First, a note on ratings and all story-telling media.

As I was at work, thinking about writing this post (which was to be a list of actors and actresses you can count on to be part of good or at least creative projects), I got off on a tangent. So I'll discuss this first, then delve into that.

At the top of my great actors list would have to be Daniel Day-Lewis, and not because he's a "man's man" who I can idolize to compensate for my own lack of bad-ass qualities (such as jumping from an enormous waterfall or intimidating the shit out of an entire city). My favorite character of his is actually a subtly masterful portrayal of a dying father in The Ballad of Jack and Rose (his daughter played by Camilla Belle).

Anyway, I was trying to recall if there had been a Day-Lewis film that just was not good at all. My mind went to The Crucible. But I'm not certain that it wasn't great, I just don't remember it being great. And that got me thinking about something else: when I saw The Crucible I was in high school. Literally. We watched it in class. I started thinking about why we watch movies in school, because we rarely watched the whole thing, and usually it was only to compare and contrast (high school English teachers' favorite phrase) the book to the movie.

It's asinine right? Like how do you do that, exactly? A book and a film are so different, what rubric can judge both? Can an author actually be compared to a director? Is that even the comparison that should be made? With a film there are a thousand different people involved, whereas a book is the story of one person, told by that one person and edited perhaps by two or three, with creative input and possibly some stipulations coming from two or three more.

But this spawns yet another question, if the media are vastly different, but both are used to relate a narrative, why are only books (or the movies of those books) used for education? If we can learn from stories (and I'm convinced we do all the time), why not use films, films with thought-provoking and young-adult-worthy themes, just like the books? Is it because it's just too time-consuming to use class time to watch movies together as a group? Well, teachers take up class time to watch the movies of the books, so why couldn't they ditch those fruitless (and deceptive -- "kids, you actually CAN compare apples to oranges!") compare-and-contrast exercises, and use that time to watch a different movie, one that will actually further supplement the discussion of issues brought up by that year's literature? For example, you could read the Odyssey and then watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? Or read 1984 and watch V for Vendetta.

Everyone sees the immediate problem, right? This could work. Kids could learn and have fun watching good films that illustrate the same issues and themes that their books contained. But... ratings. Yeah. This wouldn't work, because of ratings. In the U.S. you have to be 17 to watch an R-rated film. Obviously that puts a PG-13 limit on every single teacher who has a freshman, sophomore or junior class. So the 1984 and V for Vendetta pairing won't work.

Now here's the question: is that how it should be? I don't know about anyone else, but many of the books I remember reading in high school (and middle school for that matter) would've easily been marked with the R sticker, had they been made into movies. But they stayed in the library, available to our greedy little eyes and minds, because books don't get ratings. Even with other unrated media now receiving them (i.e. television programs and video games), books are still untagged. Why is this? I know seeing something is different than reading about it, but books can get you emotionally charged up. In fact, I'm not certain that seeing something in a movie is actually worse than reading about it at all. I'm reading Life of Pi right now and the description of the hyena attack on the zebra had me recoiled in nauseated horror, probably much worse a feeling than seeing it in a movie would have produced.

Or I remember reading books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and  similar stories that has some fairly explicit sexual content, some of it described graphically enough that in a movie it would have to be handled in a creative way, because to show what was described would simply be pornographic. So am I calling for a rating system for books? Not really. What I find interesting is that it seems to be ok without one. But why? Why do we trust our kids and ourselves with books when it's pages could be filled with hyper-descriptive violence, graphic and gratuitous sex, and abusive language? Why don't we give ourselves the same leeway with movies? Or if we feel it to be too dangerous  to let children walk into any theatre they choose, the logical solution would be a rating system for books, which just gets super tricky. What about previously published works? What about Classics? What about foreign books? Would it be enforceable? If no one has cared thus far about putting ratings on literature, would anyone support the idea?

Perhaps a much better plan would be this: let the film ratings stand as they are (corrupt and inaccurate system that it is) and let books be sold to whomever. Instead, I propose schools be allowed to lift ratings' suggested age limits for the sake of education. I believe there to be as many good lessons in films I've seen as books I've read and believe that teachers should be allowed to qualify as a "legal guardian" while the child is at school (not in a legal sense, but in relation to film ratings) so that they may have the final say about whether an R-rated film, like Best Picture-winner Crash, might actually benefit a group of sophomores and juniors.

In the mean time, teachers should  be smart and search out great films they can show. There are some fascinating films out there that, surprisingly, are only PG or PG-13. Here are a few, none of them R, that could be used in numerous high school classrooms, from freshmen English to advanced U.S. History: Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet, The New World, The Visitor, Mona Lisa Smile,  and the Aviator.

Those are just some off the top of my head, but any film that is acted well, has some theme that could help further the education and understanding of America's youth and not rated R could be shown. And hopefully, someday, a school will decide comparing movies and books is like comparing an ancient sculpture to a modern city.

Oh, about that list of actors and actresses... umm, next time.

this is how i shall do this

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thank you

and goodnight.