This LJ Post is Not Rated

[trinityvixen]

This Film is Not Yet Rated should win awards for best documentary. The irony is that it can't because the people who would nominate it would have to get over the fact that the director exposed the MPAA's hypocritical asses. And, as the director very calmly states, the paranoia around this organization borders on hysteria but may be justified. The director, in addition to having made a smart movie, has enough cheek and humor to really keep you absorbed. The question and answer period with the director is, if possible, just as revealing at about ten minutes as the entire movie is. The raters he submitted his movie to basically violated every single rule that the MPAA spends billions of dollars screeching about other people not breaking (number one with a bullet: they made a copy of the film he submitted to them!).

Everything you hate about screaming fundamentalists, you will find to hate in this movie reviewers. They make the rules and then pretend they did not ("we don't create the culture, we reflect it" when they're the ones making the connection between women's bodies being cheap and easy at PG-13 and men's bodies being dirty and inappropriate at R or worse). They lay out public guidelines for their own behavior and, surprise surprise, they can't/don't/won't police themselves to be sure they follow them. When filmmakers try to meet them half-way, they get pats on the head and told they're not quite there, but aren't they sweet for trying? And then they're left to guess at what to fix or else rebel and not get distributed. It's okay it you're with the MPAA...

The breakdown of what the ratings means really shows how ridiculous the system is. If you aren't bland, devoid of artistic content, or white and missionary-happy, your sex isn't welcome here. If you kill people but just don't show them bleeding, kids as young as thirteen can get at your movie without parental notification or consent. I don't like the credence given to the pop-psychology stuff with violence affecting kids and making them violent, but I do agree that, in general, the acts of violence that get a pass in this craphole system are a lot more damaging than things that don't get the same permission.

Everyone should see this movie. John Waters, Matt Stone, and Kevin Smith are all hilarious and spot-on with their anecdotes about the MPAA's rating system. Kevin Smith, in particular, is more refreshingly intelligent than even ever I've heard from him. Best quote of the entire fucking thing is his:

"If I were to create a ratings system, I would put...I wouldn't even put murder right at the top of chief offenses. I would put rape at the top of chief offenses. And assault against women 'cause it's so insanely overused and insulting how much it's overused in movies: a woman in peril. That to me is offensive, yet that shit skates."

He gets it. As a human being, he gets it. Violence against women isn't a convenient shortcut for development as a character; you don't get to play fast, loose, and fucking lazy with real issues because you're too stupid, too ignorant, or too patriarchally brainwashed to understand how truly traumatic it is to have that threat hanging over the head of just about every woman on the planet and then to have it thrown in like it necessarily makes good drama. It fucking does not. As a filmmaker, too, he gets it. Not only is this cheapening the fear of rape (which is not unhealthy thing to have given the sense of entitlement that movies especially encourage with regards to men getting laid), it's cheapening the effect of that background on our ability as an audience to appreciate and relate to a character.

And, yes, I would think that sexual violence that is non-consensual deserves at least an R rating no matter how tame the actual footage because it is a graphic depiction of violation just in thought, let alone in deed. We should be focusing more on issues of consent than on why it's not okay to show female pleasure, why we like tits but can't stand hips, why gay sex is inherently weirder than any heterosex (same sex in both = greater rating for the gay act), et al. Violence is the bane of our existence; sex is the only way to ensure existence is maintained. Without ascribing to the theories of the screamie-meamie psychologists who get the vapors when they hear that a kid who went beserk ever breathed air in a Game Stop, you can at least admit that violence is something we should protect against more than we should protect against a biological urge.

Fucking awesome movie. Highly recommend it to all.

Comments

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Couple of things...

Still don't know where you got the thing about male/female nudity as that will get you an immediate R for both. Titanic and Solaris are exceptions. I think for all intents and purposes, filmmakers just make less movies with male nudity. I said some other things on your last post but I forget what they were.

Also I guess the MPAA guy went to another conference and said that they were going to define the rules clearly for both the public and filmmakers, so that the system would be clear and understood, so that parents who pay attention to it will know what specific kinds of things define the ratings. Also, he said, there would be a re-evaluation of the kinds of things that get a movie an R rating. He said his biggest goal was making sure people understood the system, and that that cloud of secrecy went away. Sounds good to me...but I still haven't seen the movie.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Actually, some of the explanation for why it won't win awards is in this Roger Simon Article:

This leaves documentaries to be judged by a very small group of volunteers from that division (estimated at 30-35 persons) who have time to troop down to the Academy to view the potential nominees. For the most part, these people are retired or close to it. Being of a certain age, their view of the documentary form is, again for the most part, from a different era. They tend to be more comfortable with old-style talking heads docs like Gore’s (called “archival” in the trade) and less comfortable with the more creative verité approach of Hoop Dreams etc.

