R-rated movies in the 1980s. Honestly, as a kid, I never thought much about watching something like Alien, Halloween, The Exorcist, Friday the 13th, or even Poltergeist. Not into scary stuff. I didn’t care if anyone else watched it, like kids my age, but I wondered about the parents who would take their kids to those kinds of movies. I mean, even Jaws was a little too intense for my tastes.

So I got on this R-rated movie kick after watching a short video that felt like a news report. The one reported on? Alien.

Sure, the clothes caught my attention, as did the gritty feel of 35mm film footage versus the crisp feel of videotape, but it was the harshness of the interviewer’s questions. She was doing her best to shame the parents into believing they had done something wrong, not dissimilar to followers of Jesus in the same timeframe, to attack anyone listening to rock and roll music because of backward masking and Satanic symbology, shaming kids because they liked the beat and the sound.

I cringed just watching her do the interviews.

“Do you really think that you should allow your child to watch this kind of filth?”

“Is it appropriate for parents to let their school-aged children, like yours, watch a movie with all the gratuitous violence, like Alien?”

“What kind of role model are you being, letting them see something as grotesque as this film?”

The tone in her voice? Shrill. Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall Part II: Wrong! Do it again! Wrong! Do it again!

And the poor kids standing next to their parents! I think I felt worse for them, because today? They are my age. These are GenXers, all in their late forties, fifties, and almost sixties. Did we all wind up serial killers and Satanists because we watched scary movies and listened to rock and roll music? Actually, I believe the reverse is true today. A lot of those same kids still enjoy movies, some in the horror genre, and still love hard rock and roll, which also looks a lot different. And would it surprise you to learn that they are some of the most sincere followers of Jesus?

But the kids in the interviews? They played along with the ridiculousness of the questions.

“Would you take kids in your classroom to see it?”

“No,” one kid laughed, “I don’t think so.”

It’s not that the answer was honest; it’s that they knew which kids liked those movies and which ones didn’t.

None of the kids who knew me would even think about bringing up a movie like Poltergeist or Halloween, even though video cassettes and VCRs were everywhere. Access to those R-rated movies? You bet I had access, one of my friend’s parents owned a video rental store. Watching them with my friends with no parents around? Yeah, that’s doubtful — unless the rating came from language alone, or maybe a little nudity. Nothing that would keep me out of the TV room.

I think my first R-rated movie was Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. I loved that movie, not because of the language. I loved it the same way I loved Raiders of the Lost Ark. The story itself was fun. I got it. It resonated with me. I was the underdog. I wanted to be Billy Ray Valentine, Eddie Murphy’s character. I wanted to get even with the rich guys; in my case, it was all the kids who were picking on me or being mean to me in general. That would’ve been radically awesome.

Instead, I had friends telling me about the latest R-rated movie. The Terminator, detailing the most graphic scenes and the incredible one-liners from Arnold Schwarzenegger, the new action hero of the mid-80s. Or Porky’s. Or Revenge of the Nerds, to name a few.

I thought about that last night, watching this lady’s scathing interview. Ouch. Those poor kids. We knew what was up. Seen and not heard. Until they want to embarrass us.

This interview? I think that was the goal. Not to embarrass the parents. Embarrass the kids.

Yeah.

That was such a GenX thing.