Sorry folks, but it is rant time again and a new article from CNN has thrown the extra bit of fuel on the fire and turned it into a blaze. Thanks to “parents’ complaints about sex and violence in in-flight movies, two congressmen introduced legislation Tuesday calling for airlines to create kid-friendly zones on plane,” reports CNN. Yup, our plane flights are getting too violent and too sexy. Someone, tell me where these flights are and how I can get on one! All of mine are boring, cramped and stinky. Perhaps it is just me and my bad luck.
Rep. Heath Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat gave a quote talking out of the side of his face (or the hole in his ass depending on how you interpret it) saying, “The airlines have chosen to put our children in a situation that I don’t feel comfortable with,” Yeah Heath, they all got together in a boardroom and said, “Fuck it, let’s just put these kids in a shitty situation.”
The solution to this is a proposed Family Friendly Flights Act, which Heath and Republican Rep. Walter Jones, also from North Carolina are going in together on. The bill calls for the creation of sections on commercial flights where there would not be any publicly viewable movie screens. It would still allow airlines to show the movies they choose on big screens in other sections, or on individual seatback screens.
Shuler posed the question, “How do you tell a 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-year-old, ‘Don’t look at the screen,’ when it’s basically all over the cabin?” I guess I would have to ask Shuler if he is talking about a regular flight, because if so the seats are pretty damned high and unless these 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-year-olds are the spawn of Shaquille O’Neal and climbing all over the seats then I can pretty much assume they must resort to watching the screens directly in front of them, screens that should be controlled by their parents.
Oops, I dropped the parenting card. There are two parents mentioned in the article, the first is Katie Kelley, who said she was on a plane last February when an R-rated movie with “a lot of nudity” was shown. She said she was traveling without her children, ages 4 and 7, but was still bothered by the situation. Interesting little fact here is that she doesn’t even mention the movie. What movie is being shown on an average flight that is rated R and filled with “a lot of nudity” Katie? Can you please advise?
The other parent is Jesse Kalisher, a man with two kids that has apparently created the impressively non-working site www.kidsafefilms.org/. He got pissed when his two kids were asleep and King Kong was shown on a flight. Good thing those kids were asleep or they would have seen a big ol’ monkey. Whew! Dodged a bullet there.
Kalisher said, “Parents were trying to protect their children from seeing images that were really gruesome… The whole thing is completely inappropriate for kids.” For the life of me I can’t remember images that were entirely gruesome in that movie outside of the Spider Pit, but if parents are paying attention they cover the eyes for 30 seconds and voila, let the movie roll.
For an idea of what is shown on flights click here, looks like American has a good variety.
