How strict was your upbringing w/r/t TV shows?

[treble]

I was limited to an hour a week of wrestling because I would always try and put my brothers in the Sharpshooter. I also wasn't allowed to watch Roseanne, but I think that's just because my mom didn't like Roseanne Barr.

 

[NoCalMike]

I was actually never banned from anything really. My mom was pretty naive to TV/Cable programming, as in she had her little niche of shows she watched such as, game shows, lifetime movies, and the occasional network tv show, and then movies we rented, but other then that she didn't really know all the stuff that was on other channels.

My dad he was hip to the game, but he was really annoyed at news programs that tried to blame TV/Movies for things that kids did.

I think my parents just felt satisfied in the job they did teaching me from a young age that TV/Movies(video games & music as well) are just a form of entertainment, it's not real, so don't act like it's real in life.

That was pretty much enough for me.

 

[vivisectvi]

I could pretty much watch anything, outside of porn of course. Horror was my main thing, and my parents realized I was mature enough to handle that kind of thing at an early age.

 

[samoarowe]

Oh yeah, I wasn't allowed to watch wrestling as a kid, but since I didn't have cable, that wasn't a big issue. That's why I didn't get into wrestling until I was 13-14, and didn't become a dedicated fan until I was 15.

 

[Youth N Asia]

My parents were cool. I'd lose wrestling for a week or two when my brother and I would mock it and he'd get hurt. Otherwise I pretty much watched as I liked.

 

[909]

We were watching Raw the night after IYH: Rock Bottom (which we saw, btw, so this makes no sense at all), and Val Venis showed up for his match. He gyrated. TV went off.

I missed Test's debut. This ban only lasted for a week. That was it.

 

[Kinetic]

I was never banned from watching anything. My parents actually encouraged my interest in ultra-violent horror movies, and seemed more than happy to park me in front of the TV for the horror movie doubleheader that San Antonio's ABC affiliate would show every Saturday night. Some of these movies actually haunted me well into my teenage years, so perhaps this wasn't the greatest idea on their part. Never had any problems with Beavis and Butt-Head. My dad was actually a big fan; him laughing until he cried at Beavis's Andy Rooney impression is a fond childhood memory.

Music was a different deal, though. My mother actually smashed all of my Gwar cassettes one day when I was at school. Our relationship has never fully recovered.

 

[still fly]

I was allowed to watch all the Child's Play movies, Nightmare on Elm Streets, comedy shows, wrestling, the Simpsons, but not Beavis and Butthead for some reason.

My parents were always lenient with television, but not with music. During the Death Row Records heyday when I lived in Inglewood, they tried their hardest to keep my sister and I innocent, but I had older cousins that bumped the stuff 24/7 so they eventually gave up.

 

[CanadianChris]

I was never specifically banned from watching anything, but I was only allowed to watch either A-Team or Knight Rider in a given week (not both).

I thought it was weird as a kid. In retrospect...still weird.

 

[DrVenkman PhD]

I think there had some suggestions I try to limit my Unsolved Mysteries viewing due to the fact the show was pure nightmare fuel for a child (in school, we all agreed as much) but it was never banned. It was a "you can watch it, but it's your own fault if you have a bad dream" deal.

 

[Jaxxxson Mayhem]

I think there had some suggestions I try to limit my Unsolved Mysteries viewing due to the fact the show was pure nightmare fuel for a child (in school, we all agreed as much) but it was never banned. It was a "you can watch it, but it's your own fault if you have a bad dream" deal.

So true. I still get freaked out by that show.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Not strict at all. I could watch pretty much anything I wanted to. If I did something stupid in real life, I would have a lot of owning up to do but TV, videogames and films were anything goes.

Put me in the Unsolved Mysteries fanclub. I watched that every chance I could get as a kid. That was one of my favourite shows.

