Noel: With the hue and cry over the extreme violence in Hostel: Part II, some pundits—like Mark Harris in a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly—have dredged back up the old complaint that the MPAA punishes honest expressions of human sexuality with an NC-17, while allowing graphic violence and torture through with an R rating. I'm sympathetic to that position. Back in 2000, I co-authored a long article about the inequities in the MPAA, particularly in regard to sex vs. violence, as well as sex vs. smutty PG-13 innuendo. And I still feel that American movies are far too babyish about sex, especially when compared to music, books, and even comics and TV.
But you know what? I no longer hold the MPAA responsible for the sex vs. violence gap in our cinema. And you know what started to change my mind? Kirby Dick's MPAA documentary "exposé," This Film Is Not Yet Rated.
I went into This Film Is Not Yet Rated last year expecting to have my animosity for the MPAA fully validated. And I thought at least one sequence in the film was brilliant: the one where Dick shows gay sex scenes and straight sex scenes side by side, and proves that the MPAA is, at the least, frighteningly homophobic. But as the movie ground on, with one more spurious claim after another made by a horde of conspiracy-minded filmmakers, I got increasingly irritated, and I started picking holes in everyone's arguments. By the time the movie was over, I'd decided that Dick and company's claims were basically bullshit.
But it isn't just Dick-spite that turned me around on the MPAA. Becoming a parent has also played a small part, as has growing up and growing weary of knee-jerk anti-authoritarianism—which at a certain point becomes a kind of impotent "poor me"-ism, and a weak excuse for personal failure. So with that in mind, my argument here boils down to three points:
1. Ratings-wise, the MPAA gets it right 90 to 95 percent of the time.
2. When they get it wrong, the injury caused is negligible.
3. When people complain about the MPAA's decisions, they're most often really complaining about something that the MPAA doesn't control.
(I hasten to add that I'm strictly talking about the ratings here. I don't want to get into the MPAA's frequently misguided—and suspiciously studio-friendly—anti-piracy efforts, or their oft-asinine regulation of movie marketing.)
There's not much to say about the first point. I've already mentioned the gay-vs.-straight disconnect, which I find egregious, and I do think the MPAA could be generally laxer when it comes to sexual content. But those two issues rarely come up. More often, the MPAA is dealing with violence and language. When it comes to the latter, I'm sorry: I don't think words are just words. It may be fundamentally nonsensical, but as a society, we've ascribed a taboo power to certain words. And no matter how much some protest, I don't think we really want it any other way. We need "shit" and "fuck" to mean something stronger than "crap" and "screw." We need those degrees, because they clarify our meaning. And because of that, we don't need "shit" in a G-rated film, or "fuck" in a PG. (Or even a PG-13.) We should be comfortable, as freedom-loving Americans, having those words in movies, but we should also be comfortable with the warnings and restrictions that we place around them. As a parent, I need to know where those zones are, and then I'll decide when my kids are old enough to enter them.
As for violence, I think that's a point where the anti-MPAA crowd gets really disingenuous. They love to hold up the beautiful purity of onscreen sex and the soul-shredding awfulness of graphic violence, but I have to wonder: If the MPAA weren't so prudish about sex, would those same crusaders be so worked about the violence? Or is it just the seemingly insane disparity between the MPAA's approach to the two topics that gets them so steamed? Because I'm sure if you asked Brian De Palma or Quentin Tarantino, they'd say that the MPAA isn't permissive enough when it comes to violence.
Let me ask you, because I know you were shocked by the violence in the R-rated Hostel: Part II. Answer me honestly: Is the movie something that only someone 17 or older should see? Would it have been too much for you to handle at, say, 16? (With a parent or legal guardian by your side, of course.)
Scott: The MPAA ratings board exists for the express purpose of helping parents make informed decisions about what they choose to allow their kids to see. For this reason alone, I concur with Harris' eloquent argument in Entertainment Weekly that the NC-17 rating should be thrown away, because it forbids anyone under the age of 17 to see a movie, regardless of whether their parents are permissive enough to allow it. I don't believe it's the MPAA's right to make those kinds of decisions for adults; requiring someone under 17 to be accompanied by a parent or guardian strikes me as a reasonable enough restriction. What bothers me about Hostel: Part II isn't that it's rated R, but that it's R while Henry & June is still NC-17. And it isn't just that I disagree with the MPAA's standards regarding sex and violence—and boy howdy, I do—it's that those standards aren't consistently applied.
