South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have some advice for minors who want to see the film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut -- buy a ticket to the movie Wild Wild West and then sneak into their subversive feature length satire based on their late night animated program on Comedy Central. South Park is lewd, crude, rude, and biting. South Park may not be suitable for children -- it is a bit of adult animation. It is as witty as The Simpsons but not as classy -- it is full of base humor of the type Beavis and Butthead made popular -- but it's far more obscene than Beavis and Butthead.

The South Park movie features a talking clitoris and frequent use of the term "uncle fucker." It also criticizes the Motion Picture Association of America, and skewers the notion that films are have a dangerous Svengaliesque ability to control and warp young minds which will emulate, without question, obscenity and vulgarity in mass media. It is rated "R" by the MPAA which means that children under 17 can't see the film without their parents.

Now, it has long been held that ratings are not censorship -- the MPAA isn't saying you can't make a film with R-rated content, or even X-rated content. Hell, you could make a film which defies all ratings categories if you want -- the First Amendment, we are assured, is safe from ratings on movies, or warning labels on music and video games. But the MPAA does get to say what age groups have access to what films (even a parent can't bring a minor into an NC-17 rated movie, no matter what they've decided their children are ready to see).

The South Park movie is aimed at the minors who will have to sneak into the show. The humor isn't really above the head of your average 15-year-old and further, the movie is arguing to that age group, telling kids under 17 that the ratings system is unfair and wrong and that it's ridiculous for them to think that Hollywood and media can control their behavior. Today's high school-aged citizens, the group most affected by the tragedy at Columbine, are being asked by Parker and Stone to seriously consider and evaluate the recent rash of anti-Hollywood thought which abounds on the news and in newspapers lately.

But those kids, the target of South Park's theme, can't get into the movie except by sneaking in -- this is censorship. The MPAA is telling the two writer/director/animators that their intended message cannot be delivered to their intended audience.

Security at Albuquerque's Century Rio movie theater for the opening night of South Park was ridiculous -- my girlfriend and I, both 24-years-old, were carded when we bought our tickets. We went into the theater lobby and were directed to our theater where we were carded again, in an attempt to foil minors hopping shows, I guess. I asked the second guy who carded me if their was beer and wine in the theater, or maybe some mescaline. Imagine, all this security just to keep young eyes away from a movie!

The film is obscene, by the way -- I learned several new curse words. It's also an excellent movie. When our heroes, young Kyle, Kenny, Stan and Cartman sneak into a dirty movie by Canadian comedians Terence and Phillip they become obsessed with foul language. Kyle's easily antagonized mother starts up "Mothers Against Canada" and provokes the United States into a war with Canada (there's a great sequence where the Canadians bomb the home of the Baldwin Brothers). There are great numbers (a few hard hits at Disney there) and the constant question asked by the kids "What would Brian Boitano do?"

But the film's main message -- that people, especially young people, are not controlled by the images they see on film and television screens, that ratings are a form of censorship, and that parents like to criticize Hollywood for their rotten kids because they don't have to face their horrible child-rearing skills, needs to be heard and it needs to be heard most by the very teenagers who are supposed to be locked out of the theaters.

It's time to scrap the MPAA because they've gone too far and crossed the line from ratings to censorship. Studios should refuse to have their films rated, and theaters should refuse to publish those ratings.

Michael Maiello demands that the MPAA "respect my authoritae!"