The Back Row: Is The MPAA Out Of Touch?

People have been dismissing the NC-17 rating as a flawed invention almost since its inception in 1990. It was intended to replace the old, non-trademarked X-rating, which had long since been claimed by porn producers, but didn’t really serve much of a purpose: if a film was too explicit (in whatever manner) to earn an R, an NC-17 rating would not help it overmuch, as many theaters refused to host them and most media would not carry advertisements for them. The abject failure of Showgirls to do any business after being saddled with the NC-17 essentially killed it as a rating for commercial films, and thus it has merely become shorthand for “you need to cut this down to get an R rating” from the MPAA. It’s far more common for films to simply settle for an unrated release in independent theaters than it is for a film to actually be released as an NC-17.

Why is this relevant now, however? You might’ve heard of the small kerfuffle over the release of Hatchet II, which was released in 68 AMC theaters, made something like $50,000 dollars over the course of a weekend, and was unceremoniously yanked by AMC, who likely wasn’t even making the rent on those theaters back from the money it was making off of the film (not to mention any added costs of having people to check IDs, etc.) The catch? Hatchet II was promoted as being “uncut & unrated”, and thus was being shown by a major film exhibitor without a rating from the MPAA, an uncommon set of circumstances to be sure. Its director, Adam Green, has insinuated that perhaps AMC was influenced by the MPAA into pulling the film, although its dire performance probably didn’t help matters much. (It’s kind of interesting that I’ve seen a lot of news reports regarding Hatchet II, but when I walked into an AMC theater to see another film, I saw that one of the screens was showing I Spit On Your Grave, another unrated film that would almost surely have been given an NC-17 had it been certified at all.)

So if the NC-17 is widely acknowledged as a kiss of death for a commercial film, why do these ultra-violent films bother to submit themselves for ratings at all? Well, as the recent NC-17 that Blue Valentine was slapped with should indicate, the rating is, at times, a bit of a surprise to everyone involved. Blue Valentine apparently contains a few sex scenes with “minimal nudity”, according to people who’ve seen the film, but the raw nature of the relationship in the film is apparently rough enough to justify the most severe rating the board (which consists, theoretically, of an average selection of American parents who are told to judge a movie by prevailing standards) can give. The producer of the film has filed an appeal, but has also said that he has no plans to edit the film to fit into an R rating, and justifiably points out that the recent Jackass 3-D has more full frontal male nudity than his film does.

Roger Ebert, among others, has argued for the creation of a new rating, somewhere in-between an R and an NC-17 (A for Adult, for instance), for films that have serious merit but which still contain material not suited for underage viewers, which might allow them to find wider distribution without the stigma of an NC-17 rating. It’s easy for me to forget this when I work in an office a quarter-mile from an excellent independent theater, but the majority of Americans no doubt live pretty far from the nearest arthouse theater, even if the appetite for such films has increased thanks to the rise of Netflix and better Internet coverage of smaller, independent films. If such a rating were to be created, and would let films like Blue Valentine reach multiplex screens without necessarily being chopped down to reach an R rating, then I think we can all agree that it’d be a good thing, although, as others (such as Kirby Dick in This Film Is Not Yet Rated) have argued , the capriciousness of the MPAA system is the real culprit here.

Their claim that Blue Valentine’s thematic elements, and not the nudity itself, is the reason for the NC-17 rating is immensely disturbing. The couple in the film apparently retreat to a hotel room in an attempt to save their marriage; he wants to have sex, while she doesn’t. The ensuing conversation has been described as incredibly raw, but raw enough in itself to be inherently damaging to anyone who’s 16 years and 364 days old? As it is, it’s easier for a kid to see Bruno’s talking cock sequences than it is to watch an adult drama that might actually affect them in some serious way. We live in a country where the MPAA has decided that no mature teenager should be allowed to see Blue Valentine in theaters, and yet you can bring your five-year-old to see Hostel 2 if you like. See anything wrong with this picture?

Perhaps worse yet is the MPAA’s decision to rate The King’s Speech as an R-rated film for a brief scene in which the word “fuck” is uttered around 20 times by the main character, played by Colin Firth, as part of speech therapy to help him overcome a stutter. It’s by all accounts a charming, uplifting film, but according to the MPAA, it’s just as bad for your kids as Saw 3D is. (It’s worth noting that the film has been given the equivalent of a PG-13 in the U.K.) As director Tom Hooper told the LA Times:

"This isn't creating a precedent, since after all, how many films can claim to use swearing for its therapeutic effect? The floodgates aren't going to open. But when you have a system that gives the same rating to 'Kick Ass' and 'Saw' as 'The King's Speech,' it feels like you're in a world that has lost its mooring."

We can all agree that the MPAA is a preferable system to what its likely alternative might be: government regulation of the industry. And we’re obviously better off than when Hollywood struggled under the constraints of the Hays code. But still, but still: as the years wear on, and we move on from annoyances like Whale Rider’s PG-13 rating in 2002 to more serious concerns like those raised by The King’s Speech and Blue Valentine this year, doesn’t it feel like something needs to change?

What about you guys? Where do you draw the line between an R and an NC-17? Does the MPAA stifle independent film or make it harder for quality films to find an audience? Would you be more worried about your kids seeing a movie with an R-rated amount of swearing or a PG-13 amount of violence?