Family-Friendly

Kids’ TV is now about young people in wild situations—with few adults

When I wrote a review of The Dark Knight for the website, I had some trouble coming up with a word to describe the movie’s resolutely sexless, bloodless content. I went with calling it “the cleanest Batman movie ever,” but as some people pointed out to me, that doesn’t make a great deal of sense. (Who describes a gritty crime thriller with a zillion murders as “clean?”) But I couldn’t call it “family-friendly” either, because this movie is not family-friendly, and in fact people are arguing over whether it’s too intense for children. “But,” it was pointed out to me, “you’re saying that it could be shown on CBS at 8 pm; doesn’t that mean you’re saying it’s family-friendly?” Not really. Few broadcast network TV shows today are really “family-friendly,” yet all of them, because of FCC regulations, have restrictions on violence, language and sex. And it’s the same with Christopher Nolan’s Batman, though the restrictions are self-imposed (even within the limits of a PG-13 rating, you can get away with more than he tries to get away with).