The Indigestible

The MPAA is the “authority” in the US which decides what kind of rating a film should get: G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 and the notorious X range. Over the years since Jack Valenti founded the organization in 1968, some of its decisions have been baffling and arbitrary. For instance it’s not uncommon for close-up shots of people in flagrante to earn a film a tame R; but wider shots showing moving pelvises end up thrusting (!) your film into less-pristine waters.

And let’s not even begin discussing what happens if a movie tries to show a woman having an orgasm.

The thing is that the MPAA board is not made up of cultural experts; these are allegedly regular people. Some of their decisions seem to indicate that “regular” means “functionally retarded”.

Now, to make things even more asinine, the MPAA is announcing they’ll be using smoking as a criterion for determining film ratings.

Along with violence, depictions of sex, adult language and other content considerations, ratings organizations will examine new releases to determine if they glamorize smoking or if it is pervasive through the films, even among adults.

Nothing else the MPAA is doing will change. This means that if you have a movie which glamorizes crime-sprees and killing — complete with extramarital fucking (shoulders-up), you might be in for PG-13 … but if your characters light up and puff after murdering a chapelful of nuns, you’ll be in XXX range.

Can the MPAA possibly become more irrelevant? They’re like the Catholic church of the movie industry — old, outdated and far too self-important, yet somehow still taken seriously by millions of inbred dimwits.