rate this, joe!
Thursday, April 26, 2001

Well, well, well. It ought to be interesting to see what happens with this. Briefly, Senator Joe Lieberman (D - Conn.) is proposing that studios be directly penalized for advertising R and NC-17 rated films to teenagers. The studios, needless to say, are not happy. The article predicts the most likely result of such a law is that studios will stop submitting films for ratings at all.

At the upper end of the scale--the R/NC-17 area--Lieberman's bill would not produce an entirely bad result for the viewer. If films are no longer rated, then there would no longer be a direct commercial penalty for showing R and NC-17 rated films; exhibitors would no longer be able to say that they couldn't show a film because it was rated too strongly, since no films would be rated. The NC-17 rating, and its accompanying commercial penalty, is enforced disproportionately against films that have sexual content, and would allow studios and exhibitors to stop privileging violence over sex to get the coveted R-rated films into the theaters. (Although, to be sure, given the American market, films would still probably be fairly violent. Sex sells, but gore is easier to get away with.)

At the lower end of the scale -- the G and some PG films area -- the lack of a ratings system wouldn't really matter. Decent family-oriented fare will still sell; it's not as if Disney would suddenly take the liberty to start throwing out NC-17 rated animation. (Though it would be interesting to see what they could produce if they did.) Studios know how to market those films so that people know what they are.

Where this type of plan would create problems would be somewhere in the middle, some PG/ most PG-13/all R-rated films. Most people would agree that there's are sometimes noticeable differences between films with those ratings, even if most people aren't entirely sure what those differences are. (Neither is the ratings board, so at least everyone's on the same page.) Very generally, PG-13 is allowed to have considerably more violence than PG -- it was created partly as a result of the backlash against the violence in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom -- and a spash more nudity (generally rearward only, although the occasional flash of breastworks may be allowed) and references to sexual content (although not actual sexual content -- or rather, actual simulated sexual content) than PG, as well as stronger language. R is allowed considerably more leeway in terms of harsher language, violence and sexual content and nudity than either of the PG ratings; on the other hand, the division between what makes a film R or NC-17 is so thoroughly muddy that nobody can tell. (Very generally, any view of a naked penis will get an automatic R; more than one view, and you're flirting with NC-17. Excessive amounts of frontal female nudity will trigger an NC-17, but the ratings board's tolerance for frontal female nudity is very high indeed; you practically have to shoot straight into the vagina to get an NC-17 for female nudity. Very very VERY extreme violence gets an NC-17 as well, but the violence has to be WAY out there. That's a very muddy guideline, however; Clerks received an initial NC-17 for nothing more than strong language.)

What's going to happen, if more and more filmmakers and studios decline to submit their films for ratings to avoid legal liability, is that people will have to rely purely on reviews and word-of-mouth to determine if those films are appropriate for themselves or their older children. Not entirely a bad development, but even I, no fan of the ratings system, will concede that a more rigid demarcation of types of films makes evaluating them easier.

The only way in which Lieberman's bill can possibly have teeth, so to speak, is to require all films produced for exhibition in this country to be submitted to the MPAA or to have the same civil penalties attached. Once you do that, however, you're involved in state sponsored censorship; even this hideously conservative Supreme Court is likely to be perturbed somewhat by that development. Moreover, the MPAA is, by definition, a private agency or association; the studios might bridle at being forced by law to submit their films to them -- independent studios certainly will. Since the MPAA exists only at the will of the major studios, it's entirely possible that to get around that sort of enforcment clause, they would simply dissolve the MPAA as an organization. (And there would be great rejoicing...)

Should this law actually get enacted -- assuming it's not just political posturing, of which Lieberman seems to be doing a lot lately -- it will almost certainly be challenged. In some ways, it's a pity if it doesn't happen, though. It would be nice to see the distinction between R and NC-17 eliminated, as it's almost entirely sophistry in any event; the difference betwen the ratings is the MPAA's mood on a particular day. (Mind, if I had to sit through almost every major studio film produced, I'd be hard on the ratings, as well. Freddy Got Fingered would get an NC-17 just because Tom Green was in it. But I digress.)

Theatre owners should not be required to assume that sort of censorial and parental responsibility for teenagers; if they're there and purchasing the ticket, theatre owners should be allowed to assume that parents have given permission. If it means that 14-year-old Johnny sneaks out and gets in to see, for example, The Center of the World (Flash required) when he knows perfectly well that he shouldn't ... well, he does know that, doesn't he? At some point, it stops being the theater owner's fault for letting the kid in, and starts being the kid's fault for doing something he knows perfectly well he shouldn't do.

© 2001 Iain Jackson, after-words.org

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