I’m currently watching this documentary on IFC called “This Film is Not Yet Rated”. They’re going through and showing all these little tidbits of information like the MPAA is run by mostly unknown people who are stated to have children between the ages of 2 and 19 really have kids who are in their upper twenties; that most movies that get an NC-17 rating is because of sex and not violence; that sometimes they just say “it was the overall tone of the movie” that earns a rating.

They seem to be pointing out the hypocrisy of how movies are rated by raising questions like “who counted the curse words” and “why does this film get this rating for a sex scene whereas this scene with extreme violence gets a PG-13” but for what purpose?

They go on to show several directors (like Kevin Smith) who have their own opinions on what the rating system should be (ie; Smith says movies depicting violence to women should be rated harsher). They go so far to have this long segment of showing the relationship of violent movies to Columbine and leaving the question open: they don’t know if there’s a relationship.

So what are they doing? I mean, is this really an expose? To say that the MPAA raters will rate more conservatively with movies? How can they complain about movies showing violence while saying we should show movies with homosexual sex-or at the very least, show those as well as the regular sex movies with the same R rating?

If the point is that the rating system isn’t beneficial to children since they’re being duped into seeing something that they shouldn’t be watching, okay, fine. But they don’t seem to be doing that. It just seems to be a long complaint of “It’s not fair. It’s not equal. It should change.” 

But to what? Well, the true colors start to shine.

Right now they’re complaining about censorship so the message seems to be “we’ve exposed the kids and everyone to X we might as well expose everyone to Y because otherwise its political stifling of information.” The point then, at this scene, is “No rating system” or “a whittled down rating system where the names of the raters are released to the public.” They’re basically saying that since these people rate things in private, they have the same secrecy and power as the CIA.

Some parents still use the rating system to gauge a movie and some even use that gauge and some other sources to find out how much is in it. As a parent, I use Plugged In Online–excellent resource.