Cry me a river--cry me the f***ing Amazon
Jan. 19th, 2007 04:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenThe MPAA is 'fixing' the movie rating process
Raise your goddamned hand if you didn't need a documentary to tell these idiots that the G-to-triple-X movie rating system is a bunch of hooey? I see. So, that's everyone except the board members responsible for handing out those ratings? Yes, it is.
After a few years of tinkering with the formula--adding "contains nudity" or "drug use" or "sci-fi action violence" (my personal favorite, that last one) to the bottom of the little box saying whether a film is good (aka R) or good for kids (aka G)--they've decided to revamp. Except not really. They're changing the appeals process. Those labels are going to stay, folks; they're just going to mean even less now.
I need to bump the documentary up in my queue, methinks, because I'm mad enough reading this stupid article. We've known forever that the MPAA has the most perverse ideas about what is okay and what isn't. Things that people actually do--fuck and say "fuck," mostly--get movies R-ratings; things we would hope to God(s) never to have to do--decapitate terrorists and shoot up shit--give you the all-clear of a PG-13. That's okay, not their fault--they're just stupid Americans, too, and Americans are Puritans with better tech, meaning they're still all for the witch-burning and crusades in the name of baby Jeebus, but if you show a titty, they're gonna zap you with pain rays.
Mind you, I complain, but I can't fathom a better system, except the one of common sense and pesonal responsibility, which I know wouldn't ever be popular. Film ratings were developed because some asshole complained that Alien upset his kid. Then they started to complain that theaters weren't enforcing the ratings (note to morons everywhere: those ratings aren't legal or binding restrictions on the theaters in any way; if they let you in and you complain about it, they're just going to ban you if it's not their national policy to give a fuck about the MPAA trying to stop fifteen-year-olds from seeing Live Free and Die Harder or whatever). It completely ignores the base problem that the application of the ratings is spotty, heavily biased thanks to input from religious leaders and members of the board who stopped knowing what was/wasn't appropriate for kids back in the 1980s when their kids moved out of the house.
I see this getting worse, much worse, not better. We're going to have more ratings than you find in the corner of the TV screen, and how many of us really have any clue--still--what those ratings mean? You turn on South Park, and it says TV-MA, you figure it out. That's about where my extensive knowledge on these things falls apart, cheers. We should have a new system with symbols instead of coded letters: a silhouette of a cock for male nudity, titties for female nudity; a gun for gun violence, a pike for any kind of edge-weapon violence, and someone doing a shoryuken for punching/martial arts violence; fake glasses with false nose for any movie made by an SNL alum; a brain for movies with subtitles; a guy flying, wearing a cape for any movie--no matter how "high brow" (yes, American Splendor, I am talking about you)--adapted from a comic book or graphic novel (let's show the masses how much of their culture comes from our culture--BITCH!); and the number of the person responsible for any movie made from a television show now twenty years off the air (does anyone have the digits for the guy who brought us The Dukes of Hazzard movie? Just checking. I need the number for...uh...stuff).
Raise your goddamned hand if you didn't need a documentary to tell these idiots that the G-to-triple-X movie rating system is a bunch of hooey? I see. So, that's everyone except the board members responsible for handing out those ratings? Yes, it is.
After a few years of tinkering with the formula--adding "contains nudity" or "drug use" or "sci-fi action violence" (my personal favorite, that last one) to the bottom of the little box saying whether a film is good (aka R) or good for kids (aka G)--they've decided to revamp. Except not really. They're changing the appeals process. Those labels are going to stay, folks; they're just going to mean even less now.
I need to bump the documentary up in my queue, methinks, because I'm mad enough reading this stupid article. We've known forever that the MPAA has the most perverse ideas about what is okay and what isn't. Things that people actually do--fuck and say "fuck," mostly--get movies R-ratings; things we would hope to God(s) never to have to do--decapitate terrorists and shoot up shit--give you the all-clear of a PG-13. That's okay, not their fault--they're just stupid Americans, too, and Americans are Puritans with better tech, meaning they're still all for the witch-burning and crusades in the name of baby Jeebus, but if you show a titty, they're gonna zap you with pain rays.
Mind you, I complain, but I can't fathom a better system, except the one of common sense and pesonal responsibility, which I know wouldn't ever be popular. Film ratings were developed because some asshole complained that Alien upset his kid. Then they started to complain that theaters weren't enforcing the ratings (note to morons everywhere: those ratings aren't legal or binding restrictions on the theaters in any way; if they let you in and you complain about it, they're just going to ban you if it's not their national policy to give a fuck about the MPAA trying to stop fifteen-year-olds from seeing Live Free and Die Harder or whatever). It completely ignores the base problem that the application of the ratings is spotty, heavily biased thanks to input from religious leaders and members of the board who stopped knowing what was/wasn't appropriate for kids back in the 1980s when their kids moved out of the house.
I see this getting worse, much worse, not better. We're going to have more ratings than you find in the corner of the TV screen, and how many of us really have any clue--still--what those ratings mean? You turn on South Park, and it says TV-MA, you figure it out. That's about where my extensive knowledge on these things falls apart, cheers. We should have a new system with symbols instead of coded letters: a silhouette of a cock for male nudity, titties for female nudity; a gun for gun violence, a pike for any kind of edge-weapon violence, and someone doing a shoryuken for punching/martial arts violence; fake glasses with false nose for any movie made by an SNL alum; a brain for movies with subtitles; a guy flying, wearing a cape for any movie--no matter how "high brow" (yes, American Splendor, I am talking about you)--adapted from a comic book or graphic novel (let's show the masses how much of their culture comes from our culture--BITCH!); and the number of the person responsible for any movie made from a television show now twenty years off the air (does anyone have the digits for the guy who brought us The Dukes of Hazzard movie? Just checking. I need the number for...uh...stuff).
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Date: 2007-01-19 09:49 pm (UTC):-D
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Date: 2007-01-19 09:52 pm (UTC)