How To Solve the Problem of the MPAA, or an activists reaction to "This film is not yet Rated"

In November last year, a movie called The Kings Speech was rated R by the MPAA. The reason?

The Kings Speech - f**** speech


Yes, swear words.

British director Tom Hooper has lashed out at the MPAA ratings board after the board slapped his critically acclaimed movie The King’s Speech with an R rating for a scene in which a speech therapist encourages the future King George VI to let loose with a torrent of four-letter words as part of the therapy to cure his stuttering. Noting that the ratings board routinely gives films depicting horrendous violence PG-13 ratings, Hooper told Los Angeles Times columnist Patrick Goldstein, “What really upsets me is that the boundaries for violence have been pushed farther and farther back while any kind of bad language remains taboo. … I can’t think of a single film I’ve ever seen where the swear words had haunted me forever, the way a scene of violence or torture has, yet the ratings board only worries about the bad language.” MORE

The Kings Speech is a movie about friendship through speech therapy. There are no sex scenes and no violence. The words in question are things that kids hear and use every day, from at least primary school, and they weren't gratuitously used. And yet the movie was placed in the same category as American Psycho and Kill Bill Vol. 1.


The Kings Speech won the Academy Award for best movie, R-rating and all, but in order to capitalize on this, the distributor (The Weinstein Company) decided to reedit the film to remove that scene so that kids could watch it. Tom Hopper flatly refused to cut the scene, and sothe MPAA decided that if 3 of the 5 instances of the word "fuck" were muted, they could get a PG 13 rating. In addition, a waiver was granted that allowed the R verion of the film to be withdrawn and replaced by the PG13 version almost immediately, instead of the usual 90 days.


Blue Valentine was hit with an NC-17 rating for one sex scene.

Blue Valentine Trailer

This sex scene was between a married couple who were trying to repair their relationship. In contrast Passion of the Christ and the SAW film franchise had a boatload of torture in them, but managed to snag an R rating, This film was also distributed by the Weinstein Company and so they hired a set of lawyers to combat the rating. Eventually, they too managed to get an R rating. For a sex scene between a married couple.

The 2006 documentary This film is not yet Rated focuses on the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) Classification and Ratings Administration (CARA) work in deciding how to rate movies so that movie goers can decide what to take their children to see.

Jack Valenti, who created the MPAA system, says it wasn't designed for producers, major studios, directors or critics. It was designed for parents, he says.

This Film is Not Yet Rated Trailer


These ratings are important because they dictate whether your movie can be played in certain cinema chains or advertise on network television or in certain newspapers. Of course, the ratings also restrict the audience of the movie as well. Unsurprisingly, as Director Kirby Dick and his stable of interviewed directors point out, there are some serious problems with the decisions that CARA makes. Violence is allowed more latitude than sex. Sex is graded on a heirarchy which sees heterosexual missionary position penis in vagina intercourse and male masturbation being given a less harsh rating than LGBT sex of any kind, non missionary position sex or female masturbation. (And they don't like people of color having sex either.) In addition to the talking head directors, Mr. Dick spends a lot of time filmimg the work of his private investigators to

The articles given were a mix of conservative reaction which could be boiled down to "oh shut up liberals!!" and progressive reactions which could be boiled down to " right on" plus a surprisingly thoughtful interview with Mr. Dick in which he expounds on the themes of the film.

Useful Questions

1. Was the film successful in portraying its message?

2. Was the use of humor including the cartoon images of the head of the MPAA a fine attempt at humor or ill-advised?

3. Did the private investigator subplot add to the documentary or was it a distraction?

4. Why a rating system anyway? Who should decide what your child is capable of watching, an individual parent or some faceless and not very qualified or representative board members with a couple of random religious leaders on the "side"?

Class Questions

1. How would we go about pressuring the MPAA to make the classification board more diverse and transparent?

2. If we were to make a new classification system, how would it work?

3. What is about the American culture that makes us so much less comfortable with sexuality than violence? Is it that violence can be impersonal, and sex can be very personal? Is it our religious roots?


Analysis.

I think that film and tv entertainment plays the dual role of being a shaper of reality, as well as being shaped by it. I think that censoring entertainment because of our discomfort with what it portrays in terms of different sexualities while allowing much more violence to be portrayed is bigoted and speaks to the privilege hierarchy in our society. Privileged white men’s ways of viewing the world are fed to consumers and they help to shape what we think and feel and how we act. It narrows our collective ideas of what could be, because the people who have those ideas did not have access to the megaphone that Hollywood does. Hollywood is in the business of making money. And thus their actions when faced with the possibility of government and citizen-led censorship were predictable and sensible, according to their goals of making sure that they had an environment that they could sell films in.

Activism against bigotry doesn’t pay the bills, after all, so I don’t really expect Hollywood to be the vanguard of change. But I do believe that we the people of these United States are less reactionary than Hollywood thinks, and so I have come up with a list of ideas that activists can do to challenge the MPAA:

1. Find out if movie theatres don’t carry NC 17 film, and ask why not. Make it clear the demand exists. Of course, make sure you support the films when they come through.
2. Work on getting television stations and newspapers to play NC 17 and higher films after 9pm as a compromise between those who are worried about kids and those who are mature.
3. Join groups that are working on the equalization of GLBT and other minorities, and that are seeking to change the way societal sees currently uncomfortable topics like women’s sexuality. Societal change is one of the strongest ways we will have to undermine the rationales of the MPAA.
4. Work on getting a diverse set of people to review films, including knowledgeable scientists, psychologists, lgbt, a range of religious leaders from conservative to liberal and as large of range of class, race and other signifiers in order to make sure that the vast diversity in America is represented.
5. Work on a much more transparent system. Less appearance of studio collusion because they fund the organization. Much less ridiculous secret meetings and intimidation. Chairlady of the board does to get to intimidate her staff.
6. Work to change the rating system, maybe to just drop ratings and say that what is in it: sex, violence and language .
7. Pressure stores to carry NC-17
8. Make your own films and boycott the MPAA in protest. It’s worked before!