On Games, Midnight, and Broken Promises

Alternate title:  Obligatory Hunger Games Post

Y'all know I'm a fan of midnight movies with my older kids.  I love taking that time with them. Even if they leave me in the dust to sit with their friends, I still have them all to myself for the thirty-minute drive home at 3 am.  I wouldn't trade those 3 am discussions for any amount of sleep.  And that's really saying something.

Thursday night at the last minute, Ben decided he wanted to see if there were any tickets still available for Hunger Games.  No problem, so he called his buddy McKay and the three of us headed over to the theater around 9:45 pm.  Lines wrapped around the building, but we only waited about 40 minutes before we were allowed into the theater, where we found very good seats and made ourselves comfy for the next hour until the movie started.

I know most of the civilized world has already seen the movie or at least read the book, but I won't spoil it for any of you.  What I will tell you is this:  It is violent.  Very violent.  It is not well-acted.  It is not beautifully or creatively shot.  It's just okay.  It will not be one of my favorite movies.  I'm sure I won't ever see it again.

That all being said, I wanted to tell you what those two sophomore boys said about the movie on our drive home.  Both of them have read the books multiple times.  Both are huge fans (and both were disappointed with the ending of the series), and both were excited to see the movie.

Neither of them really liked the movie.  Both commented on the violence and missing story line.  Both enjoyed the movie on some level, but it was not their fave either.

What really opened my eyes was their concern about the violence--how graphic it was.  How explicit it was. So it wasn't just me as a prudish 40-something adult.

I had a hard time going to sleep that night.  You see, I had promised Lily that even though she was not allowed to attend the midnight showing (Hello! She's 11.), I would take her to see it first thing after school on Friday.

Now I was seriously reconsidering that promise.

There is a difference in the intensity of the written word and a visual image of those written words.  I had just read Hunger Games.  The story and images were very fresh in my mind, and yet I found myself worked up and tense through much of the show--so tense that I would have to consciously uncoil my fists and relax my arms.  Once I screamed out loud--very loud, in all honesty (you know the part, at the end, with the wolves?).  And that was gruesome.  I don't want the intensity of those images flashing through my daughter's head.  What really disturbed me about the visual images was that these were no longer just characters in a book, but that these people were children--young children.  If this concept had been penned with grown-ups in the arena, fighting each other to the death, all in the name of civilization, the movie would carry an R rating, but since it is a young-adult book, PG-13 was necessary.

When I dragged myself out of bed after a too-brief three-hour nap night's sleep, I found Lily sitting at the computer looking up show times.  How could I tell her? What would I decide to do? Tell her I'd changed my mind, and I wouldn't allow her to see the movie?

Am I a hypocrite?  I let her read the book, after all.  Is a movie really all that different from the book?
In this case, yes it is.  There is a reason the movie is rated PG-13.  She's not thirteen.  And I'm the parent.  I get final say.

As she left for school that morning, I told her I was thinking about it, but I didn't know if I'd let her see the movie or not.  By 2:15, I was sure--she would not be seeing Hunger Games any time in the near future. 

To say she was angry is like describing the Statue of Liberty as tall.  She was furious--anger, stamping, tears, shouting.  Her friends saw it at midnight.  Her friends loved it.  She wouldn't be scared. And the backbone of her argument, "YOU PROMISED!"

Yes, I had promised.  That promise had been a mistake, and I wasn't going to compound my initial mistake by making another, one that I couldn't take back.  She ranted and railed, but I never relented.  I stuck to my decision, and that's that.

Don't misunderstand me.  I like the books themselves--they provide a lot for kids to think about--to deeply consider and evaluate on moral levels.  I love that it had the big boys thinking about modern reality TV, politics, violence, and our society in general.  And I will let Lily finish reading the last two books.

But she will not be seeing the movie any time in the near future.

That's the beauty of being the parent.  I get to decide.  I get to set the limits.  I get to take the heat for my decisions.

And I won't budge.  I don't care who else has seen it.