 

[mw679]

My parents didn't let me watch R rated movies, and they were pretty strict with music, I remember my dad busting some of my older brother's tapes that had the dreaded "parental advisory" sticker on them. With the movies, though, I'd just walk down the street to my buddies house and watch anything we wanted, there were no restrictions at his house. My parents weren't too fond of wrestling but they never told me not to watch it, they would usually just make smart ass comments like "You know it's fake, right?" and "Don't go trying that with your friends, someone might get hurt!" I can also remember my dad always bitching about MTV and how crappy their programming was, yet, I would catch him now and then watching, like, Singled Out or something and when I'd walk into the room, he'd fumble with the remote and try to change the channel real quick.(Like I didn't notice that he was staring at Carmen Electra.)

 

[Anakin Flair]

I was never banned from watching anything. In fact, I have vivid memories of watching Beverly Hills Cop with my sister when I was in first grade. The only restrictions I had were that, until Junior High, my TV had to be off by Nine. This led me to stuffing my blanket into the crack under my door so I could watch Star Trek: TNG.

Funny story- I had moved into my sister's (bigger) room when she moved out, and she had had cable installed. She canceled it, but they never disconnected it, which I discovered one day when I tried to watch X-Men and couldn't get a good picture. Well my dad caught me, and did what any good parent would do- he immediately wired the entire house, so we had free cable until we moved several years later.

 

[Anakin Flair]

I think there had some suggestions I try to limit my Unsolved Mysteries viewing due to the fact the show was pure nightmare fuel for a child (in school, we all agreed as much) but it was never banned. It was a "you can watch it, but it's your own fault if you have a bad dream" deal.

I rarely got freaked out by the show itself, but I almost always was freaked by the theme song. Gave me the creeps. Great show, though.

So true. I still get freaked out by that show.

 

[Dobbs3K]

My parents weren't too bad. I remember when we first got cable, they had MTV blocked for whatever reason (this was when I was about 11). We soon figured out we could watch the channel anyway, and they didn't seem to really care soon after. Beavis and Butthead wasn't seen as a big deal, as far as I recall. I was allowed to watch wrestling, though my parents thought it was stupid.

We weren't supposed to watch Married With Children, and I didn't (always thought it was kind of dumb, personally).

My grandma was way stricter, and I remember some stupid debacle about us not being allowed to watch a VHS tape of Look Who's Talking, because it was rated PG-13. Though my parents rented it for us like three months later. I still am not sure what the big deal was there.

 

[MFer]

There weren't really any rules on what TV shows I could or couldn't watch, but I got the feeling that my parents wouldn't be thrilled with me watching wrestling or Howard Stern or some random MTV/VH1 music video or show so I usually snuck around to watch that stuff.

 

[Ed Wood Caulfield]

It wasn't really strict at all. I was allowed to watch whatever I wanted, though I remember my mother covering my eyes during graphic violence or sex scenes. I remember she took me to see White Men Can't Jump when it was in theaters, and I had to have been around 4-years-old at the time. She covered my eyes whenever there was a sex scene.

I remember watching Total Recall non-stop as a kid. I remember watching Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan with my mother and my cousins when I was 3 or 4. I also remember seeing Terminator 2: Judgment Day on pay-per-view along with my family (cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents)! Honestly, the only time I can recall my mother freaking out over something was when I wanted to buy Rage Against The Machine's self-titled debut album. She didn't want me to get it because it had the song "Bullet In Your Head" in it. She wasn't too thrilled about that.

And I loved Unsolved Mysteries as a child. Scared me alot of the time, but I still watched it.

 

[CanadianGuitarist]

Has anyone ever had the experience of having a parent think something would be clean, family fun and suitable viewing only to be sorely mistaken?

There's Something About Mary. My mother took my brother and me to see it on our 14th birthday. At fourteen, it wasn't too bad, but there were certainly kids younger than I in the audience.

She also took us to see The Birdcage when I was...ten or eleven. I remember her explaining to us outside the theatre beforehand that Robin Williams and Nathan Lane played homosexuals, and she was kind of surprised that we didn't ask what 'gay' meant. I don't remember the film very well, probably because I was so surprised my mother thought I didn't know what 'gay' meant. Ironically, the Simpsons that night was where Bart bankrupts Itchy and Scratchy, and my mother walked through the living room to hear 'the possible end of I&S', much to her delight. I remember her being opposed to the Simpsons, but we eventually got that overturned. She never caved on Itchy and Scratchy, though.

