David Spates "Therefore I Am" Published May 7, 2002

Spider-Man toys aren't
targeted to 14-year-olds

It's going to be hard to write this column without sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, but here goes.

Movie ratings are a joke -- that's the long and short of it. They're a farce.

See, I sound like a grumpy old man already. The problem is that I'm only 31. (Side note: It's funny how we all say we're ONLY 31 or 41 or 51 or 61 or whatever. No one wants to seem old, but the truth is that "old" is in the eye of the beholder. To an 14-year-old, I'm "old" at 31. To me, 41 doesn't seem old anymore, but when I was a teenager, 41 might as well have meant you've got one foot in the grave. Standing on 31, however, 41 isn't old, it's a blink.)

Anyway, back to the movies.

I was in a department store the other day when I took note of an aisle devoted to Spider-Man toys being sold in conjunction with the movie. There was some pretty cool stuff, actually. They have Spider-Man toys that climb walls, shoot webs, capture bad guys and commit numerous other action-packed feats of do-goodism. If I were an 8-year-old again, I'd revising and re-revising my birthday wish list. There's nothing an 8-year-old boy likes better than a high-octane action figure made to look like a bug. Boys have "action figures," girls have "dolls." It's a narrow distinction, I grant you, but it makes all the difference in the world when you're 8.

The problem -- and this is where the fuddy-duddy thoughts come in -- is that according to the Motion Picture Association of America, 8-year-olds shouldn't even see the movie Spider-Man. It's rated PG-13. You catch the hypocrisy, don't you? Eight-year-olds, not to mention 9- and 10-year-olds, shouldn't see the movie, but they're expected to pester their parents for Spider-Man toys.

The truth, as we know, is that young kids will see Spider-Man anyway, and Hollywood and the toy makers are banking on it. No one creates an entire line of toys in the hope that only children 13 and older will want them. By the time I was 13, I was done with toys like that -- my action figures were banished to a big cardboard box next to the water heater, never to see the light of day again until we sold them in a garage sale. Kids who are 13, 14 and 15, even 12, don't play with toys like those. Their interests turn to music, video games, computers and, most prominently, the opposite sex. Take it from me, 14-year-old girls aren't impressed with 14-year-old boys' action figure collections.

Spider-Man toys are targeted at 5- to 11-year-olds, yet, ostensibly, the movie isn't for them.
It's nothing more than generating the biggest bottom line. The movie studio crafted a movie that it thought would sell the most tickets, and that product earned a PG-13 rating. That's fine. The movie studio is in the business to make money. We ALL work to make money. It's the American way, and it's something to keep in mind when you take your 8-year-old to see Spider-Man.

As I said earlier, however, it's the movie ratings that are the biggest joke.

What does PG-13 mean? I looked it up. According to the MPAA, PG-13 indicates, "Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. This signifies that the film rated may be inappropriate for preteens. Parents should be especially careful about letting their younger children attend. Rough or persistent violence is absent; sexually-oriented nudity is generally absent; some scenes of drug use may be seen; one use of the harsher sexually derived words may be heard."

I noticed that nowhere in the MPAA's PG-13 description is wording that restricts access to younger children. An R rating plainly says that children under 17 are not admitted without a parent or guardian, but there's no similar language in the PG-13 rating. To me, that allows a 10-year-old to see it by himself. There doesn't seem to be a rule against it. The PG-13 rating merely "cautions" parents. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

I'm sure there are plenty of 10-, 11- and 12-year-olds who are mentally mature enough to see Spider-Man, and that's a determination for their parents to make, but what's working against the parents are the businesses that stand to make big bucks from that decision. Don't think for a second the MPAA, toy makers or the movie studio have your child's best interests in mind. They want your money, and they know how to get it.

See, now, I sound like a cranky, old fuddy-duddy. Worse still, it wasn't too long ago that I was a young boy who wanted to watch movies I wasn't supposed to see, like Porky's, First Blood and Alien. Even worse than that, I recall there were Alien and First Blood toys back in the day. I don't remember seeing any Porky's toys. I shudder to think.

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David Spates is a Knoxville resident and Crossville Chronicle contributor whose column is published each Tuesday. He can be reached at davespates@chartertn.net.