And so "This Film is Not Yet Rated" doesn't get a nomination. An Incovenient Truth will win because no one in the academy actually watches the documentaries, and Gore's film is the most well known and has the best ideology. Much like how Bowling for Columbine beat Spellbound in 2002. The occasional rare exception occurs when a documentary makes big bucks, as March of the Penguins did last year.

[thekit.livejournal.com]

Why is violence so prevalent in our media?

http://www.killology.com/

America has a volunteer army who were raised in a peaceful country going up against national armies of countries that have known war for whole lifetimes. The sight of blood coupled with stories of things getting unrealistically much better after the application of violence might make our soldiers more psychologically prepared to kill, and (at least according to Grossman) less likely to become psychological casualties.

I've read a lot of blogs that related stories of violence from the war in iraq, and included the words "it was just like a movie" to somehow frame their experiences into a world that made sense.

I think Melvin Van Peebles once said that movies are the advanced scouts of life. You can learn to ride a horse, kiss, find a job in movies.

I think you can also learn to kill and die. There are powerful people who want more killing and more dying.

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the review! I've been interested in this film anyway, and now I am even more so.

[teneda.livejournal.com]

After reading this post, I was reminded of Inside the Actor's Studio.

I think it was Susan Suranden(sp?) who was asked, "What is your favorite curse word?"

Her reply: "Cocksucker."

"Why?"

"Because you can have a PG-13 rating riiiight up until THAT word in the script. Once that word is in the movie, you go STRAIGHT to an R rating."

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Still don't know where you got the thing about male/female nudity as that will get you an immediate R for both.

Nope, it won't. You can show tits and get PG-13. Genital areas below or beyond, yes, they will get Rs. Worse, female pubic exposure or even non-exposure but lingering on the female in question seriously enjoying an orgasm can bump you to NC-17. Female masturbation, where less is shown of the masturbator's body got a higher rating versus a man doing the same with his pants down and his hips gyrating. The same scene of sex, shoulder-up, missionary etc was shown to be differentially labeled R vs NC-17 in two movies where the latter couple was black (ooh boy, not even going there because I'll never stop). The reasoning was that you could tell, from the woman's face when the point of penetration occurred (which, a) was the point of the scene--her losing her virginity, and b) was fairly obvious in the other film as well, with it's white-white stars). That is part as parcel of the women are either cheap sex or no sex (sluts or saints!) thing.

As for the changes you mentioned, that's fantastic. To a point. The secrecy and lack of clear guidelines for what does or doesn't make it is grating and makes it harder for a filmmaker to figure out how to obtain the lower rating desired without losing scenes unnecessarily. On the other hand, clear guidelines will still be arbitrary ones: will they be numbers of incidences or duration thereof? Will "fuck" still be worse than "shit" and "fuck" for fucking be worse than "fuck" for fuck's sake?

Really, they need to move to a more descriptive system and one that prioritizes things that are truly awful and traumatic above getting laid or getting off some other way. Paragraphs about what to expect would do more than would ratings. Polishing doorknobs on the Titanic, as Tyler Durden would say...

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Well, they say they are revising the requirements for an R rating, which would suggest that they are re-evaluating sex and violence and language and all that.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Also, I was reading your response just now again and I think the reason I disagree that a more detailed "paragraph" system for the things a film contains would help is because I think it's not that people don't understand the rating system, but that they don't care, and if laziness abounds when we've reduced the ratings to five easy-to-remember symbols, complete with brief descriptors underneath, then extensive explanations of what's in a movie isn't going to make those lazy people suddenly pay attention.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Oh, that would be lovely, don't get me wrong. I just don't like the idea of a rating period. As a shorthand, yes, fine, but I think parents shouldn't be shorthanding when it comes to something they get to shrieking about damaging their kids' psychological development. If seeing Sin City is going to damage a kid, you'd do better to read a paragraph mentioning the specific nature of the violence (sexual predation, gun/knife violence, blood, cannibalism etc) than just go, "Hmm, R, well, he's seen Rs before." Shorthand should be for the parents deciding for themselves more than for their kids, if that is really their concern. If they're just being lazy (they are!) there's nothing any rating system can do, specific or amorphous as may be.