Isn't Life Rated R?
by garycottle (Thu May 17 2007 07:56:39 )
Isn’t Life Rated R?
I have already informed several people on this board that my father passed away this week. I want to take this opportunity to thank those people for their kind words of encouragement and their support. Dad died of congestive heart failure. In other words his heart had grown very weak and there was a buildup of fluid in his body. Basically Dad suffocated to death. He could no longer breath. I was by his side, holding his hand when he passed.
A little more than three years ago my mother was put on life support when she contracted pneumonia following treatment for stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. When there was little hope for her recovery we decided to turn off the machine. Just as with Dad, I was right there with Mother when she died. Both of them drowned in their own fluids, gasping for breath, right in front of me, and I was powerless to help.
Brokeback Mountain has been a great comfort to me for more than a year now. But most especially this week. The heartache and sense of loss that Jack and Ennis experienced rings truer today than ever. I relate to the story on many levels, but one of the main reasons this film is such a solace is because it attempts to convey something real and honest about its characters and life in general. It is a sad and beautiful story that speaks to the suffering of humanity. Brokeback Mountain is a work of art.
I believe that anyone could relate to Brokeback Mountain in some way if they gave it a chance. And given the fact that so many people of different walks of life frequent this board in order to express the feelings this film evoked in them is an indication of this. For several months I have been coming to this board to share my own thoughts and feelings, and to greedily read what others have posted here.
For the past several days I have been too busy to participate in the discussions, but I have been looking in every chance I’ve gotten. I couldn’t help but notice the hubbub about a substitute teacher showing this film to a group of 12-year-old students in her charge. I want to say right from the start that I do not condone what this teacher did. I don’t think a teacher should show an R rated film to underage children without parental consent. But with that said, I’d like to add that this issue is in the end much ado about nothing.
12-year-olds routinely see films and play video games that are far more graphic than BBM. There isn’t a great amount of gore and violence in the film. You will see much more violence in nearly any given news broadcast. And how many people turn off CNN when their kid comes into the room? You will hear some swear words while watching the film, but I guarantee that nearly every 12-year-old has head worse from peers at school. There is some nudity and sexual situations in BBM. But BBM is not really a sexy movie. Nothing in it is designed to titillate. It might provoke a 12-year-old to ask some questions about sex and relationships, but when a kid hits puberty shouldn’t those questions be asked and answered?
Jack and Ennis were only 19 when they met–just 7 years past the age of 12–and because no one had prepared them for the feelings they had for one another their story became a tragedy. Jack and Ennis were kept in the dark, and as a result they didn’t know what to do when they fell in love with each other. For the longest time they even lacked the capacity to recognize that they were in love. This destroyed their own lives, and it had a strong negative impact on the lives of the women they married and the children they had. After watching this film one can safely say that ignorance is not bliss.
It is not the responsibility of parents or the school system to preserve a child’s innocence. Life is very difficult and the purpose of an education is to deliberately and systematically strip away innocence so that a child will be prepared to withstand the vagaries of life. Perhaps the film Brokeback Mountain isn’t suitable for the average 12-year-old. But Brokeback Mountain is about life, and if watching it is traumatic it is because life itself is traumatic. And if a child of 12 cannot cope with seeing Brokeback Mountain then that child is facing a very rough road indeed.
