Fidel Gastro’s

After watching ‘This Film is Not Yet Rated’, and waiting for The Office US s3e14 to download, I’ve decided to have a rant and a vaguely serious one for once. It’s not about the fact that Ironman is the only superhero with an alcoholic alter-ego but on the non-functional US film rating system all the way from G to NC-17.

The film ‘This Film is Not Yet Rated’ covers the cult-like organization, the MPAA, and it’s effect on the film industry. Claiming not to be a censorship body but instead just offering guidelines for parents, the MPAA is effectively a collusion between the studios and the Church to ensure that both their profits and sensibilities are never to be offended.

Catholicism Wow
The problem that any film-maker faces is that if the MPAA rates a film NC-17 (over 18’s only), because of slightly lesbianity, they will get no publicity, nor marketing and no cinemas will show their film. They are then forced to cut the film to an R (Restricted: under 18’s need an over 18 with them) or film the movie with R in mind, which means a 2 year old can see multiple exploding heads and full boobs so long as they with their 18 year old weed-dealing brother.

The film was then interjected with filmmakers stating that everyone should be able to see what they are making and their art house film littered with side boobs and pubes should be passed as an R without cuts.

However I think there should be actual age restrictions in terms of what people can and can’t see and the problem is not with the MPAA giving films NC-17’s, but with cinemas and studios not showing or promoting NC-17’s. From their financial and marketing point of view there are as many under-18’s as over-18’s and all films should be able to be seen by anyone to pay off the $200m production costs.

Barely Legal

In the UK we have three ratings which have age restrictions (12,15,18) and the fact that Apocalypto is rated 18 doesn’t mean that is only shown in 3 cinemas in Guildford to a grand total of 6 people. Additionally the BBFC is much more critical on violence and especially ‘head butting’ in fear of schoolyard copycats rather than counting the number of pelvic thrusts, or the seconds focused on the ‘O’ face of the female lead and then slapping a NC-17 on the film. Sex versus violence means 90% of US films that arrive in the UK to be rated are already cut to an ‘R’ rating; a few exceptions include American Psycho where the BBFC put the bicep-kissing threesome back into the film but still we are viewing inappropriately censored work.

I’ve got three tickets

We therefore have to rely on our liberal European friends and the occasional US rebel (Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream went ‘unrated’ and was barely shown in the US on theatrical release) for appropriate adult entertainment and I’m not meaning porn but cerebellum-fusing cinema.
If the US culture and studio economics meant they could have mainstream promoted films which were for over 18’s only, it would allow filmakers to make films with real adults, not the MPAA’s view of children, in mind, and not expose 100 million US teens to the sort of violence and inappropriateness which ends up with kids shooting up their schools.
Allegedly.