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MPAA Gives Film About Ratings an NC-17 Rating
jtcm writes "An original documentary by Kirby Dick, called "This Film is Not Yet Rated" has been assigned an NC-17 rating by the MPAA. The film explores the MPAA's own film rating system and "its profound effect on American culture." The NC-17 rating was given due to "some graphic sexual content" and will likely limit the movie's distribution, as many theater chains will not show NC-17 movies. Among the filmmakers speaking openly in the movie are two of my personal favorites, Kevin Smith and Matt Stone. For those who are eager to view this exposé, fear not. The Independent Film Channel (IFC) will present the film uncensored and uninterrupted."
The MPAA doesn't want many people to see the BS they do. I'm shocked, totally shocked.
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The NC-17 rating was given due to "some graphic sexual content"
That's what NC-17 is for.
NEWSFLASH! Producers of anti-MPAA film include racy content with intention to pull an NC-17 rating that causes typical Slashdot readers who never read articles and jump to conclusions to conclude that the MPAA is rating such film inappropriately because of the target of said film and not the adult content. More at 11!
Gee, anyone think the film's producers might have included very adult content knowing the MPAA would have to rate it NC-17 according to their policies and then capitalize on the publicity of "oh noes! censorshipzors!"?
Seriously. Come on Slashdotters. I know common sense isn't that common around here but put your fucking tin foil hats down for a second.
Easy. When the new NC-17 rating came out in 1990; the religious nutters like Jerry Falwell put pressure on all the major chains to refuse to show NC-17. So of course they got their way and now it's virtually impossible to show NC-17 movies. It wouldn't be hard to keep children out of NC-17 movies, any movie theater could do it, so it's mostly the right wing attacking that which they can't understand and don't like.
Choosing a better performing product over a lesser one is good business.
;)
But a blanket policy against NC-17 movies is different. They do that "for the children". You don't hate children, do you?
Its a lame CYA policy. If they don't show the movies, they won't get complaints and boycotts and other crap. If they proactivelty say they won't show NC-17 movies, that keeps all the radical religious freaks out of their hair.
You know... Kind of like how all those IMAX theaters decided not to show that movie about the ocean since it had the word "evolution" in it.
blog
The whole point of ratings (for anything, not just movies) is to free people from having to make case-by-case decisions.
It might have been on digg, but was there actually any discussion of the matter?
I'd rather be a little behind the times in news, if I can get some meaningful comments beyond: "LOLL, the MPAA is so gay!!"
Digg is for headlines early and often, slashdot is for conversation. It's not an either/or scenario. Digg has the most awkward and useless comment system imaginable populated almost entirely by 12 year olds. Slashdot has at least as many 12 year olds, but it has a much better method of dealing with them so that actual adults aren't afraid to comment. I'll often see something on digg and look forward to seeing if it makes Slashdot simply because I know the comments will be worth reading. If digg implemented a decent comment system like slashcodes then it would probably start attracting a better class of comment. Until then, it's just another RSS headline feed for me and not a "community".
It's an independently released documentary. For fuck's sake, that pretty much limits its distribution to places that would show it irrespective of its rating already. Hell, the new rating may open its distribution circle to the kinds of theatres Pee-Wee Herman frequents.
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
Try "Sex and Lucia" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254455/), if you can get an uncut version in the US. It contains vast amounts of nudity and sex, but still has (IMHO) a very good story and a female perspective (which "real" sex films haven't).
What motivates theatres to have a "No NC-17" blanket policy?
Because it's like the old XXX rating. Automatically the NC-17 rating is associated with hardcore porn. Hardcore porn is a big turn off to parents paying for their 15 year old going to the theater. This is a bad business move regardless if the movie is rated NC-17 or unrated due to gore, violence, etc etc...
I recall when NC-17 was being put in place that there was a move to have better definitions of "offensive" content to help the horror industry make films that were a bit more graphic without having them associated with pornography. As we all know, this never happened.
it seems naive to just ban all NC-17 movies blindly. I've never looked up who owns the big chains of theatres, but is it a religiously charged, mid-west family like the Waltons (Walmart)?
Not to be a troll or a flame but you are the naive one here; This has NOTHING to do with religion. It has to do with the profitability of the theater in the face of a fairly common social morality. Sure I can imagine a few bible beaters showing up to protest this at my local theater in a community that has tens of thousands of members but if anything this would help the theater get people interested in this film.
Instead this has to do with "parental concern" not much unlike the advisory warnings on CDs and Tapes (a movement led by a "liberal", I will remind you).