Also, no wrestling from King of the Ring 1993 until sometime around the 1995 Royal Rumble, both of which my dad was ordering on PPV. I maintain to this day that the KotR ban was just to piss off my father, from whom my mother had recently separated. He coaxed her into the 95 Rumble, and the ban was lifted. It was back in full effect a day later when my brother and I got in shit at school (along with every single other boy in Grade 5) for having an enormous Royal Rumble over the fence, on top of a pile of snow that had been plowed up against it. No one was hurt, but Nick Hodges tore his jacket on the fence and told a teacher about it.

 

[Sesquipedaliantique]

I wasn't really allowed to watch wrestling because I was a fairly violent child (to other children). Aside from that I never had much of an interest in television growing up, so it was never really a problem.

 

[Next USC #55]

My parents didn't care what I watched on TV, as long as I understood it's just fiction/to be mature about themes. Although that's because they exposed me to adult concepts at a young age, so it was nothing.

 

[NoCalMike]

My first memory of going to the Drive-In, my dad too me and my sister to a double feature of Batman & Child's Play. I was 9.

 

[Jingus]

Hah, I've been to an inappropriate double feature at a drive-in too. Well, not inappropriate as in R-rated, but more for the bizarre discongruity between the two films showing: Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and Jurassic Park. What?! I mean, really? How my parents got me to sit through the first movie at 13 years of age, I don't remember. Still, I guess it was worth it just to see a flick like Jurassic Park at a fuckin' drive-in.

 

[Czech]

they exposed me to adult concepts at a young age

Elaborate.

 

[Incandenza]

My mother was intent on corrupting my mind at an early age. First R-rated movie I saw in a theater was Coming to America. I was eight. Not sure what my first ever R movie was. I remember my mom renting RoboCop when it came out on video. It may've been that. I was seven or eight at the time.

As fine as she was letting me watch violent movies and read Stephen King novels at an impressionable age, she was a bit more hardline about letting me buy my first Parental Advisory-stickered album. It ended up being BloodSugarSexMagik, purchased on cassette when I was 13.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

Hah, I've been to an inappropriate double feature at a drive-in too. Well, not inappropriate as in R-rated, but more for the bizarre discongruity between the two films showing: Honey, I Blew Up the Kid and Jurassic Park. What?! I mean, really? How my parents got me to sit through the first movie at 13 years of age, I don't remember. Still, I guess it was worth it just to see a flick like Jurassic Park at a fuckin' drive-in.

Jurassic Park was HUGE when I was a kid. It was the Star Wars of my generation.

Lineups around the block, a gazillion Jurassic Park ripoffs, the book being sold out everywhere, numerous travelling dinosaur exhibits, etc.

 

[DrVenkman PhD]

The one and only time I went to a Drive-In was for Ghostbusters II with my dad, his (now-ex) wife and her daughter (under no circumstances would I refer to the woman as "step mother", but I would call her "step sister", but enough about that) but we had to watch "La Bamba" first. I fell asleep before GB actually started.

 

[Smues]

Only time in my life I've been to a drive-in I was probably 6 or 7 years old and I went with a friend and his parents. The double feature? Weekend at Bernies 2 and Son-in-law. My friends mom made us leave about 5 minutes into son-in-law as she decided it wasn't kid appropriate. Paulie Shore really isn't human being appropriate so I agree.

 

[mellow]

The one and only time I went to a Drive-In was for Ghostbusters II with my dad, his (now-ex) wife and her daughter (under no circumstances would I refer to the woman as "step mother", but I would call her "step sister", but enough about that) but we had to watch "La Bamba" first. I fell asleep before GB actually started.

The fuck? La Bamba came out in 1987. You had to put up with that to get to Ghostbusters II in 1989? At least I got to see it with Batman.

 

[Sesquipedaliantique]

Since this discussion's now shifted to cinema, I should probably mention that my parents watched GoodFellas four days before I was born.