Parental responsibilities
Ok, I am going to take a leaf ot of Noel’s book on this one and be a bit contrivesial.
The headline in most of the Scottish press yesterday was a bout a boy of 11 setting himself on fire after watching the stunt be performed on Jackass. This is truely a terrible thing to happen, the effects that this is going to have on the child is to horrific to even contemplate.
Read the article here
According to the press the parents are calling for the banning of the Jackass sequel.
Now I can’t even begin to understand what the parents are going through, and hope i never will, but lets raise an age old point that i have talked about before…. Certification. Jackass was given the certificate of an 18. Due to the stupid ass stunts that were performed in this movie, I think that was the right cert to give it. There is a huge disclaimer at the begining warning people not to copy anything they see in this movie.
I am a fan of Jackass, but am at an age where I am sensible enough to know that I can’t just set myself on fire cause I saw someone on teevee do it, 11 years olds may not yet comprehend that. Also Knoxville was wearing flame resistent material and had someone with a fire extingushier standing next to him, this stunt was carried out in a controlled situation
The bottom line, as cold as it may sound, is that the child should not have been watching the movie in the first place. The parents should be monitoring what DVDs and TV programs children watch. I personally would not let my neices or newphews watch anything that I thought was inappropriate for them at their age.
I do sincerely feel very bad for the parents in this case, I mean parents want to protect their children, and these two must feel hurt and understandably angry at what happend
But banning the movie will not fix the wider problem, what parents let their children watch out with the Certification unsupervised.
Thats my 2 cents worth.
I will post about something light-hearted/stupid/ludicrous next time.
GI
February 3rd, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Quite right!
I won’t even get started on my views on modern parenting…
Needless to say, I will be perfect and never make any mistakes.
February 4th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
An important point to make, is that if the parents did not want him to watch it, its relativly simple to ‘lock’ dvd players from playing certified dvds, meaning they literally watch it, but thats just a side issue really.
At the end of the day,i do agree,not the films fault, its the stupid parents!!
February 6th, 2007 at 9:36 am
I don’t see the controversy of the point, myself
I perfectly agree. The original stunts might be stupid in the first place, but it’s not like there aren’t any warnings telling the kids not to partake in the stunts themselves and at the end of the day the parents may complain they didn’t realize they children were watching it, but you have to ask why they didn’t know, really.
February 7th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
A sad story and one I blame on the whole Jackass team. This story made the headlines in the Scottish press but there have been numerous injuries and deaths all over the world. These deaths and horrific injuries have all involved children.
It’s a fair point that children under 18 should not be watching it but we live in the real world and youngsters will always be drawn to the type of humour in Jackass. It’s essentially a show which is cartoon like; requires little or no attention span; and cruically is aimed at a young male audience between 10 and 20. If any survey is done this is the age group and target audience who actually watch it despite the warnings before and after the film. I’m sure they were put on the TV shows and DVD with great sincerity. No I’m joking. What I am sure of is that the clowns who made it are saying ‘It’s nothing to do with me, we put warnings on the show and DVD.’ Laughing all the way to the bank. Ask a group of secondary school pupils who has seen the Jackass DVD and I’d guess 90% of them have. In an ideal world kids shouldn’t watch 18 certificate movies but we all know they do. Parents can’t be expected to look after their kids in a kind of Orwellian dystopia that the Jackass team are holding up as an excuse for the continued sale of their vile product.
If I was making a movie which was directly the cause of deaths, horrific burns and a lifetime of disabilities inflicted on children I’d say ‘enough is enough I don’t want that on my conscience.’ But then 99% of all arguments boil down to money. Make the sensible choice don’t buy this DVD or see the Jackass 2 movie when it comes out. There are plenty of other bad movies out there with untalented actors that don’t involve real incidents of children being horribly burned.