Trim the Sentence About the Female Orgasm and I'll Get an "R"

You know how, once you're old enough, you stop paying attention to movie ratings? If it's a family film, you know it's G or PG. If it's a somewhat mild [teen/romantic/misc.] comedy, then it's a PG-13. Anything else is R, and the rare occassion of an NC-17 usually means a lot of sex. In fact, unless you have kids, the only time the ratings mean anything to you is when you want to avoid a G or PG or even a PG-13, to avoid anything too schmaltzy and wholesome (i.e. boring and predictable).

Well, what about the people who decide on those ratings to begin with? Who are they? How do they make their decisions? This Film is Not Yet Rated only finds out the answers for the first two questions, not the third. Directed by Kirby Dick, this documentary is meant to expose mainstream audiences to the hypocritical, unaccountable mess that is the Motion Picture Association of America.

To do this, Dick interviews directors who have had problems with the MPAA. Kimberly Pierce, the director of Boys Don't Cry, had to trim a scene that focused on one of her female characters experiencing an orgasm. She didn't have to cut the scene entirely, but for the film to go from an NC-17 to an R, she had shave a few seconds off. Director John Waters has also, unsurprisingly, had problems getting some of his material pass the MPAA with anything under an NC-17. Matt Stone, one of the writers of Team America: World Police, explains how they intentionally filmed much more of their puppet sex scene than they planned to use just so they could dupe the MPAA into believing they trimmed NC-17 material for an R rating. And it worked.

Why all this effort to avoid an NC-17 rating anyway? Because many newspapers won't carry ads for NC-17/unrated movies (it's not required to even get a rating in the first place), many movie theaters won't show them, and Blockbuster and Wal-Mart won't carry those movies, which accounts for a large percent of the video market. Basically, a film cannot be NC-17/unrated if it wants distribution, marketing and, ultimately, an audience.

It's during this educational portion of the doc that we learn about the MPAA's double standards. Violence is much more tolerable than sex, straight sex is better than "abnormal" (read: gay) sex, and major studios get away with more than indie films. Want to discuss these biases with an actual rater? Good luck. All the members of the MPAA ratings board are kept anonymous so that they don't have to explain their decisions and so that people don't "pressure" them. Seriously.

Who do they think they are? Why are these raters treated like children who must be protected from the big, bad public (ironically, the very public they claim to be protecting with their ratings)? Every single other person has to be accountable for their decisions on their job (well, I can think of one guy who isn't, but we won't go there). Every single other person has to deal with "pressure" if they make a decision that other people might not agree with. Are these raters so fragile that they can't assert their opinion at a dinner party or, even better, assert that they don't care to discuss their decisions at all? How difficult is that? It's called coping, people. Better yet, it's call adulthood.

Of course, if a filmmaker disagrees with a rating, they can appeal. This is done behind closed doors, with an anonymous appeal panel, and the filmmaker is absolutely not allowed to reference other, similar films to put his own in context. Dick manages to talk to two former members of the appeals board, one anonymous, one not. They both explain that there are two religious figures on the appeals board (two priests of different denominations) (and, oh yeah, um, what?), but the anonymous one claims that these religious guys vote, while the identified one claims they don't - can you say "plant"?

Dick also spends time with the plucky private detective Becky Altringer to hunt down the members of the MPAA. They are successful in finding the identities of almost every member of the ratings and the appeals board. Unsurprisingly, their statistics contradict the MPAA's publicized profile of a typical rater. Instead of having children between the ages of 3 and 19, most of their children are in their 20's and 30's (all the are heterosexual parents). Instead of only serving for at maximum nine years, most have been on the board much longer. Although Dick discloses all their identities, it's not exactly clear what to do with this information. Quickly write it down and harass the raters? Write Dick an email congratulating him? I think Dick expexts the audience to share the exhilerating, David-vs.-Goliath pride he revels in, but that "stick it to the man" rush doesn't last long.

Though flawed in its allotment of information, the film provokes much anger against an entity that coddles its members while infantilizing the American public. Fittingly, this film actually is not rated. Dick originally received an NC-17 rating due to using examples from NC-17 films (even the film's posters shown here have been banned in some areas). So, after unsucessfully appealing, he decided to go without a rating at all. That's his choice as an artist, of course - it's not as if the MPAA wants to censor anyone - but that also means it will be very hard to see this film in the theaters. That's not actually a big loss, as it doesn't benefit from the big screen. Since the film is produced by IFC and in this Netflix age, you should be able to find it soon.

And when you do, don't pay any attention to the (lack of a) rating.