What the eff is wrong with the MPAA?
November 20th, 2007
Who are the people behind the MPAA? I picture them as being old, lecherous white men with no souls. Of course, that’s pretty much the same way I picture the richest producers in Hollywood.
Most people seem to hate the MPAA for ‘prudishly’ equating sex with violence by giving films with a little of either the same R rating. More on that in a minute. But here’s a survey, because I’m curious. One: which R-rated movie is more harmful to an impressionable 17-year-old teen: the bloody Gladiator starring Russell Crowe or the sexy Unfaithful starring Diane Lane, and why? Two: what exactly in the big-screen graphic novel Sin City is more damaging to the same kid — its gory forcefulness or its take on female sexuality, and why?
On the other hand, *I* hate the MPAA for demonizing coarse language and drug use, which are nowhere near either sex/nudity or gore/violence. What bothers me is that R-rated films are so diverse in their offerings that the rating itself has become meaningless. Important films like North Country and The Joy Luck Club get the same rating as bloodbaths like Kill Bill and 300. Even worse, charming ‘people’ movies like Love for Rent and Billy Elliott get the same rating as lewd nonsense like American Pie.
How can curse words (which, looking at the etymology of the English language, are often the original English words that were made ‘low-class’ and then ‘dirty’ by the Norman French aristocrats) be in the same class as watching people kill each other? How can drug use, which doesn’t make the viewer actually use mind-altering substances, be in the same class as nudity, which does make the viewer actually partake in a woman’s objectification?
When my hilarious Turkish husband accidentally rented some pretty bawdy comedies, he started to avoid R ratings. But at the library, he felt cornered into bringing home boring, dated ‘family’ films that feature talking pets (as though all people who shy away from sex and death simulation are, by definition, stupid). So he started checking why the films were R, searching for the tiny box that said it all (R-Language or R-Nudity or R-Graphic War Violence). But of course it doesn’t explain the context. So the nudity and violence of Schindler’s List or Braveheart is ‘equivalent’ to the nudity and violence of a Rob Zombie flick.
Basically, there’s no way to see a movie without seeing a movie. (Though we try to fast-forward through the sexy bits.) But if we’ve seen it, we’ve already bothered ourselves. Wild scenes that I saw literally years ago still pop into my head sometimes and I doubt that I learned anything from the film that made the lasting visceral imagery ‘worth it’.
I think it’s obvious that the gore and violence in films is harmful psychologically, slowly desensitizing us to forceful death and war and making human life utterly expendable, and allowing us to find the evening news totally bland compared to a Martin Scorsese film. And I’ve read many comparisons between American and Roman bloodlust (the Romans had the coliseum, we have the action movie). It’s interesting how the more heinous American films get, so goes American foreign policy, as we look on disinterestedly.
But I, too, used to parrot oh-so-chic idea that the sex and nudity in films is harmless, though I was annoyed that the nudity in question is 99 percent female. How hypocritical to say ‘we’re equal’ and then turn women into sex objects. But when we’re all being honest, and not trying to sound more enlightened and modern than our parents, we can admit that watching people writhe around with feigned passion, sans clothing, is embarrassing — deep inside in that old-fashioned place we like to pretend we’ve conquered. I’m not talking about the more utilitarian nudity in a National Geographic special, but the gratuitous nudity in a film. Maybe it’s just human to be a little embarrassed by that kind of nudity, not because it’s dirty but because it’s lovely — and none of our business.
Even before I was Muslim, I began to hate the panopticon of the male gaze. After converting, I began to cover my body to privatize the public sphere. Now that I feel more at home in feminism than ever before — because I have dropped out of the society that deems that my assets are in my ass, and because male strangers don’t harrass me anymore, which always made me feel worthless — the film industry seems more blatantly misogynistic than ever before. Pretending to ‘liberate’ women from ‘patriarchal’ ideas about sexuality, pretending to embrace a woman’s ‘freedom’ to bare all, they have effectively imprisoned them — their bodies are currency, their attractiveness is their worth. They are their bodies, and that is all.