You say the MPAA is right 90 to 95 percent of the time, but I'd argue that most movies are tailored to receive a specific rating anyway, and the other 5 to 10 percent of the time, the MPAA's decisions are baffling and even damaging to the medium. This summer, the two big examples that stand out for me are Hostel II and Once. Both films are rated R. Along with copious nudity and violence involving both sexes, Hostel II includes [Really gross spoiler warning.] one scene in which a naked woman is suspended from the ceiling while another naked woman slashes her from below with a scythe and bathes in her blood. It also includes a scene in which a man's genitals get lopped off with a pair of scissors. [End spoilers.] Contrast this with Once, the great micro-budgeted Irish musical about the creative collaboration between a busker in Dublin and a Czech immigrant. The film has no violence. It has no sex. It's been rated R for "language," but I have no memory of the language being particularly salty, certainly not enough to warrant the tougher rating. It would be perfectly appropriate for budding young cinephiles to see without their parents. It would be absurd to assert that these movies fall within the same ratings spectrum, and it makes you wonder anew what the MPAA is trying to accomplish.
Hostel II is a good example of the frequent anti-MPAA argument that if you cut off a breast, it's rated R, but if you a kiss a breast, it's NC-17. Hence, Hostel II is suitable for kids under 17 to see with a parent or guardian, while something like The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci's steamy tale of three amorous young people who take part in the '68 Paris student riots, is forbidden to all but adults. The difference between the two, of course, is that the male and female nudity in The Dreamers has a sexual context, while in Hostel II they're a pretext for bodies being ripped apart. As I said earlier, I'd be in favor of both films getting an R rating and having NC-17 tossed out altogether, but the blatant hypocrisies of the system tick me off. At bottom, I think the MPAA supports a set of values—permissive about violence, puritanical about sex, viciously anti-gay (ever wonder why a Lifetime-ready movie like Longtime Companion got an R?)—that's completely perverse and in need of radical retooling.
Before I go any further, a little more on the folly that is the NC-17 rating. Back in 1990, when the NC-17 was first used for Henry & June, I believe the intent was good, even if it was misapplied in that particular case. Before NC-17, any movie for adults that the MPAA didn't deem within the parameters of an R (and some of those decisions, like Midnight Cowboy, are pretty questionable in retrospect) would get an X, which wasn't an official rating at all, so it was equivalent to just tossing a film out altogether. NC-17 was supposed to separate artistically motivated adult films from out-and-out pornography, but it backfired immediately. Newspaper and television outlets refused to run ads for NC-17-rated movies, some theater chains refused to book them, Blockbuster refused to carry them on its shelves, and filmmakers wound up contractually obligated to bring their work in at an R. The MPAA did a horrible job of introducing the rating, and its stigma remains intact. To quote Harris' EW piece:
The X rating was invented at a time when hardcore-porn movie houses were springing up across America. But those theaters are gone, and kids who want access to porn are only a Google away. Today, the NC-17 protects nobody and preserves the illusion that R-rated movies like Hostel: Part II are okay for kids because if they weren't, somebody would have rated them NC-17.
You weren't the only one irritated by This Film Is Not Yet Rated (though I liked it) but I think your animus toward its rhetorical failings have led you in the direction of sympathy for the devil. What does the MPAA do right? If you could create your own ratings system, would it share the same values as those reflected by the MPAA's? I'll concede that the public generally finds the MPAA ratings system more workable then, say, the hilariously inane TV ratings system, or the utterly ineffectual "Explicit Content" warnings on CDs. But that isn't setting the bar terribly high. You seem to suggest that anti-MPAA types such as myself have contempt for the very idea of a ratings system, but that couldn't be further from the truth, at least personally speaking. I think parents really do need an advisory rating to help them make good decisions about what their kids should see; it's just that this particular system is often unhelpful, if not downright risible.
And what's this business about the injury caused by the MPAA's mistakes being negligible? What about all the films that have been compromised or not even made because of the ratings system? I'd say the board has had a profound creative impact on the movies, but clearly you feel otherwise, yes?
