Revealed! Clandestine humor at The Gray Lady!

The New York Times is not funny. It has many journalistic virtues, but sparkling wit is not among them. Maureen Dowd lands a witty zinger on occasion, and Dwight Garner always leavens his book reviews with sly humor. But overall, the Times is much too self-conscious to be funny; it fancies itself the national paper of record and so is appropriately earnest. Life magazine in 1951 may have referred to it as “The Old Gray Lady” because its front pages used to feature dense columns of text unrelieved by images, but the nickname, which probably preceded Life’s mention, stuck because of the paper’s sobriety.

But a stealthy wag lurks on the Times’s culture desk. Perhaps multiple wags. Whoever it is, they are responsible for some levity in very small letters appended to film reviews in the newspaper’s digital edition. Below the text of each review, you will find a table of information—the movie’s director, writers, stars, running time, rating—set in type small enough to strain a falcon. If a film has been rated by the American Motion Picture Association, especially if it has been rated R for mature audiences, this information may include a half-dozen words, sometimes more, that explain the rating. This is where the fun happens.

A small sample from various films rated R...

• …for violence, assault, and grown-up matters.
• …for a particularly narcissistic bedroom fantasy.
• …for damage done by sharp, ferocious teeth, both shark and human.
• …for a needle in the neck and a corpse in the car.
  

I think that last one rivals the 1983 New York Post headline:

There is a capricious element here. Many films don’t seem to merit an explanation of their ratings, at least in the mind of our mysterious rascal. Some seem to come about because someone wants us to take a film’s rating seriously:

• …for fiery disasters and extreme violence.
• …for explicit drug use, graphic sexual content, nudity, strong language, and scenes of violent abuse.
• …for mutant monsters, flesh wounds, cults, and really painful sex.
  

I don’t think I’ll be streaming those. The evening news is bad enough.

To a writer’s dismay, “language” shows up a lot as a non-specific threat:

• …for violence and language.
• …for language and themes.
• …for language and comedic violence.
• …for strong bloody violence, grisly images, and language throughout.
  

I concede that nothing is more alarming than language throughout. It has certainly scarred me.

The language warnings can be more specific:

• …for language which I have already forgotten.
• …for language unfit for daytime TV.
  

My curiosity was stimulated by these:

• …for nonstop scenes of peril to man and beast, including a pretty terrifying mutant predator.
• …for forced sex and a frightening dinner party.
  

A dinner party more frightening than forced sex? I haven’t experienced that since I left academia.

• …for face bashing, gut busting, and exploding torso jump scares.
  

I can picture the gut busting, but what the hell is an exploding torso jump scare? I am so out of touch with popular culture these days.

• …for blood, saws, ritual shaving.
  

I’m fairly sure I don’t want to know about that last one.

Now and then one comes across what feels like an inside joke:

• …for some rowdy, bawdy chatter, incest-y intimations, murder, intrigue, and Henry Golding’s bare derrière.
  

Among my favorites are the ones that read like fragments of poetry from an archaeological dig:

• …for teenage fumblings, adult infidelity.
• …for bang-bang, repeat.
  

If I may play the critic myself for a moment, kudos to our anonymous wit, whose quality is revealed frequently by the last item in each sentence, which every experienced writer knows is where you put your best bits:

• …for violence and being an eyesore.
• …for violence and bad investments.
• …for alcoholism, adultery, and enviable curb appeal.
• …for strong bloody violence and heavy drink service.
• …for a lot of sex scenes, some bad language, and a general sense of longing.
  

And finally, some are worthy of the Times’s Olympian posture by the sheer wonder of so much conveyed and so much evoked with the concision of haiku:

• …for, oh, just so many bizarre and gory deaths, plus lots of bad language and some chatter about swingers.
• …for fire in the face and a severed hand in a bag.
• …for the cringing but also for the kind of stuff desperate guys talk about, and a drug trip involving a toad.
  

I cannot improve on that.

Coda: After further research, I suspect that these charming nuggets are tacked onto Times reviews by their authors. But I prefer the stealthy wag theory. Many a good story has been ruined by fact-checking.