I’m sure most Hollywood actresses think Muslim women are oppressed. I wonder if they know that Muslim women think Hollywood actresses are oppressed. Think about it. Who is held to an impossible standard of beauty? Who spends hours grooming? Who is gossiped about and judged for gaining or losing a few pounds? Who is discarded the minute she becomes old or ugly or fat?
9 Responses to “What the eff is wrong with the MPAA?”
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November 20th, 2007 at 15:40
No, I just find it incredibly funny for the most part. I don’t find it at all embarrassing. I’m not trying to sound enlightened, modern, or cool. I just don’t see why sexual passion — even faux sexual passion — should make me feel embarrassed. So I don’t.
I’m also insatiably curious. I want to know everything. I want to know how other people do it, how movie writers and directors think other people do it, and what both Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts looks like while faking an orgasm on a movie set. I want to know what “depraved” acts evangelical Christians participate in. I want to know what exactly gay folks do with each other and why they’re attracted to their same sex. I want to know whether people have innie or outie belly buttons and exactly how much hair Kevin Bacon has on his butt.
I would agree that women exist in a male-privileged society and that our entertainment is therefore largely exploitive of females in general (as is nearly every structure in our society). This is why I consider myself a feminist.
November 20th, 2007 at 17:24
my bad. I should have said, ‘everyone but Rusty’ is embarrassed by simulated sex! p.s. What if your parents were in the room? Still no agony? (Even if my most depraved days, my mom being in the room turned the experience into a shameful one.)
November 20th, 2007 at 17:44
I don’t really see myself as that big of an anomaly. I can’t speak for anyone but me, but I have my doubts that I’m the only person who doesn’t find movie “sex” particularly embarrassing.
The only agony in that situation would be that I might get drawn into a confrontation. I don’t enjoy conflict.
November 20th, 2007 at 18:04
confrontations embarrass me, as well. come to think of it, an awful lot of things embarrass me. maybe *i’m* the anomaly. i am a pretty sensitive person. even so, the objectification factor is the real reason i object to nudity, not my own preference. i’ve heard some feminists say women can ‘own’ pornography and nudity and be liberated from the entire structure, but that theory just doesn’t resonate with my heart.
November 20th, 2007 at 20:05
Right on and fair enough.
November 20th, 2007 at 22:19
I think the real point here is that we all are individuals and we find different things acceptable based on our own beliefs or morals. So the MPAA can’t be expected to rate movies in a way that is meaningful to a specific group or an individual person. The ratings are a general guideline directed at the majority of people, and because they are trying to guide everyone away from being offended, they rate movies as conservatively as possible.
Who are they to decide what is mature content? And what does ‘mature content’ mean to them anyway? Of course there is no way everyone could agree on that definition, but I think it’s important to define what you personally find offensive and then if you really want to avoid those things, do the research ahead of time to find out if a movie you are looking at will be acceptable.
November 21st, 2007 at 11:06
I just wish it were more than just G, PG (practically the same thing), PG-13, and R. R includes such diverse offerings that it doesn’t reveal anything about the movie. People online have suggested creating new categories altogether, which I would support. I doubt gutter language is in the same category with pornographic sex or war violence for most people.
December 4th, 2007 at 21:52
Excellent blog! I believe the movies that are shown today have taken away and desensitized most people in regards of nudity/sexuality. The shame is no longer there and this is unfortunate.
December 5th, 2007 at 14:06
Selam Kelly… people from other countries say this a lot… it’s how American ideas of sexuality and violence are being exported all over the world — in cultures that, for one reason or another, did not evolve with those sensibilities — that is so troublesome.
We Americans may like to pretend that movies are removed from our realities, that the media do not inform our ideas about ourselves and about the world, but that doesn’t really resonate with me. Movies, TV, etc. are all very absorbing… sometimes we don’t realize until much later how they change our ideas and our character.