Why in the world did ABC feel the need to show ads for Hostel during the Orange Bowl?
I’m watching the game with my daughter and son (10, 8), and having a great time, when all of sudden this ad pops on for Hostel. A girl is bound and gagged to a chair. A man in a mask picks up a power drill. Pliers are placed around a toe. Various instruments of torture are shown on a table. A man is screaming for his life, while another masked man approaches with a chain saw!!
WTF!!
My daugther gives me a nervous look. My son bites down on his lip. In a matter of seconds, we’ve gone from having a great time watching football to utter horror; dark, gruesome, torture-horror! I now have to calm my kids down and try to explain what the hell they just saw.
Newsflash to ABC: Families watch football!! Kids watch football!! Don’t show ads for what looks to be the most horrific, gruesome, movie in years during the freakin’ Orange Bowl!!
Interestingly enough, I’m a fan of Eli Roth (the writer/director). I loved Cabin Fever. But still…
Interesting. No outrage at all. Scenes of torture, involving pliers and chain saws, are shown during a commercial of a college football game and no one blinks an eye!?
A mere ten years ago, people were up in arms about the level of violence (i.e. intense torture scenes) shown in movies like Resevior Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Now it’s apparently acceptable to show the same types of scenes during commercials(!), commercials aired during footballs games, when kids are watching!
Television is for adults. Not for kids. I result the hell out of the implication that anything shown in prime time should be so dumbed down, so infantile, so mindless that any eight-year-old who happens to be in the room won’t be offended. Or any person with an eight-year-old mentality, for that matter.
I’m no fan of horror movies or gratuitous torture scenes. I’ll never see Hostel. But it doesn’t bother me that ads for it are shown at night because I just don’t care about your children. They’re your responsibility, not the networks’ and certainly not mine.
We’re very careful about what we expose our kids to regarding TV. The last thing in the world I expected to see when watching ads for the Orange Bowl was a girl strapped to a chair, screaming for her life, while some guy in a mask approaches her with a power drill! The last thing I expected to see was a close up shot a toe about to be snipped off by a pair of pliers!
Before I knew what the hell was happening, I scrambled to get my kids off of me in a frantic attempt to hunt for the remote, so I could to turn the freakin’ channel! By the time I had found the remote, the commerical was over and kids were freaking out!
I guess if anything I am guilty of not having the remote in my hands when the commercials appeared.
I’m sorry, but gratuitous torture scenes should NOT be shown during commecials of football games!! Period!!
Of course you realize that no gratuitous torture was actually shown during the commercial. The threat of impending torture was, certainly; but no actual torture. So it was all in your mind – which is why it was ok to show.
Not that I necessarily agree with this philosophy, but I can’t really disagree that TV has, due to the various niche cable networks, become stratified to the point where I can’t really trust any of the non-kid oriented channels to not show mature content commercials during ‘family’ shows. There’s plenty of sex and violence shown in commercials during a standard prime time lineup, so I’d not expect a sports program to be any different, really.
Now, if only we can stop those ‘Worship Jamz’ commercials from airing on Nickelodeon, I’ll be set.
Well that’s technically true, but in my mind the line was crossed. When you show a girl tied to a chair, begging for her life, and then immediately show a close-up a toe about to be snipped off by pliers, that’s torture.
Again, my point is that they showed too much, and they showed it during the wrong program, at the wrong time (I could be wrong, but I believe they showed the first ad, and yes, they showed it multiple times, at ~ 8:45PM). If this level of violence must be showed on commercials, show them late at night, during the Sopranos, or something. Not during the damn Orange Bowl!
It is extremely broad. And it comes from not having children. I expect I’d feel differently if I did.
But I don’t. And as I get older I find the concessions and outright censorship of network - and even cable - television to suit the eight-year-old mentality more and more annoying instead of more understandable.
I realize that mine is a minority viewpoint. Nonetheless valid in this context, however.
I think I’ve seen that trailer, including during the movie King Kong with my eleven-year-old nephew and seven-year-old niece. As others have said, no actual torture is shown, and what is shown is in very brief clips. I think your reaction of throwing the kids off you and jumping for the remote might have freaked them out. You might have been better off to simply ignore the commercial, or attempt to quietly distract them from it for the thirty seconds it was on. I don’t think my niece noticed the trailer when we were waiting for King Kong to start.
