Parents Guide being dragged downhill again.

Temporarily posting this as an "idea" resulted in views but no feedback, so I've converted it to "problem" as planned, because someone needs to say it.

My understanding of the Parents Guide's is that the content should be descriptive, that it's not a place to espouse one's personal viewpoint or analysis.  More and more items are being entered more frequently that violate that concept.

These include opinions as to whether kids should watch a film, or kids of what ages; what the rating should be or should have been; laments of sexist treatment of actresses relative to actors, and vice-versa; judgments of content as necessary or gratuitous or skippable;  judgements of the quality of the product, or how it conflicts with source material, or how it compares with other films; language that introduces a religious bias; and descriptions that add to a general aura of sleaziness.

Although some of the troublesome entries might be suitable for the Reviews section, none of them belong in the Parents Guide.  It's likely that many of these come from a relatively small number of contributors, but the example set no doubt encourages a large number of others.

Efforts to edit these entries, initially with delicacy, have been only marginally successful: items reappear, and new ones keep coming and coming.  I've given up.

Many of these problems can be solved or reduced, but some will require IMDb staff to take a more active and direct approach.  Although staff has recommended individual efforts in this forum in the past, I now think it's not practical and perhaps not desirable for individual contributors to address all of them.

Or maybe I'm out of touch, and all of this is just fine as it is.  I hope not.

Below, I'm listing several areas of concern, in no particular order of priority, with a few examples.  Google searches will find more.

'Nick'

1.  Opinions about who shouldn't or shouldn't watch a film, what the ratings should be, and the quality of the film.

Recurring in a group of films related to Shakespeare's plays, with lines like "Suggested re-rating"
       "R-rating was an extreme overreaction"     "could probably have passed for PG instead"
       "absolutely inappropriate for children"     "nothing unsuitable for children"
       "faithful to Shakespeare's play"     "verbatim from Shakespeare's play"
       "really brings that drama and tragedy to life"
       "can be skipped without missing any part of the story."

 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10095582/parentalguide?ref_=tt_stry_pg
              tt0379889   tt0116477   tt0063518   tt2049483   tt067372  tt0114279
              tt0114057   tt0107616   tt0099726   tt0086467   tt0081152

Soviet/Ukrainian animated films, added on a semi-regular basis
      usually "is"/"is not suitable for children"
       tt5517460   tt1075364

Films from India (sometimes following the Singapore ratings), mostly appearing recently
       tt11150912       "Language is very rough, full of slang and not suitable for below 18"
       tt2369154       "Suitable for viewers above 16. Parental Guidance suggested."

Many other similar opinions, sometimes dueling, pop up at random anywhere as to what the rating should have been if it already has one, or what it should be if it doesn't or was producing before a current rating system, or if it were on TV instead of film or vice-versa.  Opinions as to the reasons a film has a certain rating, in the U.S. or U.K., occasionally Canada or Australia.

       tt7852026     "Suitable for Teens"
       tt1094229     "Not sure if it's suitable for children under 10"
       tt7897718     "In Vietnam, the movie is rated C13...
     tt1880940     Suggested MPAA Rating: Rated R for strong brutal bloody violence and some graphic sexuality, and for nudity, pervassive strong language and drug content.
     tt8665330     6\10 Suggested Rating: TV 14, LV for strong language and violence.
     tt0197159     Depending on where you watch it, the show might be rated TV-MA, but it's not that bad.
     tt0095159     Pg Level Pg13 Language       More appropriate than the majority of films that came out that year especially comedies even more appropriate than Big which was rated pg

2.  Entries lamenting sexism in filmmaking.  These were originally more strident, with qualifiers such as "exploitative" and with comments such as "comparable male nudity is not provided for the pleasure of female viewers"; describing what I assume was a brothel as a "trafficked victimhouse."  More commonly now, the descriptive content is appended with comparative rather than descriptive statements regarding limited male vs female content, but some blatant examples are still found.

     tt0108052 (Schindler's List)     "these are gratuitous and unnecessary scenes"
        "Exclusively gratuitous female nudity"  "Bare breasts are unnecessarily shown"
     tt1649419   "clearly the director wanted her breasts shown. All obviously not necessary to the story"
     tt5294550       "Meanwhile, there is no male nudity shown at all."
     tt0061181   "Gratuitous female nudity… No parallel male nudity…."
     tt2494362   tt0208092  tt0310910  tt0117318

Presumably in response, some films are now receiving items highlighting the opposite situation, making comparative rather than descriptive statements when more male nudity occurs than female.

     tt11525022   "gratuitous full frontal male nudity. No female genitalia as per sexist double standard."
     tt5011816     "Mild female nudity not on par with gratuitous male nudity"
     t13172796   tt7043012

