Why is it so bad for movies to be rated NC-17 in the US? All it means is No Children under 17 admitted. Why did it fail to replace X? Other countries have ratings that don’t permit children to be admited even with a guardian. Distributors will almost always cut a film to get it an R rating, but almost never will they market to children. And major retailers often won’t stock NC-17 DVDs, but will stock unrated DVDs even though they often contain material that would have gotten an NC-17 rating. If a major distributor release a film with an NC-17 rating would others follow?
Considering the number of parents who drag their kids into R Rated movies… :dubious:
It did replace X.
I might be incorrect but I was under the impression that X was never an offical MPAA designation.
Marc
NC-17 is an easy target for the self-appointed Morality Police to pounce upon. Fear of the Morality Police means that most theaters, including I believe all of the large chains, will not show NC-17 movies. This means NC-17 movies will only be seen at some independent theaters, missing most of the market, and have little chance of even breaking even. Which in turn means most US directors would rather cut a little here, tweak a little there, and get the R rating.
NC-17, of course, replaced X, which has become firmly identified with the porn industry. Anybody could claim their movie was rated X, while to say a movie had an R rating it actually had to be submitted and approved as such. NC-17 movies are therefore seen as being X movies in disguise, and X movies are of course Dirty Movies With No Redeeming Social Value. In my opinion, the MPAA waited too long. They could have either protected the X rating as they did G, PG, and R (and later PG-13), or invented a new protected alternative to X as soon as it became clear that X wasn’t being seen outside the red light district.
John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969) was rated X when it was released, and was the first X rated film to receive an Academy award for Best Picture. (It also got Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.) It was eventually re-rated R.
The modern rating system came about on account of Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966). Here’s my blurb about it from my list of the 50 most important Hollywood films:
This powerful drama with superstars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor is the film that you can thank for the modern rating system. Jack Valenti had just taken over as president of the Motion Picture Association of America, and met with Jack Warner (of Warner Bros fame) and his top aide, Ben Kalmenson, for three hours of discussions about this movie before the three finally agreed to delete “screw” and retain “hump the hostess”. Valenti’s discomfort with that meeting foreshadowed an eventual Supreme Court ruling in April, 1968 that upheld the power of states and cities to shield children from books and movies that could not be shielded from adults. On November 1, 1968, the MPAA introduced its first ratings categories: G, M, R, and X. These were modified over time, and on September 27, 1990 became the familiar G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17.
I’m not quite sure, but isn’t the NC-17 rating a barrier to Oscar consideration.
It was an official designation, but the MPAA deliberately did not make it a trademark like the others (you’ll note that the X is in a circle, whereas the other ratings are in a box). The idea was that it would prevent the MPAA from having to rule on out-and-out porn films – you could call your film X without submitting it to them.
NC-17 is no barrier to an Oscar nomination. The designation is avoided because a large part of the movie-going audience is under 18, and if you get an NC-17, you’re cutting that section out completely.
I didn’t see it mentioned, but I believe that many newspapers won’t accept advertising for NC-17 films, so that’s another reason it’s undesirable.
Is it true that just because a movie is rated NC-17 by the MPAA, a movie theater has no obligation to follow the “No Children Under 17” rule? There’s no actual law behind it, is there?
To date, the only film released with an NC-17 to receive an Oscar nomination is Henry & June. Y Tu Mama Tambien originally received that rating, but the distributors chose to release the uncut version without a rating, and that film also received an Oscar nod.
The ratings system is voluntary, but municipalities (and other governmental entities) are free to make obscenity laws that are tied to it. (See the Supreme Court case I cited above.) Here’s a Wikipedia article on it.
**Midnight Cowboy ** and **Clockwork Orange ** both were rated X, from the old MPAA system.
Same with the classic “blaxploitation” film Sweet Sweetback’s Badaaasssss Song, now rated R…even with the child porn in it. :eek:
What really killed the NC-17 rating was when Blockbuster Video decided not to stock movies with that rating. And they didn’t even own a total monopoly on the market, like they do today (online vendors such as Netflix aside.)
The MPAA needs to establish two new ratings for adult films, one for pornographic content, one without. Call the second one “R-15” or something like that, make it ok for teens to see (with parent or guardian) but not ok for younger kids. This is how ratings in other countries work; in fact, it’s ridiculous that America’s top rating (which “R” is, for all intents and purposes) still allows 4-year-old kids in the theater just because their parents couldn’t bother with a babysitter, and then they get all righteous and moral and complain to their senator that Hollywood is marketing violent films to children. :mad:
I wondered if you were joking about Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song, but there it is on IMDB. Well, waddaya know.
Ebert ocassionally gets on his soapbox about the need for an “A” (Adult) rating to replace NC-17, since NC-17 is obviously not working. I’ve never understood why he expects the “A” rating will be treated any differently than NC-17. The problem is that the religious right refuses to accept that there a difference between films like Eyes Wide Shut (before the cuts) and hardcore porn - and they’re not going to be fooled by changing the letters used in the rating.
The theater owners need to quit buckling under the pressure to not show the NC-17 films, which I don’t see happening in the near future.
Pash
His suggestion is the same as mine, which is to add the “A” rating in addition to leaving the NC-17 (or re-instating the X.) Apply the “A” to the non-pornographic adult films and leave the stronger “X” as a sacrificial lamb for the Morality Police. But you are right that it’s probably too late for this to work…heck, the fundies have been aggressively attacking the “R” rating lately. (Can PG-13 be far behind? You bet!)
Well look at the films that got an NC-!7.
Showgirls? I hardly think the rating was the kiss of death.
The thing is that now, you can release an ‘un-rated’ DVD with the 7 seconds of stuff that was too much for an R and keep everybody happy.
Lib, not to doubt your sources, but you sure about this?
Everything I’ve read about the subject thus far says that it was Bonnie and Clyde that prompted the ratings system.
Except for PG-13 and NC-17, I’m pretty sure the rest were in place by 1970.
I seem to recall some films circa 1970 being rated “GP”, or is my memory just a little garbled?