STUDIES SHOW: JACK VALENTI CAUSES MOVIE CENSORSHIP
Flick freaks are chuckling over Scary Movie's "R" rating, given its raunchiness. As delicately described in Variety, the movie features a man getting "stabbed through the head with an erect penis," a female gym teacher sporting "suspiciously male nether regions," a guy spewing "an Exorcist-like stream of his, uh, essence," and a chick with "an Amazon-like thicket of... public hair." If the movie had been grimmer or artsier, the same elements could have drawn the dreaded "NC-17" rating, which means no one under 17 admitted, period (which means smaller profits). "R" means restricted, as in people under 17 need a parent or adult guardian to accompany them.
It's not so much that double standards piss us off, or that we're surprised by the underlying assumption here, which seems to be that thinking about sex and violence is more dangerous than laughing about them. It's more that we're curious about why, in the U.S., we're stuck with a movie rating fetish in the first place. The answer goes back to the notorious, so-called Hays office, which in the '20s and '30s, enforced the industry's voluntary (that is, not legally binding) "production code." The code had been formulated in response to supposed public indignance over Hollywood sex scandals of the time. Thereafter, according to one source, "such words as 'damn,' 'hell,' 'nuts,' even 'nerts' were forbidden, as was explicit violence, alternative social behavior, unpunished criminal activity, and even the depiction of men and women in bed together."
Pretty unprogressive, right? Well, most of the Hollywood elite were immigrants and thus on their best behavior-- the appearance of which, of course, didn't hurt business. Code tyranny stayed strong until the '60s, when, as you know, all fuck broke loose. Enter Jack Valenti-- war hero, Harvard grad, successful businessman, presidential advisor (Kennedy and Johnson), and now head of the Motion Picture Association of America-- who officially abolished the Hays office but nonetheless continued to stoke the sanctimony throughout the last thirty years, as he presided over the evolution of the ratings system.
In the beginning, it was "G" for general audiences, "M" for mature audiences, "R" for audiences restricted to those under 16 or 17 (depending on where you were), and "X" for the hot stuff. In time, "M" became "GP," which became "PG" (parental guidance suggested), which split into "PG" and "PG-13" (the latter connoting, according to the MPAA, "a higher level of intensity"). "X" (which came to sound unacceptably scurrilous, once dirty art films found their stride) became "NC-17." Naturally, all these changes were accompanied by a conspicuous public discourse whose drivers (Valenti and the studios) were always more interested in selling tickets than moving forward a conversation about national morals-- a fact we think you should keep in mind during the summer movie season, when you're lining up for the privilege of immersing yourself for two hours in other people's thoughts.
It's not so much that double standards piss us off, or that we're surprised by the underlying assumption here, which seems to be that thinking about sex and violence is more dangerous than laughing about them. It's more that we're curious about why, in the U.S., we're stuck with a movie rating fetish in the first place. The answer goes back to the notorious, so-called Hays office, which in the '20s and '30s, enforced the industry's voluntary (that is, not legally binding) "production code." The code had been formulated in response to supposed public indignance over Hollywood sex scandals of the time. Thereafter, according to one source, "such words as 'damn,' 'hell,' 'nuts,' even 'nerts' were forbidden, as was explicit violence, alternative social behavior, unpunished criminal activity, and even the depiction of men and women in bed together."
Pretty unprogressive, right? Well, most of the Hollywood elite were immigrants and thus on their best behavior-- the appearance of which, of course, didn't hurt business. Code tyranny stayed strong until the '60s, when, as you know, all fuck broke loose. Enter Jack Valenti-- war hero, Harvard grad, successful businessman, presidential advisor (Kennedy and Johnson), and now head of the Motion Picture Association of America-- who officially abolished the Hays office but nonetheless continued to stoke the sanctimony throughout the last thirty years, as he presided over the evolution of the ratings system.
In the beginning, it was "G" for general audiences, "M" for mature audiences, "R" for audiences restricted to those under 16 or 17 (depending on where you were), and "X" for the hot stuff. In time, "M" became "GP," which became "PG" (parental guidance suggested), which split into "PG" and "PG-13" (the latter connoting, according to the MPAA, "a higher level of intensity"). "X" (which came to sound unacceptably scurrilous, once dirty art films found their stride) became "NC-17." Naturally, all these changes were accompanied by a conspicuous public discourse whose drivers (Valenti and the studios) were always more interested in selling tickets than moving forward a conversation about national morals-- a fact we think you should keep in mind during the summer movie season, when you're lining up for the privilege of immersing yourself for two hours in other people's thoughts.
posted by Lucia Toledo at 9:14 AM
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