Do you really think a theater owner should show this film knowing that the community isn't going to support this type of film? That's probably your most naive sentiment; theaters and the movies they show are not about art, they're about profit. If you want art for the sake of art on the big screen you're not going to find it at the 18 screen megaplex. Not because it might upset a very small number of religious people, but because it's bad business.
And what if you found out the theater owner was an atheist? how would that effect your unfortunate stereotype of the "religiously charged, mid-west family"? What would you look to next as a crutch for a really lame assumption? There is morality outside of religion. Most of the more "leftist" types I see on slashdot always thinks that moral standards in the community on any level is automatically associated with a religious group. This is absolutely false. Even without religion society will find a common morality and there will still be "oppression" in the name of the public good or in the greatest cry of politicians and prudes everywhere; "What about the children?". Social morality, while it may have been at one point based on religion (as all the major world religions have a few points in common concerning morality) today this morality is based on a sense of purpose and right not based on a religious doctrine but rather an "natural" sense of right and wrong.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
You may laugh, but I've read that teenagers are the movie market now. R movies make much less money than PG-13 movies, to the extent that studios are not willing to make a lot of R movies. (The rating for a studio movie is decided before it gets made.) NC-17 movies would presumably make even less money because teens wouldn't be able to get in at all.
I had to look up what an NC-17 was, since I'm from the UK.
Broadly speaking, it seems similar to our 18 cert. In other words, a level of maturity reasonable for an 18 year old is required to see the film.
So why do cinemas in the US have a problem showing material appropriate for everyone from 18-[dead] year olds? Does this not annoy anyone? The ratings system there seems to have been appropriated to decide what should be seen by adults, not what I'd imagine a ratings system's purpose to be: to highlught material which is perhaps not appropriate for minors
Just seems a little horse-before-cart to me. And more than a little Victorian. What I don't understand is why there isn't outrage over this sort of behaviour? Well, perhaps outrage is too strong a word. A broad assumption seems to be that here in Ye Olde Europe, we all live in nanny-states. But perhaps the nanny'ing pressure groups in the US need to be treated to a little more questioning, and perhaps brought down a peg or two.
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
Maybe you haven't realized that a majority market for the major film producers is indeed the teenage crowd. Not to mention adults going with their children. You may also fail to realize that "family organizations" would probably organize a boycott against theatres showing porn. Personal responsibility or not, the organized are more powerful than the disorganized. When it comes down to it, the theatres are centers of business not political ideology. They will respond to those that could harm their profit margin.
Most of the more "leftist" types I see on slashdot always thinks that moral standards in the community on any level is automatically associated with a religious group.
Funny, it's usually the right-wingers who insist you can't have morality without religion.
I think the leftist assumption is not that community moral standards arise from religion, but that stupid, allegedly "moral" standards which have nothing to do with actual right or wrong tend to arise from religion -- and in the US, at least, that assumption is usually correct. Believers and unbelievers alike agree that, e.g., murder, rape, and robbery are wrong, because those cause obvious and direct harm to other people. But it's almost universally believers who try to prevent other people from doing things that don't affect the believers' lives in the slightest.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
> Funny, it's usually the right-wingers who insist you can't have morality without religion.
I've never seen proof of this.
[shrug] I don't know if it's ever been "proved," in the sense of a large-scale study of the correlation between right-wing political beliefs and the belief in religion as the source of morality; I do know that I've seen many, many right-wingers argue this position, and rarely (though not never) seen left-wingers do the same. Actually, that's a study I'd like to see.
> stupid, allegedly "moral" standards which have nothing to do with actual right or wrong tend to arise from religion
Such as?
Such as the idea that there's some inherent danger in mainstream movie theaters showing NC-17 movies.
Also such as: gay people getting married is a threat to straight people's marriages, students should learn creationism in science class, it's an appropriate use of the FBI's time to invesitgate "obscene" material on the internet, et bloody cetera.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
While it seems shocking and obsurd and screams "conspiracy" and the MPAA doesn't want this to reach a mass audience...step back a little. How many people do you know that would pay to see a documentary about the MPAA rating system at a theatre? While in recent past, the works of Michael Moore have gained much attention and reached a mass audience, documentaries still are generally not widely accepted by the masses. Sure, there are theatres which will not show this film now, but having had an R rating, would they een show it in the first place? Thus, the conspiracy theory becomes a moot point. This will be shown in indie theatres, where people who are actually into this kind of work (such as my self) actually go.
Chicks with Dicks volume 37, of course.
Also such as: gay people getting married is a threat to straight people's marriages
No, that's an issue of fuck-buddies taking advantage of loopholes in laws which were written to motivate parents to stay married for the sake of the kids.
