THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED d: Kirby Dick
This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006)
Direction: Kirby Dick. Cast: David Ansen, Allison Anders, Darren Aronofsky, Maria Bello, Atom Egoyan, Stephen Farber, Kimberly Peirce, Kevin Smith, John Waters
THE CROTCH ON THE CUTTING-ROOM FLOOR
This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick’s documentary about the ratings board of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), provides a revealing glimpse into a censorship organization that is part-kafkaesque, part-byzantine, and 100% undemocratic. (See synopsis.)
Though hardly flawless, Dick’s documentary is clever, funny, and informative. There are curious montages involving sexual acts shown on film (some MPAA board members actually count the number of thrusts in sex scenes in order to come up with the appropriate rating); illuminating comparisons between NC-17 scenes depicting homo sex and R-rated scenes depicting hetero sex, making the point that MPAA members tend to be anti-gay bigots; and interviews with a mix of film personalities — plus a couple of former MPAA members — that offer an insider’s look at the twisted mindset of the people who decide what is appropriate for American audiences to see on their local movie screens.
Most damning of all is Dick’s assertion that the MPAA is little more than a tool for the big American studios to fight competition from independent and foreign filmmakers. Since Hollywood films tend to be much more overtly violent than sexual, sexuality is treated much more severely than violence. (As reviewer David Ansen points out, in Europe the rules are reversed.) Thus, heads getting blown up in closeup get an R rating (for admittance, those under 18 need to be accompanied by a parent or guardian), while the semi-graphic (gay) sex in, say, Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education is slapped with a NC-17 rating (no one under 17 allowed).
The NC-17 rating — which replaced the old X, now associated (as XXX) with the sex film industry — means that the film in question will get relatively little TV and newspaper exposure, and will be banned from hundreds of movie theaters across the United States.
Particularly effective is the way This Film Is Not Yet Rated makes former MPAA head Jack Valenti look like a corporate clown, disseminating half-truths and misinformation about the ratings board. Valenti, a former secretary to U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson, is probably best known for being the most unbearable element of nearly every Oscar telecast of the last several decades (and that’s quite a feat). He became the — extremely well-paid — head of the MPAA in 1966, when the old ratings system collapsed and was replaced by guidelines similar to the ones still in existence. (Until then, Hollywood movies had to abide by the Production Code, a set of rules and regulations in existence since the early 1920s but that were mostly ignored until mid-1934, when Christian groups were threatening to boycott motion pictures. By the 1960s, market forces — i.e., television — had pushed film censors to become more lenient.)
Other highlights of the documentary include actress Maria Bello discussing her fight for her pubic hair in a scene from The Cooler; director Kevin Smith giving a remarkably blunt rebuttal to a top MPAA member; and, best of all, a hilarious phone conversation between Dick and a couple of animated characters representing an MPAA board member and an attorney for the organization.
My chief complaint about This Film Is Not Yet Rated is that I’d rather have seen more of the history of the MPAA’s censorship activities and less of Dick’s Michael Moore-inspired on-screen investigation, in which the director co-stars with two private eyes attempting to find the identities of the members of the MPAA’s Inner Sanctum. The hunt for those elusive men and women is interesting, but that should have taken a backseat to the fascinating story of the MPAA’s warped decision-making process throughout the years.
Also, Dick veers off in a couple of directions that have little to do with the matter at hand. We learn, for instance, the sexual orientation of one of the investigators. Now, how is that relevant to the MPAA undemocratic procedures? That sort of personal information would be fine as one of the "extras" on the This Film Is Not Yet Rated DVD, but it adds nothing to the documentary.
Along the same vein, Dick offers a whole sequence on film piracy and the MPAA’s role in attempting to destroy the studios’ Public Enemies #1. (Illegal online film downloaders are referred to as "terrorists" at one point.) It’s one more example of the MPAA incestuous relationship with the studios, but the amount of time devoted to the matter could have been better used discussing, say, different censorship boards around the world.
And finally, Dick doesn’t have anyone outside the MPAA praising the board’s rating activities. I’m not sure if that means that no one in the United States likes the ratings, or if Kirby simply didn’t try to interview people who were in favor of them.
Either way, This Film Is Not Yet Rated demonstrates that those ratings — and the process by which they are reached — are in dire need of a radical makeover.
Reviewed at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
With the help of private investigators, documentarian Kirby Dick attempts to uncover the identities of the men and women who belong to the highly secretive ratings board of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
While not on the prowl, Dick tackles a variety of social, cultural, and political issues related to the MPAA, including the role of censorship in a supposedly free society, views on sex and violence, and the inordinate power held by this undemocratic institution.
Notes:
A brief history of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) can be found here.
On this page, you can sign a petition requesting an overhaul of the MPAA’s procedures (or lack thereof) for rating movies. The This Film Is Not Yet Rated site offers five fair-minded suggestions for change, one of which reads:
"Personal Choice and Responsibility: We ask that the NC-17 rating be replaced with a category that describes content fairly and accurately, but does not restrict the rights of individual parents to make their own decisions about what their minor children may see or limit the ability of adults to see films."
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