Nobody's Perfect

No matter how hard an organization tries, it will never be perfect; the MPAA is no different. Before you criticize the MPAA for what it does, take a second and think about what it would be like if there was no rating system. It may not seem like such a bad idea to young adults (like us) but if you take a parents perspective, it would be a nightmare. Imagine your son or daughter saying that there going to the movies with their friends. You ask what the movie is about and they reply, “I don’t know.” Since there are no ratings, this movie could range from the recent Disney movie “Up” to “The Strangers.” You have no way of knowing, in a relative matter of time, what the movie is about. Sure you can find reviews and analyze them, but by then your child has already left with their friends and there’s really no way of stopping them. In my opinion there is a major misconception about the MPAA. The main purpose of the organization is to inform parents of the content of the movie. According to the MPAA CEO Dan Glickman, there is a panel of about 15 parents (that is a must to be on the panel) and they simply watch the movies and give them a rating. Glickman says, “The raters look at the movies and try and rate them as if what parents would think if their kids went to go see this movie. This is not a censorship situation, it’s an informative situation.” Since the sole purpose of the ratings system is to inform parents, it should not be done by movie critics or by people of that nature. I agree that the parents on the panel should get a little more guidelines before they actually start rating but like I said in the beginning, nobody is perfect. I also agree that there might be some biases in the MPAA, but again there are also some biases in the real world. Glickman says, “Movies reflect our culture, and so do the ratings…we don’t try to lead society, we try to reflect society.” He uses the illustration of “Knocked Up” and how it got an ‘R’ rating but how it probably wouldn’t have even got a rating 30 years ago. He says that’s not a change in the movie it’s a change in society. You can see the progression of ratings in Leff’s “Dame in the Kimono.” Leff also goes into the fact that anything over ‘R’ is “economic suicide” (281). He says, “[t]heaters won’t play your movie, you’re not able to advertise on TV, and many newspapers won’t take your ads” (282). With this in mind, production companies often modify their films to drop down into the ‘R’ rating. Noel Murray, author of “Crosstalk: Does The MPAA Ratings Board Get A Bad Rap?” explains it in possibly the best way. He says “1) Ratings-wise, the MPAA gets it right 90 to 95 percent of the time. 2) When they get it wrong, the injury caused is negligible. 3) When people complain about the MPAA's decisions, they're most often really complaining about something that the MPAA doesn't control.” This basically sums up my argument. With Glickman’s quote saying ratings don’t try to lead society, they just reflect society. As of now, society still has biases; they aren’t good or bad, their just biases. When this culture has no more biases, the ratings will likewise reflect it.