This Film is Not Yet Finished (Nor is this blogpost)

Ya know, I was looking forward to Kirby Dick's This Film is Not Yet Rated with great anticipation. A month ago indie flick Blue Valentine was arguing with the MPAA over their initial NC 17 rating for a sex scene with little nudity but intense emotional impact. Apparently parents could not be expected to handle kids asking about scenes with great emotional impact? Anyway, after great protest and an official appeal the rating was downgraded to an R. A few days ago I became aware that the The King's Speech was rated R because of a scene wherein the stuttering king is advised by his doctor to say several expletives in order to expel tension. One of the expletives is "Fuck". Their appeal to downgrade the rating to PG-13 failed. A look at Wikipedia gives quite an interesting look at rating process which compares several films' contents and their contradictory ratings.

I especially appreciated the two articles "HUAC... and the Censorship Changes By Jeanine Basinger" and "American Film Censorship" from The Film Reference Encyclopedia because they gave me the background of rise of censorship in the USA and the ways in which it has changed to what we know today. I was also interested in the long interview with Kirby Dick, the director in Cineaste and I was interested to see his vision realized on screen. I was rather unsettled by the use of private investigators to track down members of the film board, however, because I tend to like my privacy, though I do understand the reasons why they decided to do so. And so I waited to see what would happen.

Having now watched the film, I am somewhat underwhelmed. I think I expected something somewhat more polished than what I got. I didn't like the animation of the MPAA lawyer and Chairwoman because I thought that the constant eyerolling of the animated characters was probably not an accurate representation of them, as people. I reread his interview and saw that he'd added it for humorous effect. Unfortunately, the humor did not work for me. I was bored by the long takes spent on the private investigating work as well. I liked the fact that the investigator was middle-aged and lesbian, lord knows that most of them as portrayed on tv are usually male and middleaged and presumably straight, so yeah for diversity; but after dealing with that, the rest her scenes just bored me, when I wasn't being discomfited by the tracking down of the MPAA workers. I must confess to being an utter hypocrite here. My sense of privacy rights clashed with my understanding that people need to know the who are making the decisions as to what they get to watch.


(At this point I have to break for class, will come back to this later)