Noel: Well first off, I still don't see what's so "unhelpful" about the MPAA's ratings system. We've lived within its parameters for so long that I think we have a general idea what PG-13 means and what R means. Yes, the line does move sometimes for no apparent reason. Dick's film makes that point well, when one of his interviewees—I believe it's Kimberly Peirce—talks about an oral-sex scene from Coming Home that got an R in its day, but now would be tagged with an NC-17. By and large, though, we know what to expect from certain movies based on their ratings, and now that the MPAA is offering short explanations ("Rated PG-13 for strong language," etc.) there's no reason why anyone should be unduly shocked by what's on the screen. And if they feel the MPAA is under-informing them, there's a ton of websites and print reviews to complete the picture. When it comes to the bottom line of what the MPAA ratings board does—tell parents what general age-level a movie is appropriate for—they're rarely off-base, if you ask me.
As to your point about "all the films that have been compromised or not even made because of the ratings system," I wish we were chatting live so that you could give me some examples I could shoot down. I can really only think of one: Eyes Wide Shut, which Warner Bros. altered for its theatrical release by inserting digital figures to block an orgy scene. In a world where unrated directors' cuts clog DVD racks at big-box stores everywhere, it's disappointing that Warner Bros. still hasn't released the unadulterated Eyes Wide Shut domestically.
But here's the rub: We do live in the world of unrated directors' cuts. So what's being suppressed, exactly? Who's really being prevented from making movies as sexy and bloody and sweary as they want?
I understand that the argument cuts both ways, and you could contend that it's stupid for the MPAA to restrict material in theaters that I can pick up unrestricted at my local Wal-Mart. But I'd push right back and say that the experience of watching a movie at home by myself or with friends is far removed from the experience of watching a movie with a bunch of strangers—some of whom may be kids. It's sort of like the difference between telling a sexist joke to my wife, who knows I'm kidding, and telling it on the radio. Context—and company—matters.
The argument I often hear from MPAA-bashers is that it's silly to work so hard to keep teenagers from seeing nudity and non-explicit sex in a movie when "they can get porn on the Internet." But is what people do privately really meant to meet anyone's idea of "community standards"? Is it even a standard that rational people want to apply? I grew up in a pre-Internet age, but I still saw plenty of porn long before my parents let me go to an R-rated movie. Isn't that just an accepted rite of passage? There's the adult material we sneak around and see before we're supposed to, and then there's the adult material we get to see in a socially approved setting. Again, I think the MPAA could be a little more lenient when it comes to sex, but neither I nor any reasonable person should demand a complete absence of restrictions. Shortbus, for example, should never be rated R.
And what about Shortbus? Because I think I know the counter-argument you're itching to trot out in response to my "unrated DVD" comment. You're going to say that movies are meant to be seen on the big screen, and the MPAA is preventing that from happening. Then explain Shortbus. How does John Cameron Mitchell get to make a movie with explicit gay and straight sex, and get it shown in theaters around the country? The answer: He bypasses the MPAA entirely, and the studio system, and he makes a little movie with a tiny budget that reaches exactly the audience that it's intended for, with little to no public outcry. Everybody wins.
But what if Mitchell wanted to make a movie on a bigger budget, and he needed the marketing and distribution push of some studio or another, in order to recoup the investment? What if he's like Atom Egoyan, trying to make Where The Truth Lies and getting dinged by the MPAA because of some untoward thrusting? Well, he's still got options. One is to trim the "offensive" material back some, and release the movie with an R rating, knowing that he can put the thrusts back in on the DVD. Another is to work with a studio that can pressure the MPAA into changing its mind, which happens from time to time. Yet another is to release the movie unrated, or to take the NC-17 and deal with the consequences.
And this leads me to a third point: Those consequences, unfortunate as they are, have little to nothing to do with the MPAA. But I don't want to get ahead of myself, so I'll throw it back to you to clarify a few points from your previous salvo:
Can you name some movies that have been irreparably harmed by the MPAA ratings board? (As in: No one will ever get to see them the way the director intended, ever?) And why do you think the ratings system we have is so unhelpful, given that you concede my point that the MPAA rates movies correctly almost every time? And if you had been 15 or 16 when The Dreamers came out, would you have wanted to watch it with your parents?
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