More boobs!
From This Film is Not Yet Rated, Kimberly Pierce, director of Boys Don’t Cry, complained that people like her (lesbians) were not represented by the ratings board. I think that prudes and Bible thumpers should absolutely be included on ratings boards. However, I think it does a lot of good to have as broad a representation of society as is reasonably possible.
Something like the NFPA 704 standard for chemicals:
An easy to understand (after you have learned the system), at a glance, symbol.
Except instead of Flamable, Health and Reactivity, have:
Sex - Pink
Violence - Red
Language - Blue
Each on a scale of 0-4 (giving 5 grades),
Plus a special comments diamond - White
Another one voting for a mandatory and consistent system of description. There would be no provisions for governmental banning; individuals and companies could show what they wished, or not, but they would have to post the descriptions. Something like obfuscatrist’s list would be a good start. It could cover:
Sexual material (not intended to incite erotic interest).
Erotic material (intended to incite erotic interest).
Violence.
Insult.
Speech and actions intended to incite hate.
Demagoguery (emotional appeals intended to incite the audience to an action).
Psychological horror.
Unsafe activity.
Etc, etc…
I’m sure deciding on the categories would be an interesting exercise.
I would also mandate a change of terminology. The term “adult”, in its current inaccurate usage describing material that excites sexual interest, would be temporarily retired in favour of “erotic”. Only once that change had taken hold would “adult” be allowed to return to describe all material that is considered unsuitable for kids. Erotica, violence, psychological horror, whatever.
(In the ‘erotica’ section, I’d support a finer-grained system of labeling for porn, so that viewers could screen out specific acts they found unattractive.)
I wouldn’t bother making any changes to the letter ratings themselves, there’d be no point. Sure it’s not perfect but no system would be, and more importantly it’s a system that the public more or less knows. And the public are, frankly, idiots, so rearranging the ratings would do more harm than good. The only thing I’d change is I’d force the NC-17 rating into legitimacy.
I too watched This Film is Not Yet Rated and found it fascinating. But I also think that the lesbo director’s whining is stupid. The average American movie viewer is not a lesbian. Get over yourself. As far as the whole ‘violence should be worse than sex’ argument goes, well at first that may seem right. But think about this- When you were kids you routinely played cops & robbers, cowboys & indians, cops & dealers, whatever. Point is that ‘fake violence’ is inherent in human kids. Pointing your thumb and index finger at another kid and going BANG! is as natural as any other kind of childish playing. But kids don’t ‘play’ sex. They don’t play Romeo & Juliet. Of course for me this also means that exposing kids to sexual themes is a great big who cares. It does no harm because kids don’t get it at all. But neither does violence (within reason).
What I would change is I would make all the ratings board member’s terms three or four years tops. And only one or two terms maximum. Set it initially so that they expire in a staggered manner. This way there’s a decent ‘churn’ of memberships. Biggest problem with today’s board is it’s a total star chamber out of touch with changing social moors. And the whole anonymity thing may have had a purpose once, but it’s completely unnecessary now. In fact it just adds to the star chamber aspect, these people need accountability.
The following film is rated:
**BA ** - Bad Ass
**V ** - Chick flick (Vagina required)
R-15 - Restricted to adults with the mentality of a 15 year old
OO - Exposed boobs
8= - Caution: Closeup of some dude’s junk
**
** - Hilarious as shit
Make the ratings board be composed of 17-year olds. Since they are precisely at the age of the threshold of the R-rating, they are in the best position to judge what that age level means in the cultural context. They could think of their younger siblings and consider what they should not be allowed to see. That would make it a little more personal and realistic.
Just use Kids-in-Mind style rating and don’t ban anyone from anything. Get the basic sex, language, and violence(along with drug usage, etc.) info out there and let parents decide.
Besides, Kids-in-mind is what I will use as a parent to help me decide what movies little Mahaloths can see.
I don’t think getting rid of the overarching letters is a good idea. I think they serve as a useful quick guide. What I would do is more like the way TV ratings do, with both a letter grade and smaller letters that tell you why it is that grade. Fuller information would also be available, but using that alone would overwhelm too many people.
Another thing I like about the TV system is something no one else has touched on. There’s a separate TV/G and TV/K track. In other words, there’s a separate rating for movies for kids and movies for general audiences. Adding a K rating alone would fix so many problems with the system, even without any other reform.
I also like term limits for the board, but it won’t be because the criteria are subjective. It will be because they will have the ability amend the criteria. However, the public will also be invited to give their opinion, ala Congress. I think the board will have sufficient reason to listen to what the people want, as they will still be ultimately paid from sales. Unfortunately, I can’t force people to care if the system is incorrect, but I think having both the information and the rating will make this a lot easier. There will be at least one customer who will count and make sure the information is accurate, and at least one other customer who will make sure the rating matches, and it will be easy to start a bandwagon if that happens.
