Thursday, March 15, 2007

This Film Is Not Yet Rated




















Last night Steve, Addy and I watched Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a film about the MPAA rating system. The movie stalks and reveals the MPAA raters and examines how the MPAA operates. I don't want to reveal too much, so I will simply say that the movie was very interesting and quite funny. We particularly enjoyed an animated segment which showed how films move from G to NC-17.


Our basic thought on rating movies is that we don't want anyone to decide which movies are shown in theaters. An NC-17 means that nobody will advertise the film, and viewers will never even know it existed. As adults, I feel we should have the right to decide for ourselves if a movie is too crude, violent, or sexually explicit. I would like to know if a movie is going to have bad language, violence, or graphic sex (particularly rape), so that I wouldn't bring a child or watch the film with my Grandparents, but surely there is a way to notify people of content without making an overall rating.


I don't want to be censored by my government and I certainly don't feel like being censored by some shadowy group of nobodies who are supported by an appeals court of hoity-toity white male officers of major theater chains.

2 comments:

cymberleah said...

I enjoyed watching this one, too. All in all, I do not mind a rating system, but I think that having NC-17 be the kiss of death is a bit much. It strikes me as odd, that there are so many people in this country that aren't children, and yet we continue to behave as if such creatures as adults do not exist when it comes to entertainment. And anyway, why? Why is the sex so horrible that seeing it rots young people's minds?

qtilla said...

I have no idea. But maybe if we never show sex, kids will never have it. Just like when we didn't give them condoms or let them take sex ed. That worked right? Right?
I have to say some sex is horrible enough to destroy an adult's mind. That movie, Something's Gotta Give, with the Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton sex- YIPES! Night terrors for weeks.
Blech!