PG Profanity: What the #*%! Is Wrong With Parents?

By Martha Brockenbrough
MSN Cinemama

Not too long ago, a study came out that said PG movies with the least swearing make the most money at the box office. The authors used ratings from a Web site called Kids-in-Mind.com to determine the box office impact of sex, violence and profanity. Many people cheered at the study's conclusion, taking it as a sign that parents were carefully steering their kids away from movies that might contain words they don't want them to say.

I suppose that is one way of looking at the data, but it misses the big scary thing: Levels of sex and violence in PG movies apparently have no effect on the box office. In other words, if you believe the interpretation, as we're busily shielding our kids from four-letter words, we're not thinking as carefully about sex and violence. Excuse me, but what the *%&#?

The consequences of both sex and violence can be serious and life-changing. It's hard to imagine a scenario where even the foulest word could do anywhere near the damage to a child.

I'm managing to keep my head attached to my shoulders by realizing that it's entirely possible the study's conclusions aren't quite right. Even though the data look this way, it's possible we're not using profanity as our sole means of determining which PG movies to attend with our kids. Low profanity might simply go hand in hand with the more popular types of movies. Think classic fairy tale vs. a more narrowly targeted modern story. The fairy tale is likely to be more commercial, and less likely to have a potty-mouthed princess.

So, it might be overstating things to say that parents are deliberately shielding their kids from naughty words -- and nothing else. That fact just might be a side effect of our collective commercial appetites. It would mean low levels of swearing are correlated with higher box office, but they don't cause it.

Whether or not you believe it, why the big "hooray" that parents are more concerned with swearing than they are with sex and violence? Is this something to be proud of?

Swearing is yucky and can be embarrassing, especially when your kids repeat the terrible words that accidentally fall out of your mouth. But it's not the end of the world. According to a bunch of British human resource managers, swearing in a job interview isn't even as bad as including a grammatical error in your resume.

Sex is something else. We're far too squeamish about nudity as a culture. But bare bodies and sex aren't equivalent. There can be serious consequences of sex, after all. Our kids shouldn't be encouraged or desensitized by what they see on-screen before they're old enough to understand it. Most people get that.

Violence, though, is in a category of its own.

These are still PG movies we're talking about. People aren't tossed into wood chippers in PG cinema. But even the violence that rates as mild here -- the sort you see in Saturday morning TV commercials -- is something we should expose kids to with care.

We can sometimes be shockingly blasé about it. In Missouri, for example, it's legal for children as young as 6 to participate in a "sport" called ultimate fighting, an anything-goes mix of boxing, wrestling and martial arts. Other states have not yet followed suit; indeed, ultimate fighting for adults isn't even legal throughout the United States.

One of the parents involved in the Missouri slugfests told CNN he was happy to have his kids involved. He said, "As a parent, I'd much rather have my kids here learning how to defend themselves and getting positive reinforcement than out on the streets."

It's hardly inevitable that our kids will be on the streets, beating each other up. How about some higher expectations for our kids? It's no wonder that last week some third graders were caught cooking up a violent scheme to harm their teacher. Inappropriate media seems a very likely source of ideas.

But getting back to the study. What's really remarkable about it is how broad the definition of profanity is. It's not just your classic four-letter words. Kids-in-Mind.com is clearly careful and thorough in how it reviews movie content, but they have muddied the definition of profanity. Insults aren't profanity. Neither is the word "darn." Both are included in their "profanity" rankings.

What this means is that, in the context of this study, the distinction between naughty language and violence is even more skewed. In other words, the language that parents are supposedly avoiding is far milder than the violence they're letting their kids view.

If you compare "level 3" profanity to "level 3" violence, you can see how the levels seem mismatched.

For example, "Cheaper by the Dozen" is PG-rated and ranks at a level 3 for profanity and violence. Where's the profanity? The movie, among other things, has some "mild anatomical references." This might be the word "butt" used to talk about a rear end.

The supposedly equivalent level of violence is described like this: "A man falls off a ladder and a chandelier falls on top of him. A dog attacks a man's crotch, he bites his buttocks and throws him off his chair, continuing to bite him while he's on the floor (he apparently has a hamburger scent on his underwear)."

Since when are dog bites and falls from ladders the equivalent of saying the word "butt"? The first two can lead to serious injuries. The latter is rude but utterly commonplace. Using someone's injury for a laugh could be said to send a confusing message to kids -- that it's hilarious when someone is hurt. How is this in any way the equivalent of saying "butt," or even "ass"?

Wouldn't you rather have a sensitive, caring kid with a PG-13 vocabulary than one who never said a bad word but found the suffering of others to be funny?

I don't know of any studies that show the long-term effects of swearing on kids. I do know, however, that watching violence on-screen can harm.

One spring 2006 study observed kids' brains while they were watching violent programming. Violent programs activated the part of the brain linked to post-traumatic stress disorder -- just what every parent dreams of doing. Even if kids know on one level that what they are seeing isn't real, their brains on a deeper level do not. As I wrote in an Encarta column, this could explain why kids who watch on-screen violence are more likely to act aggressively.

What's really going to be worth cheering is when the stuff scientists are learning in labs finally makes it out into the mainstream, and when unnecessary or exaggerated violence bothers us at least as much as dirty words.

Then I'll be excited -- damn straight.

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Martha Brockenbrough is Cinemama for the Parents' Movie Guide on MSN. She is also the author of "It Could Happen to You: Diary of a Pregnancy and Beyond" and the founder of SPOGG, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. She writes a fun-with-kids column for Cranium.com, as well as an educational humor column for Encarta. Check out her Web site.

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