As for filmmakers deliberatly making a film to fit the most popular rating? I don’t really see a way to stop that. The rating is popular for a reason, and the filmmaker is just giving people what they want. The only way I can see around this is to provide grants for underutilized ratings, but I don’t see that much point in that. Though I will allow NC-17 to be advertized in new media, even though I’m pretty sure the decrease in popularity has more to do with people not really wanting movie-studio quality movies of that level, and not an inability to advertise them. People who want to wank will just see porn, and everyone else is pretty much okay with leaving out the XXX details in the story. Direct to video studios that bypass the MPAA cover the rest. I’ll leave it to the companies to decide whether to enter into the pron or direct-to-video markets.
You mean the blurbs that appear below the ratings? I doubt it’s the MPAA that supplies those - for example, the one for Team America: World Police ended with the words “by puppets”.
If I wanted to fix the current system, there are two things I would do.
First, when a movie is rated NC-17, appoint a panel to determine whether or not it is “pornography”; if it is, change the rating to X. That solves the “NC-17 is porn” problem. (This was the intent of having NC-17 in the first place; IIRC, it was when Showgirls got an NC-17 that it established a “this is porn” rating. This will continue to happen no matter how many “adults only” ratings there are.)
Second, the movies Kids and Bully show the need to distinguish between teenagers and younger kids. There need to be NC-13 and R-13 ratings (the first means “no one under 13; 13-17 requires an adult”; the second means “no one under 13 without someone 18 or older”). The only problem with this is, what 13-year-olds carry IDs that show that they’re 13? Do you let theater managers/security enforce it “by sight” (and open themselves up to lawsuits when a 13-year-old is denied entry, or a 12-year-old is allowed in and then the kid’s parents claim the kid was traumatized by the film)?
That’s probably the easiest quick fix the current system could to to restore the value of a G rating. Have a rating below G for kids. Kids movies are typically aimed at, say, 10 and under. In a pinch, I’d go with the 13 and under line, since that’s where the PG-13 kicks in, but there doesn’t have to be the same line.
As it is, once PG-13 was instituted, material that was once rated G started getting rated PG, and G got relegated to “for kids”.
I’m not sure if the ratings reflect a shift in mores to a more protectionist attitude toward kids (PG-13 seems to support that), or if it just reflects a marketing atmosphere in the industry.
A K rating for kids would be immensely helpful. My suggestion would be to add a keyword system to list offensive material, with standard adjectives to describe how prominent these items are, for example:
brief partial nudity (there’s one scene where you see a woman’s boobs)
recurring coarse language (happens several times during the movie)
pervasive graphic violence (occurrs constantly)
Of course they do.
I will say again that much of what people are asking for in this thread can be found at www.kids-in-mind.com - descriptions of all potentially offensive scenes, # of profanities by type (scatalogical, religious, ethnic slurs, etc), numerical ratings on violence, sex, and profanity, etc.
I say, “Well, we had a good run, just like the Comics Code. Last guy out of the office, remember to turn off the lights.”
You mean somebody at MPAA came up with “For graphic crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language - all involving puppets” for Team America - World Police?
"Dear Parents:
Until your children reach the age where they can make such choices for themselves, you are responsible for deciding what they should and should not watch on TV, in movies, plays, opera, music, daily life."
That oughta do it.
Yes, they did.
I’d get rid of it and leave the ratings to a broader free market.
That is, let organizations or individuals assign ratings to the movies, and let people make their decisions based on the organizations or individuals whose ratings happen to agree with their worldview.
If you’re a conservative Christian, you can go to the website of the American Family Association or the Family Research Council, or whoever else happens to think like you do, and see what they say about the movie.
If your politics and your sense of appropriate material is more liberal, i’m sure that there are also organizations and individuals who would fit the bill.
There could even be an opportunity for some of these groups or individuals to make a name and/or some income by styling themselves as a sort of informal ratings system for a particular subset of the American population.
Basically, ratings would work in a similar way that movie reviews do now. We all have a sense of movie reviewers who like the same sorts of movies that we do, and movie reviewers that we very rarely agree with. I have the same sort of understanding when it comes to my friends; i’m more in tune with some of then than others regarding what sort of movies we do and don’t like.
I’d say pick an age. Say 18. Under that age you could either see a movie, say “G” or not, say “R”. Ideally that would be the same age as someone could drive a car, smoke, buy liquor, vote, join the army, sign contracts, whatnot, but for starters aligning at least one more thing with the age of majority would be a start.