As director, Kirby Dick states, “The MPAA is one of the most unprofessional boards operating in this country today, there are no standards.” The Motion Picture Association of America is the group of people who decided what the rating on new films should be; G, PG, PG-13, R, etc. Since it is indeed such a small group of people with no real standards for rating, there is inevitably going to be some bias in their work.
Kirby Dick also says that the MPAA is a group of parents in the Los Angeles area. This being true, then certainly some biases would appear in the rating system. For example, most parents would have negative bias towards sexually oriented movies, because they would probably not want their children to be exposed to this kind of material. Dick also specifically states in his documentary that the MPAA has a strong homophobic bias. These biases are somewhat understandable for the type of committee they have rating films these days. As Kirby Dick believes, and I agree with him, the MPAA needs to have more professional standards in the way it goes about rating films.
However, what really determines whether a movie should be PG-13 OR R? Noel Murray states, “Well first off, I still don't see what's so ‘unhelpful’ about the MPAA's ratings system. We've lived within its parameters for so long that I think we have a general idea what PG-13 means and what R means.” Murray makes a good point here, for over 30 years the MPAA has been operating the same way, and the general public have come to terms with the way they rate films. So viewers generally have an idea what a PG movie is going to contain versus what an R will.
In Leff’s Dame in the Kimono, he outlines the two goals of the rating system established by Mr. Valenti; "encourage artistic expression by expanding creative freedom" and to "insure that the freedom which encourages the artist remains responsible and sensitive to the standards of the larger society." These goals I believe have actually been achieved by the MPAA today. Despite being far from perfect, the MPAA does effectively insure the artist’s freedoms remain responsible to today’s standards.
I must say that i agree with most parts of this. The one part i don't agree on, however, is your third paragraph. The MPAA has fluctuated so much over the past decades. The MPAA is known for its bias and inconsistency. The people on the board are constantly rotated as Glickman said. Movies today are rated more harshly than movies back in the day. Glickman stated in his interview that smoking use to be in all the movies a few decades ago. Nowadays, it can spike up the rating because it's considered vulgar. ratings change over time and therefore no one really knows what the difference between PG-13 and R is.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with your opinion on the Noel Murray article. Yes the MPAA might have some biases but the MPAA has not been unhelpful. Thanks to the ratings system, a parent generally knows what is going to be in a PG, PG-13, or R movie; and this is not a 'bad' thing so they generally are helpful.
ReplyDeleteI agreed with the majority of this article, but the last paragraph gave me some grief. You quoted Leff's Dame in the Kimono when Valenti said the goals of the movie rating system was to "encourage artistic expression by expanding creative freedom." I believe that this freedom has not been achieved because directors are forced to edit some of their films in order for movie theaters to play them. This is not "creative freedom," but instead creative enslavement.
ReplyDelete