MPAA Ratings

I watched This Film is Not Yet Rated. I was a bit skeptical - mostly because of how aggressive and confrontational it seemed. But it was actually a good movie and made some really interesting points.

The movie investigates the Motion Picture Association of America's movie ratings system and finds it to be secretive and full of contradictions. We shouldn't be surprised at the problems the movie raises. Anytime an industry tries to regulate itself, it will often fail when the needed regulations threaten its bottom line.

It seems clear from the movie that the MPAA ratings system has a few significant flaws. The first is of course its lack of transparency. A system that exerts such significant control over a major communication medium should make it clear who is making its decisions and how they arrive at those decisions.

Given the lack of transparency, the MPAA is free to allow conflicts to corrupt the process. It seems clear that studio films are given more guidance and support in navigating the ratings.

What seems to be the biggest problem with the ratings system though is that it tolerates significant graphic violence in an R rating but is highly sensitive to sex and downright censors any homosexual sex or intimacy. This strikes me as completely backwards. As a society, we should be much more concerned with how our treatment of violence influences violent behavior than we are about treatment of sex influences our sexual behavior since violence can have much bigger impacts on peoples' lives than sex.

The movie suggests a reason for why the MPAA might treat sex this way. It seems that the MPAA is risk averse - its goal is to avoid criticism. It seems clear that the loudest voices would be / are conservative christian groups whose main concern is with what they consider aberrant sexual behavior (usually intimacy between same sex couples or sexual positions that deviate from missionary). In fact, the bias in favor of religious groups is clear when the viewer learns that the MPAA includes representatives from the Catholic and Episcopalian churches on their appeals baord.*

To the extent that this analysis is accurate, it is concerning both because religious groups representing views that are likely to be in the minority have an undue influence on our movie choices (coming close to censoring) and because it isn't clear to the public that the rating agencies have this bias.

The solution would be a rating system that is much more transparent - which means it would need to be less simple - and separated from the studios. HBO uses its own rating system, which is actually both more simple and more complicated than the MPAA. Because it is independent of the MPAA, it can air TV shows like the L-Word, which would otherwise likely receive an NC-17 rating. There is another rating system though that accomplishes this, and Netflix is using it: Common Sense Media. It is far more descriptive about what is contained in the movie (and tv shows and music videos). Granted, this wouldn't work for the lazy parent, but seems like a much more transparent, consistent, and independent system.



*Another explanation could be that our society overall tolerates violence more than sex and the ratings reflect that. The movie does a good job of making this explanation seem less likely.