Parental Warnings and Bannings

By Cecily Israel
May 1, 2007

I was watching a video of "This Is Halloween" sung by Marilyn Manson. For those of you that don’t know the song, it is from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. A claymation for children about a town called Halloween and its head honcho, Jack, who is bored with Halloween and wants a change. Now the video is only clips from the movie and it is verbatim the same song, but before it started there was a parental advisory. I can only surmise that this is because Marilyn Manson sang it. Marilyn Manson has made his career as a musical artist whose songs are filled with obscene language. That is his thing and whether I like it or not, does not have the right to effect other people’s pleasure in it. This is a song from a children’s movie, with no foul language or gruesome scenes; but it has a parental advisory! *Insert language that should merit a parental advisory.*

Not long ago an episode of Postcards From Buster was banned in a large number of states. This is an animation on PBS. It is a spin off of Arthur, where Buster is traveling around the world with his father, a pilot, and making documentaries about different events and people. They did an episode about the sugar processes in Vermont called "Sugar Time." Why was this show banned? Because in it there was a lesbian couple. Their support for this reason? People didn’t want their children exposed to that kind of thing.

Why do people think that is ok to impose their morals on other people? I have a brilliant idea. Just don’t let your kids watch it! Why does everyone have to suffer because you are so closed minded and ignorant that you don’t want your kids to see something? How about you decide what your family does and does not do in your life and you leave the rest of us to decide what we do in our own families. Who is it that decides that something needs a parental advisory or isn’t appropriate for people to watch anyway? No, I don’t mean what group. I mean who thinks they have that right to tell anyone else what is right or wrong for their children to watch?!

I can live with people needing to label everything, because that’s how they deal with their worlds, but if you’re going to label it, how about having a good reason for it? It is not a good reason to label something as needing a "parental advisory" because the person who created it has used explicit language in other things they have done. If that was enough, then there should be a parental warning before each and every Thomas the Tank Engine. Thomas was created by W.V. Awdry and the TV performances are narrated by George Carlin, who not only made his career on vulgar language, but continues to perform with content not appropriate for children.

I come from the belief that children should be exposed to things in the home. That way their parents are there to answer any questions and fill in any blanks that might occur. In the home parents can pick and choose what they want their children to see. If a person doesn’t agree with people being gay, then the parent can inform their children about that, but to close them off from being exposed to it entirely only means that they will be exposed to it when their parents aren’t around. If someone really thinks they can "protect" their children from all the things they don’t agree with, I think they are sadly mistaken. I also think punishing the rest of us by making it harder to raise our children the way we want to is unfair and unjust. I don’t go around pushing things people don’t agree with on their faces, so I would appreciate it if the things I agree with aren’t taken away from me.