A Quasi-Rant on the MPAA

I caught this article today on Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno. The initial cut of the movie received a NC-17 rating - a death-knell for any wide release movie. Most theatre chains simply won't show an NC-17 movie, period.

Contrast to this piece by Emily Bazelon of Slate, which looks at the Tale of Despereaux and describes it as "too scary" for a G rating.

The rating system starts with G, for General Audience. Next is PG, for parental guidance suggested. Third up in the rating scale is PG-13, strongly cautioning parents, and fourthly is R, for over age 17. NC-17 is everything else.

Now, I am 25 years old, and I look back at my own maturity level at age 17, and I think of how different I look at movies, the world, and just about everything. A huge portion of the movie-going public is age 20+, yet the movie rating system effectively tops out at age 17 - anything too graphic or intense for a 17 year old is lumped in NC-17, an effective purgatory for movies.

What we wind up with, then, is very little market for the upscale, the more mature, and the more intense. I won't even touch on the violence v. sex debate in movies, which is an entirely separate issue.

Why can't a film-maker make a movie with me in mind, without having to tone it down or edit it for the 17 year old version of me? I'm not talking about graphic sexuality, but rather just in the depth of story, the level of maturity, the subject matter of the film, and so on. Movie's like Planet Terror and Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song come to mind. Even films like American History X and Last Tango in Paris are suggestive that we need to accept the NC-17, or perhaps add another rating, for movies aimed at adults. Other good examples are movies like Casino, Resevoir Dogs, or Rambo IV - those are movies that shouldn't be screened for 17 year olds.

Overall though, the entire rating system needs to be revisited - not only for the filmmakers and the parents, but for the viewing audience. I want movies aimed at me, not at the 17 year old counterpart of me.