Arkady
President
Good article here about the controversial insistence of the MPAA on giving an anti-bullying movie an "R" rating (thus putting it out of the reach of the very kids it was meant to help):
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/28/why_the_mpaa_doesnt_want_your_kid_to_see_bully/
I've long been baffled by the MPAA's ratings. They famously give soft ratings to some of the most horrifyingly awful violence you can imagine, including explicit scenes of cold-blooded murder and torture. They don't even have a problem with violence that's depicted in an amoral or off-hand manner (killings are often used as cheap punchlines, with no moral consequences or even consideration, in MPAA-approved movies). Yet they panic any time there's nudity, romantic sexuality, or "dirty" words.
I'll give you a specific example using two films from the same year:
"Before Sunrise" is a brilliant romance about two characters who meet on a train and then spend the night walking the streets of Vienna, talking and falling in love. It was one of the best-reviewed movies of the decade. There is literally not one moment of violence in the whole movie. There's no sex -- just a couple romantic kisses. No nudity. No drug use. No criminal acts of any kind. No cruelty or insulting behavior. No body-function humor. No glorifying stupidity. And no bigotry. The characters are smart and articulate, so they don't swear much, either. But there are a handful of those "dirty" words, about a dozen of them, floating in the midst of a tidal wave of hyper-intelligent dialogue, as there would need to be to accurately capture how 20-somethings like them would talk in the real world. That was enough for the MPAA to give it an "R" rating. Overall, it was one of the least offensive movies I've ever seen, but the MPAA wanted to make sure kids were kept away, lest they hear a few "f words" peppering the dialogue.
Now, compare that to "Mortal Kombat," which came out the same year. There is non-stop violence in that movie -- sick and sadistic violence, glorified in all its gratuitous detail. Multiple people are murdered on screen. Some of the deaths are brutally graphic, including a character having his spine loudly snapped. The violence is the core of the movie, and it's depicted without any serious moral consideration, as if watching people kill each other with their bare hands was the most enjoyable thing in the world. The MPAA gave it a PG-13, letting 14-year-old kids watch it without any parental permission. That wasn't the only example that year, either. Other big-budget action flicks, full of repeated graphic violence, like Waterworld, also got PG-13s. Goldeneye even went with kinky violence (a woman kills a man with her thighs while she orgasms), in addition to the usual James Bond dosage of bloody and sadistic violent crime.
That kind of inconsistency can be mind-blowing. I've seen movies the MPAA gave PG-13s that had such mind-hammering graphic violence that I literally left the theater sick to my stomach. They struck me as inappropriate for anyone who retained a shred of respect for human life and a shred of sympathy for human suffering, much less someone under 17. And I've seen movies the MPAA gave "R" ratings that, when I played them back in my mind, I couldn't even begin to guess what got their knickers in a twist. The MPAA thinks murder's appropriate for children's fair, but a single glimpse of breast is only for adults. Graphic torture is fine for 14-year-olds, but show someone taking a drag off a joint and you're likely to have an R rating.
I've given up trying to understand the kinds of sickos who work for the MPAA -- people for whom throwing a murder into the middle of a sex scene makes it MORE appropriate for kids than having the same scene's eroticism play out without a violent death. But if you're interested in how the bizarre system works, check out the fine documentary "This Film is Not Yet Rated." It does a wonderful job giving an insider's view on the Kafkaesque process of trying to get the MPAA to reconsider an R or NC-17 rating, uncovering the anonymous prudes who actually make up the ratings board, and documenting the absurd inconsistencies of their ratings.
Some of what happens with the MPAA is just pure political conservatism. Depict heterosexual sex and you get an R rating. Depict homosexual sex in exactly the same way and it's NC-17. "This Film is Not Yet Rated" uses split screens to do the comparisons, providing a slam-dunk case for a double-standard. But it's the sex/violence double standard that outrages me more. In the Oscar-winning film Boys Don't Cry, the MPAA raters raised no objection to a scene in which the protagonist's is shot in the head and her brains plaster the wall in explicit detail..... but they forced the director to cut short a scene showing a character enjoying consensual sexual pleasure in non-explicit detail, if the film wasn't going to be slapped with a death-sentence-like NC-17. A murdered girl's brains dripping down a wall in bloody detail is somehow less offensive than watching her enjoy herself in bed for a few seconds too long.
