Really. God I'm out of touch...

EDIT: Hmmm, must have hit Quote instead of Edit. Oops.

12 certs haven't existed in years. It's 12A now, meaning under 12s can only see a movie with an adult. The only certs that are set in stone you must be this age are 15 and 18.

Not to mention that it's only been the last 50 years in the 'western' world since kids were brought up in constant real danger, bombings, blitz. The concept of a sheltered and protected childhood is the product of very modern times.

I need an adult! I need an adult!

Everything is more violent now, its just not the comics or the TV or the movies or the games. We want it, they provide it. I get tired of seeing this rant by other parents too, there is too much "bad stuff we expose our kids too", I tell them grow up and cry me a river. Seriously I am a parent and what makes for a good parent compared to an incompetent one is knowing how to properly supervisor and explain things to their kids (like violence).

It means you need an adult. Not matter the rating (unless its nc17), a kid can go into any rating if with an adult.

Does pg 13 mean you can go, but have to go with an adult if you are under 13? 12 Certs in the uk mean no matter what if you are under 12 you can't go.

PG-13?

Yeah, adults call the shots. And typically to my mind, older out of touch adults have run everything in the past. Now we've got serious cases in media of inmates running the asylum or fanboy ascension for good or for worse.

Modern cartoons = anything still shown, so 90s onwards?

There's plenty of marvel cartoons shown, clone wars is violent in extreme in terms of the level of fighting involved.

It's interesting to debate whether results are the important factor, would the scene in resevoir dogs have been as shocking/powerful if it had simply cut away after the scream, or if you never saw him holding something?

An example I often use, and it makes me look silly so it's all good, is the power of the human imagination is worse than reality. I saw robin hood prince of thieves on my 12th birthday, was the first '12' certificate I went to see (don't think there is an American equivalent of that classification, but it's obvious what it means...)

Now near the beginning of the film robin comes home and finds his dad rotting in a cage hanging from the ceiling. I was quite a 'delicate' child, I didn't like death or dead anything and I'd been warned I might not like that bit by a relative who'd already seem it. So I closed my eyes.

I've seen the film maybe 2 or 3 times as an adult and I always look away at that bit. I've never seen it. Rationally in KNOW I've seen things 1000x worse than it, heck I've seen part of the human centipede and that will live with me for a long time. The problem is that what my imagination filled in at that point is horrendous and thus I never look.

It's the same with implied violence in films just like that scene in res dogs. People's own mind fill it in. It's the reason why some of the scariest films are the ones where you don't actually see anything because the mind is better than any cgi.

So to come full circle, I don't think kids think that the violence in their cartoons is all nice and friendly, my little brother (second marriage, much younger) will often prattle on about how so and so got his head kicked right off or other nonsense that i know he didn't see, because his mind fills in the blanks.