Etiquette ?

Last weekend I went to the local Indian Movie Complex (IMC) in San Jose. This is my fifth movie watching experience in this theater. The movie was "Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu", in Tamil(Tamizh) starring Kamal Hassan. Considering the star cast it was bound to be an entertainer.

My wife and mother in law watched it Friday night in the same theater, while I babysat the kids and I went sunday afternoon when they watched the kids. This is the usual routine for us. It has been ages since I watched a movie with my wife. Usually I team up with the men and she goes with the women (all families take baby sitting turns), at least all the normal families that I know.

Well, this movie should have gotten an NC-17 rating. There was enough sexual content and Violence that would put Quentin Tarantino's movies to shame. But the real shame was the audience.

There are some morons who come with their kids (infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers, pre-teens, I saw the entire range!). The kids were in the ages of 6 months to 10-11 years old. The worst hit were the pre-school kids. The theater owners made no effort to stop these families from taking their kids inside, knowing that the content of the movie was not suitable for these kids.

The volume soars in the theater as throats are being slashed (in close ups) and the kids start screaming. What do these parents(?) do ? They take turns in the aisle with the kid and try to calm them down. But their focus is still on the screen and the kids are also looking at the screen. The guys or ladies that were walking up and down the aisle made no effort to even turn the kids faces away from the screen !!

This is where I felt that god (or evolution, whichever you chose to believe) has played a cruel trick on us. When they taught me the "survival of the fittest" theory, I thought it had something to do with being fit in the body or mind. Apparently the biology books had a typo. It is "Survival of the Fit-Test". All it takes is something to fit into something and it is enough for these morons to procreate and survive !! If only god had set some minimum IQ standard to make people parents !

What kind of excuse do these guys have to expose their kids to this kind of violence ? Especially the families where they bring the kids and the grand parents along !!!! If your parents are here, why wouldn't you let your kids be with your parents while you watch the movie with your spouse and then let the parents watch the next show ? Why arent your parents telling you not to expose your kids to such movies at that age ? Well that one is obvious, you are just proving you are your parents creation !

But most of all, What the hell is the FCC doing ? This is happening in America. Granted, that for all I know these people could be playing violent video games or watching porn in their houses with their kids sitting next to them and granted the very same kids could end up being in kids classmates a few years down the road and also granted that there is nothing I can do to prevent what goes on inside their house !!

One thing I can do, is save myself of the embarrasment of watching NC-17 movies with 3-10 year olds sitting next to me. I wanted to go and talk to the theater owners. But this is the third or fourth time I am witnessing the kids in the theater in movies which are clearly not for kids. So the least I could do was to send a detailed letter to the FCC commissioner today. Let us see if I get a response and if they actually do something about this!

It is high time they start rating these movies in the US !!