Oh boy. This is something I wrote a while back about something that really has bugged me about the film industry. Please excuse all the possible spelling errors. I do get quite angry in this one though, be warned. It's slightly censored in some places.
This first rant can be considered a little controversial, so if there's anything I need to edit out to make it more "safe", just tell me.
I already edited a few things myself to make it safer while still keeping the original point.
Just for reference sake, I believe a film should have an R rating if it's to intense/complicated for most teens to handle, like A Scanner Darkly or most of David Lynch's filmography.
While looking on Cartoon Brew I found out that Sony is intending to make their first “R Rated Animated Film”, being that I am a fan of films like If…. and the Shining, I was hoping that there was going to be a piece of animation that tries to be genuinely dark, or even an allegory. Boy was I disappointed.
“After falling out of a shopping cart, the hero sausage and his new friends embark on a journey through the supermarket to get back to their aisles before the 4th of July sale.”
You’ve gotta’ be kidding me. I assume this film is going to have an R Rating just because of the fact that the script writers will stoop down to the brain levels of a 13 year old and continuously exploit the obvious phallic related jokes. It might as well be PG-13 because all it will most likely be is all out immaturity. How tasteless can you get? “Hey look, a hotdog, it looks like a *$!%! LOL” is most likely going to be the tagline of the film. And it’s the same thing a group of IQ level 40 college students will say at a party. “Sausage Party” oh darn it, I should’ve read the title to the stupid film before I even looked into it a bit more! I guess it’s going to have an R Rating because of the fact that’s going to be released in America. The place where a film with someone being brutally decapitated onscreen get’s a PG-13, but a movie with hints of nudity here and there (in a non pornographic manner) gets an R (or even the dreadful NC-17, ooooohhh).
It’s all a difference in culture. If they tried to make a movie like Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mepris (Contempt) in America the censors will go crazy!
There are foreign films that where made for children that could have nudity in them (once again, not in a pornographic manner). For some reason, while mindless violence/gore/dismemberment is okay in films while sex is not here, it’s the complete opposite everywhere else. I’m not saying that we should start making G rated films where characters randomly have sex onscreen. But for crying out loud America! Grow up!
I think it's safe to say I was really angry when I was writing it. I actually do a lot of written rants. Here's another one.
If there is one thing that always gets on my nerves, it’s an Americanization of something to where it’s completely demonized. I recently discovered (to my disappointment) that a horror story was written about dreamcatchers. I was already dismayed by the concept, but I still read it just to see what it (dreamcatchers) would now be viewed as in the public eye. Oh dear. After finishing I was truly unsatisfied. Proven by the fact that at this very moment, I am shaking my head while typing this. Grinding my teeth while holding a scowl, I will tell you why this story has flustered me.
It involves a man whose child was kidnapped by the vengeful ghost of a native American. Already falling into the old “Them injuns are evil” stereotype. So Injun Joe here is already one thing. The man begins to have nightmares while following the smokey tracks left behind the ghost (more stereotyping). Eventually he finds the remains of his son which where formed into a dreamcatcher (his skin being the main nest while the rest of him was used for the circle around it). And after that the ghost kills the father with a tomahawk. Dear lord. the stereotypes. They are so bad they hurt! They might as well have the ghost just blurt out the phrase “How”.
As someone with native American heritage, I am offended. It makes me sad knowing that possibly a new generation will now know of the dreamcatcher by this shameless pile of trash. There are two versions of the story already (I checked). Ugh. The overuse of extreme details of gore and other things like that make it one of the most tasteless stories I ever read. You can’t make decent horror literature just out of shock value.