The MPAA knows good torture from bad
Jan 7th, 2008 by jeremy
“This Film Is Not Yet Rated” is one of the most interesting documentaries I’ve seen in a while. After investigating the MPAA (the body that decides what rating a movie gets) for over a year, the director found out what makes the MPAA tick. It’s interesting to see the disparity a film can get based on certain factors. If the film is made by a big studio it’s more likely to get PG-13 instead of an R (with similar content). Homosexual sex is more likely to get a NC-17 than heterosexual sex. Nudity and sex are worse than violence. Femle nudity isn’t as bad as male nudity. Etc. etc. etc. Some swear words are worse than others. Thirteen-year-olds are ok hearing the F-word once in a movie, but two means they need to be accompanied by an adult.
They’re also deciding what kind of politics are in your movie theater. The MPAA has to approve any advertising a company uses, so they decide what trailers and movie posters can be shown. Torture porn is a fairly recent addition to the horror movie genre. Hostel and Saw are the two big franchises, and both have been very popular in the past few years. I’ve only seen the first Saw, so I can’t give details, but they’re basically movies that fit people torturing each other into the plot of the film. Saw shows scene after scene of people being tortured and killed in extremely violent ways.
Here are some posters the MPAA has looked at, and here’s what they say about advertising that isn’t acceptable.
… depictions of violence, blood, people in jeopardy, drugs, nudity, profanity, people in frightening situations, disturbing or frighenting scenes.
Here’s a few posters the MPAA accepted, even though in my opinion they break the guidelines.
So these are all acceptable. None of them break the MPAA’s rule. Now here are two that the MPAA rejected.
The first is from the film Road to Guantanamo. It’s about three British men who were detained as “enemy combatants“at Guantanamo for three years without actually being charged with any crime. It depicts various forms of torture that were used to try an extract information from them. After three years they were released with no compensation for the time they were kept. The movie poster that was eventually released only showed the shackled hands of the prisoner.
The second poster is from Taxi to the Dark Side. It’s a documentary that focuses on a Afghan taxi driver that was beaten to death while in American custody, then goes on to examine current policies on torture by the U.S. government and the popularity of shows like 24 that use torture as entertainment.
So for the MPAA, depictions of torture for enjoyment and entertainment are ok, depictions of torture examined in a realistic way in a documentary are not. Can I depend on the MPAA to tell me what is right and wrong in a movie? No. Can I depend on the MPAA to tell me whether a movie is acceptable for my son or daughter to watch? No. Is it possible the MPAA and I differ politically? Most definately.
Don’t let anyone tell you a movie is bad because it’s rated R, or that it’s acceptable to everyone over the age of seven because it’s rated PG. Instead takea few minutes to actually find out the content of a movie and decide for yourself.
Creepy posters - every one of them. I would say the least objectionable is the last one, but I can’t understand how the top row passed the muster.
I’m not opposed entirely to watching r rated movies. A couple websites I frequently visit detail what makes a movie receive its rating. One is kids-in-mind.org, which describes every possibly offensive scene so you can know what a movie will be like. One such description is as follows:
► Women wear low-cut dresses and tops that reveal cleavage.
“This Film is Not Yet Rated” was enlightening. It’s amazing how partisan and even bigoted the MPAA can seem.
Brooke would probably want me to disclaimer that she does not watch R rated movies at all.
Good post. I thought This Movie Is Not Yet Rated was pretty enlightening, too. The violence/sex standards always dismay and aggravate me the most. Show a breast in a sexual context, and that’s bad, bad, bad. Show someone stabbing a breast, and that’s okay. Or at least not as bad. I don’t want my young kids watching either, but it just highlights how useless the system is for making any kind of less global distinctions.
My favorite part was how they hired private investigators to discover the identities of some of the MPAA reviewers and then found out some of them either had no kids or had kids who were adults at this point.
Your comparisons of the posters above is spot-on, too.
I’ve used that site as well Josh. Although it points out stuff that would never bother me, it’s useful to see beyond the MPAA warning of ‘adult situations’.
I enjoyed that as well Jamie, even though the MPAA makes themselves out to be the people that will protect your children, often they don’t have children of their own. I’m supposed to trust someone like that to decide what is ok for my daughter to watch? I’d like to think I can figure it out for myself. We do the same thing with video games. Sidney loves playing, but every game she’s played is something I’ve looked into to make sure it fits the environment we want her to be in.