It's based on several axioms:
1. All else being equal, a kid is better off being raised by both biological parents.
2. Society wants kids to be well off.
3. Using tax laws and so forth, we can encourage families to stay together.
4. A gay couple, collectively, can never produce offspring of their own.
5. If you allow gays to be legally married, they enjoy the benefits which were put in place for the sake of keeping families together, which is fundamentally unfair to single people and common-law marriages, who also do not enjoy said benefits.
Of course, where gays can claim they are being discriminated against is that we allow sterile people to marry. If a woman with no uterus is permitted to marry a man, how can you use the same lack of a uterus to prohibit a man from marrying him?
The only way to make it completely fair to everybody is to strip away all government recognition of marriage, and handle all weddings with simple civil contract law... which is fine by me, but that's exactly what the anti-gay-marriage crowd is desperately fighting against. They like their unfair marriage-law goodies, and don't want gay couples horning in on them and exposing how nonsensical they really are.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
so it's mostly the right wing attacking that which they can't understand and don't like
I'm not saying they all have good intentions, but I think it's not unfair to say that most of the rank and file are of the opinion that this material actually harms people. And just as you might distribute mosquito netting to reduce malaria, reducing the outlets where this stuff gets shown will reduce the damage.
As long as they aren't getting this stuff outlawed, I think they are well within their rights to try to convince people to not watch it, not distribute it, and not profit from it (where all the interactions are voluntary).
I suspect many of the politicians are involved for self-serving and rather cynical reasons, but in the end that doesn't matter, as long as you are able to say what you want and use your own resources to get that message out. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that free speech gives you the right to use other people's resources to convey your speech or to force anyone to listen to you.
Buddy, the "terrorists" won a long time ago...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
You're the one articulating a conspiracy theory that presumes the film producers engineered all this controversy in the first place. Personally, I think you're probably right about this, but it's a little rude to tell other people to put their tin foil away when your answer is a conspiracy theory that's even more convoluted.
This Just In: Censorship the fault of the censored!
"Well if you hadn't said that I wouldn't have had to censor it."
Thanks, slashdot!
I respond to your sigs
I don't know if it's ever been "proved," in the sense of a large-scale study of the correlation between right-wing political beliefs and the belief in religion as the source of morality
I'm not saying that religion isn't a source of morality for some, but you said that right wingers insist you can't ave morality without religion. I have never seen anyone, right or left, proclaim that morality can not exist without religion. That's the proof I'm looking for.
Such as the idea that there's some inherent danger in mainstream movie theaters showing NC-17 movies.
If you'd be so kind as to read my parent post you'll understand that it is not a matter of religious pressure but rather normal social morality outside of a religious group that makes showing NC-17 films both unprofitable for a theater and unpopular among the local patrons. Perhaps religious groups do protest but do you honestly think it's going to matter? Harry Potter is protested by the religious (in much greater numbers than this film would be) and yet it's a blockbuster. Your argument holds no weight and the profitability of films like the Potter series and The Last Temptation of Christ is undeniable proof that the religious fundamentalists have very little control over the movie industry.
gay people getting married is a threat to straight people's marriages
That is one I will give you. But do not think this is purely religious; if gay marriage comes about as a legal standard it's going to cost industries and the state big dollars in the way of taxation, benefits and pensions. I think you're going to find a more serious business threat to this type of legislation as time goes on and the church gives up it's struggle.
students should learn creationism in science class
Perhaps not science but it should be taught in school as a popular ideology. The separation of church and state should not leave us blind to various religious mythologies and their effects on society including the creationist point of view as many people believe it, it's not like we're teaching about cargo cults, this is a major religion and one of it's key beliefs. That alone makes it noteworthy.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
WTF. Burning the book/disc/whatever is censorship. Saying "People, there's sex and, like, stuff in there" is NOT. Get your facts straight.
Global warming is a cube.
- No smoking in restaurants
- Mandatory seat belt laws
- Mandatory motorcycle helmet laws
Yep. It's those darn religious conservatives who were responsible for those sort of nanny-state decisions.</sarcasm>
About the only political party that has any claim on leaving people to make their own decisions are the libertarians. Neither the repubs nor the dems can claim any innocence in that area.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
You make a perfect example of why the health care system should *NOT* be socialized. Because personal decisions that enable freedom suddenly impact others. The more you socialize anything, the more individual decisions impact others through increased costs. In other words socialism is the opposite of freedom. The more socialized things are the less individual freedom can exist.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.