Viewer Discretion is Advised

by Akim Reinahrdt

Language: Ooh, a talkie!
Strong Language: No shit
Disturbing Images: Worse than a mirror?
Nudity: Promises, promises
Sexual Content: Awkward birds & bees talk?
Sex: That’s not sex
Substance Abuse: That’s not abuse
Alcohol Use: Shots!
Smoking: With what cigarettes cost nowadays?
Product Placement: Good reminder not to buy any of it
Violence: You talkin’ to me?
Child Abuse References: I could use a good spanking
Birth: The horror!
Graphic Medical Procedures: Democracy’s autopsy?
Flashing Lights: Bamp-Bamp-Bamp da-da-da-da
Suicide: Spoilers, people!

Gore: Lesley, Frank or Vidal, I’m good. Al or Tipper I’d like a heads up.

[SCENE]

There’s a voice that says The following is intended for mature audiences only. Viewer discretion is advised and I want to slit its throat so that all the blood drains from its veins, for only then can I be sure it will never chide me again.

There is something wrong with me, to be sure.  But there is also something wrong with the show or movie I’m about to watch.  That’s what the voice is telling me.  Be discreet.  Think twice before letting others know you have watched it.  Will you watch it?  Are watching it.  Are you watching it?  Be careful.

What is wrong with you?  Why would you watch this show we made for you?  We’ve warned you.  There’s something wrong with it.

Maturity is required.  Are you mature enough to hear the alkaline truth?  There’s something wrong with you.  You’re trying to hide away what everyone else already sees.  You’re thin skinned and have a fragile ego.

It was a simple advisement, not a searing admonishment, but you couldn’t handle it.  You turned the objective into the subjective.  You were lacking in discretion.

Be discrete.  Do you really want your credit card charged a seemingly reasonable fee every month for access to imaginary sex, violence, and assorted representations of trauma?  Instead of reading and researching about real violence and trauma, which is what they pay you to do, how you got the money to begin with.  Are you mixing difficult work and marginal pleasure, confusing the real with the imaginary?  Can you still tell the difference between yourself and everyone else, between now and yesterday?

The fictional is too real.  The real is not real enough.  The screen glowing blue and white against your face is all there is.  Dry papers ruffling off to the side.

[SCENE]

Middle Class White American Family Embarrassments by Decade