Susanna+C’s+OpEd+Article

"The still sweet meadows shimmered: and I stood And cursed them, bloom of hedge and bird of tree, And bright and high beyond the hunch-backed wood The thunder and the splendour of the sea."

The film industry is bad enough, but once all those films are finished up they go to the MPAA, and that is the worst of the lot.

The MPAA is the Motion Pictures Association of America. They contain the people that rate movies as G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17. Who are these “raters”? No one knows, their names are not open to the public, as a way to “protect” them from influence. According to the former head of the MPAA, Jack Valenti, they are a group of ordinary American parents whose children are 5-17. The only name made public is the head of the Raters, Joan Graves who hand picks each rater. All this seems a bit fishy and a filmmaker, Kirby Dick, made an investigative documentary on the MPAA, //This Film Is Not Yet Rated//, to find out who was in it and how they worked. In //This Film Is Not Yet Rated,// Kirby interviews directors that have been given an NC-17 rating, and the treatment they have received, while he conducts a private investigation into the identity of the raters.

Films are rated on how much violence, profanity, and sex are in them. A PG or PG-13 film can get away with swearing, but a well placed “fuck” can give it a solid PG-13 rating and if that “fuck” refers to the sexual act then it goes straight to an R rating. This brings me, and many others, to the problem with this rating system: sex. The rating board is very biased when it comes to any kind of sex that is not a heterosexual couple in the missionary position. If a film shows any sort of female pleasure or prolonged orgasm, it is deemed offensive. These raters deny that sex is anything but dangerous to the mind of a teenager. Even talking about masturbation in a film can get it a NC-17 rating, and most studios will not release a movie if it is marked NC-17. These raters want to protect the children of America, even though their own children (found out in the documentary) are well in their late teens and adulthood. The raters have no guidelines to rate movies on, everything is their own opinion.

“What do you think they’re doing upstairs, their homework?” John Waters (Director of //Hairspray// and //A Dirty Shame//).

The American film industry is denying that sex is something natural and extremely prominent in our world, and instead shoving violence down children’s throats in order to beef up American nationalism. Films are predominantly made by men, so sex scenes are through their lenses, and when it’s through a woman's then it is considered atrociously offensive. But to who? Not me for sure. I would love to see more sexualness in films that is not just there to satisfy men. Sex is part of growing up, so filmmakes should show that side of it, rather than hushing it up like it never happened. Any kind of homosexual sex is seen as ten times as worse. Films that get an R for a heterosexual sex scene, will get an NC-17 if those having sex are the same gender. Rarely do homosexual actors play homosexual characters in movies. I never saw that film //Blue Is the Warmest Colour//, mainly because I heard it was the most unrealistic lesbian couple in a movie, and that was because the director was male and the actresses were heterosexual.

I don’t know where I’m going with this really. I just think America should have a much healthier view on sexuality rather than desexualizing it. They should take a look at the Europeans and censor violence in films rather than sex. These MPAA raters are bullshit, and they are the only people in any rating system around the world to actually have their identities hidden.