And some just at random, characterizing sexual or violent content as "gratuitous", "unnecessary", "excessive", "out of context", "justified by context" and offering opinions such as stating that a scene "can easily be skipped."

     tt12714854   tt0156891

3.  Several tendencies contribute to make the Parents Guide more lascivious than it might be:

a) One is the time-tagging of entries.  Since the overwhelming majority of these were scenes of visible nudity, no matter how mild and regardless of the intensity of non-nude sex and violence scenes, I do not acknowledge good faith on the part of folks who claim they only want to skip these scenes.  And even if that were true, this becomes a back-door way for individual contributors to flag which items they feel are the worst, leading us to the bad old days of six or seven years ago and editing wars (before my time here).

 
     tt0166110   tt11704040   tt0087799   tt0120694   tt0066415   tt0066993   tt1480055

This problem has reached the level that here's-the-nudity entries with both episode number and time-tag are being inserted in the series level content for TV programs.

b) In a similar vein, the description of nudity of minors is sometimes off-putting, particularly when descriptions of kids contain far more detail than, or to the exclusion of, descriptions of adults in the same film. One of my (least) favorite thus far was in an entry for which the nudity of a boy who had been swimming was already more than adequately described: "His penis twitches a little when he pulls his underpants on."  It was descriptive, and in the correct category.  And since I wasn't going to watch a rather depressing film a second time to verify it, I stipulate it was correct.  But... ick.

And I just don't have what it takes to address these:

     tt0089748     "There is a close-up scene of the apparent circumcision of a 6-year-old boy. The scene passes quickly but it appears that the boy has no scrotum. A stop action review would lead one to believe that the child is really a girl with a small dildo of a penis held in place at the top of her labia majora fold. A close look appears to vaguely reveal her labia in the background. An older girl, perhaps ten, is shown in a bathtub, her labia are visible through the water although, obvioulsy, not clearly."

      tt2901736     "As the maid bends down to lather the boy's legs and bottom, his penis and scrotum are visible relatively close-up. The boy is close to twelve, without any sign of pubic hair growth. His penis is uncircumcised and flaccid, and the scene is not sexual in any way. Later, a female child is born. As she is cleaned, her genitals are clearly visible. This might confuse young kids as the labia are very swollen. Some might think it's a boy missing a penis."

     tt0112989     "The boy's penis is uncircumcised and prepubescent, with no signs of pubic hair growth, and remains flaccid throughout. "

This tone spills over into other sections.  One Trivia item demonstrated that a particular film was produced after another one, by stating that the 10-year-old actress "has full nudity scenes (front and rear) in both of them and, observing her physical development, you can see that in {the second film} she's starting to have breasts and has more rounded buttocks."

     tt0082633     "The movie was filmed between October 1979 and June 1981. The scenes were shot in the same chronological order in which they appear in the film. The shower scene was filmed around December 1979."  How important to know the actors' ages when they showered!

The several "underage nudity" keywords should be eliminated.  This red flag is also misleading and not consistent with other uses of "underage".  Many nations set age limits for driving, sexual activity, marriage, smoking, and drinking, so for those events "underage" makes sense: when applied relative to the location and time in which a film is set, it indicates characters are violating a law or rule.  As best I can tell, there are no corresponding age limits for being unclothed, either in the fictional action within a film or in the real world action of making it.  The purpose of keywords phrased this way is suspect.

c)  Even when describing adults, we all know what element comprise male genitals, so I'm not sure what added value is offered by separately listing the penis, glans, shaft, or scrotum.  There's occasional use of crude terms such as 't*ts' and 'd*ck' in sections other than Profanity.

d)  On a fairly regular basis, I find myself entering the "other" categories of content, because previous contributors have only addressed the Sex & Nudity items, leaving everything else blank.

It's not just that some of the content looks bad -- so does IMDb.

4.  Recently, some contributor(s) are introducing a religious viewpoint in the Profanity section, with phrasing such as "takes our/the Lord's name in vain" or "blaspheming" and characterizations such as "misuses God's name" rather than just listing the words used.  One entry lectured other contributors or film producers with Scripture: "Thou shall not take the name of the Lord in vain."  This terminology does not jibe with the concept that IMDb is religion-neutral and does not itself have a lord, and creates an unwelcome environment for those of other faiths or no faith.

     tt2212670   tt8421350   tt8358682   tt0408790  tt7220118

5.  Less judgmental, so perhaps less troublesome but still an introduction of individual contributors' opinions, are comparisons of films with others, such as how the violence compares to others in a series (e.g. Marvel Comic Universe, or any trilogy).  And not all of the many productions described as 'most violent/gory/scary/disturbing film of all time' can be the -est.

     tt0708977     "Much more violent than the rest of Star Trek:Voyager, not suitable for children"