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/28/why_the_mpaa_doesnt_want_your_kid_to_see_bully/
I've long been baffled by the MPAA's ratings. They famously give soft ratings to some of the most horrifyingly awful violence you can imagine, including explicit scenes of cold-blooded murder and torture. They don't even have a problem with violence that's depicted in an amoral or off-hand manner (killings are often used as cheap punchlines, with no moral consequences or even consideration, in MPAA-approved movies). Yet they panic any time there's nudity, romantic sexuality, or "dirty" words.
I'll give you a specific example using two films from the same year:
"Before Sunrise" is a brilliant romance about two characters who meet on a train and then spend the night walking the streets of Vienna, talking and falling in love. It was one of the best-reviewed movies of the decade. There is literally not one moment of violence in the whole movie. There's no sex -- just a couple romantic kisses. No nudity. No drug use. No criminal acts of any kind. No cruelty or insulting behavior. No body-function humor. No glorifying stupidity. And no bigotry. The characters are smart and articulate, so they don't swear much, either. But there are a handful of those "dirty" words, about a dozen of them, floating in the midst of a tidal wave of hyper-intelligent dialogue, as there would need to be to accurately capture how 20-somethings like them would talk in the real world. That was enough for the MPAA to give it an "R" rating. Overall, it was one of the least offensive movies I've ever seen, but the MPAA wanted to make sure kids were kept away, lest they hear a few "f words" peppering the dialogue.
Now, compare that to "Mortal Kombat," which came out the same year. There is non-stop violence in that movie -- sick and sadistic violence, glorified in all its gratuitous detail. Multiple people are murdered on screen. Some of the deaths are brutally graphic, including a character having his spine loudly snapped. The violence is the core of the movie, and it's depicted without any serious moral consideration, as if watching people kill each other with their bare hands was the most enjoyable thing in the world. The MPAA gave it a PG-13, letting 14-year-old kids watch it without any parental permission. That wasn't the only example that year, either. Other big-budget action flicks, full of repeated graphic violence, like Waterworld, also got PG-13s. Goldeneye even went with kinky violence (a woman kills a man with her thighs while she orgasms), in addition to the usual James Bond dosage of bloody and sadistic violent crime.
That kind of inconsistency can be mind-blowing. I've seen movies the MPAA gave PG-13s that had such mind-hammering graphic violence that I literally left the theater sick to my stomach. They struck me as inappropriate for anyone who retained a shred of respect for human life and a shred of sympathy for human suffering, much less someone under 17. And I've seen movies the MPAA gave "R" ratings that, when I played them back in my mind, I couldn't even begin to guess what got their knickers in a twist. The MPAA thinks murder's appropriate for children's fair, but a single glimpse of breast is only for adults. Graphic torture is fine for 14-year-olds, but show someone taking a drag off a joint and you're likely to have an R rating.
I've given up trying to understand the kinds of sickos who work for the MPAA -- people for whom throwing a murder into the middle of a sex scene makes it MORE appropriate for kids than having the same scene's eroticism play out without a violent death. But if you're interested in how the bizarre system works, check out the fine documentary "This Film is Not Yet Rated." It does a wonderful job giving an insider's view on the Kafkaesque process of trying to get the MPAA to reconsider an R or NC-17 rating, uncovering the anonymous prudes who actually make up the ratings board, and documenting the absurd inconsistencies of their ratings.
Some of what happens with the MPAA is just pure political conservatism. Depict heterosexual sex and you get an R rating. Depict homosexual sex in exactly the same way and it's NC-17. "This Film is Not Yet Rated" uses split screens to do the comparisons, providing a slam-dunk case for a double-standard. But it's the sex/violence double standard that outrages me more. In the Oscar-winning film Boys Don't Cry, the MPAA raters raised no objection to a scene in which the protagonist's is shot in the head and her brains plaster the wall in explicit detail..... but they forced the director to cut short a scene showing a character enjoying consensual sexual pleasure in non-explicit detail, if the film wasn't going to be slapped with a death-sentence-like NC-17. A murdered girl's brains dripping down a wall in bloody detail is somehow less offensive than watching her enjoy herself in bed for a few seconds too long.
