfect one, but when I look at what my generation has become, which is at times the laziest, most irresponsible and care-free group of young adults this country has ever seen, we need to ask ourselves how this happened. Well, who raised the brats? Why did they end up with a hangover outside a night club on Monday mornings instead of in class or at a place of work? Again I feel like I’m painting too grim a picture for what America’s youth society has become, and there are exceptions to everything, and some very hard-working kids are out there right now getting ready to lead our nation for the next forty years. But for everyone else who is disrespectful to elders, lazy and irresponsible, we can do better. We have before.
I will close by saying we’ve seen problems like this before, whether it be Deadpool (2016) from February where lots of kids’ center of attention was caught by the newest superhero film, not necessarily knowing it was R-rated, or kids watching HBO shows meant for adults, and we’ll have further films and shows in the future that will also get the kids’ attention alongside adults. Prevention is the best key, and I have two sites for parents and adults to check before going out to the theater: IMDB and Kids-in-Mind. While I have my beef with the ratings on IMDB, the Parent’s Guide section is accurate 99% of the time when it comes to disclosing the amount of sexual content, violence, drug content, language, and frightening material that may disturb viewers. The other site, Kids-in-Mind, goes even deeper. Everything from a character looking at another character in a lustful way to scatological humor to name-calling is taken into effect when rating the movie for its content. If I could say anything else to the parents out there, it’s this: my parents raised me to love movies and see as many as I could, just as long as they were appropriate. My recommendation is this: if the movie is rated G or PG, you’ll be fine taking the kids. If it’s PG-13, find out why. Nobody will be a better judge of what your kids can handle than you are, so if it’s a PG-13 for language only or for some violence or some nudity or sexual content, it’s up to you to decide whether or not to get a babysitter. If it’s rated R, forget it. And one other thing: especially with the PG-13 rated films that you might want to take kids to, wait until the opening weekend is over. These sites may not be updated until the next Monday, and the word-of-mouth might not have been built up yet. Bottom line, nobody is to blame but the parents when it comes to inappropriate footage being shown to kids.
There were quite a handful of children in my screening last night, and you’re absolutely right…parents should be blamed for this! This is absolutely not a movie appropriate for kids!