I Disagree Although I Must Say I Do So With Complete Agreement

I ran across this article over at Boing Boing talking about the release of a documentary called, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which pretty much puts to task the MPAA's ratings system. More specifically, the documentary questions the way the MPAA uses it's dreaded NC-17 rating to push out many indie films. I can recall that the intention of the new ratings system was to get a clearer picture for parents on what might or might not be suitable for their children to watch. I can even remember President Clinton demanded a V-chip be put into every television so that we could finally control what programs our children could watch: the V-chip was (and still is, I guess) governed entirely by the MPAA ratings system. Personally, I always viewed the NC-17 rating as a legal rating since only adults could be allowed to watch those movies. In otherwords, it was a safeguard against things like the infamous Janet Jackson Superbowl incident: a time when parents around the country voiced outrage because their children got a glimpse at a starburst-framed nubian nipple. To me, NC-17 meant simply, "Parents, we think your children should be eighteen, a legal adult, to watch this movie." But then I read this in the Boing Boing article:

If they give a movie an NC-17 (no children under 17 admitted), it's a death-sentence

Blink and you might not see my point for defending the MPAA's NC-17 rating go up in dust. It says that certain children, specifically seventeen year olds, can watch this movie. That isn't the cut and dry "we think you should be an adult" rating that I thought was originally intended for NC-17. I was confused and so I went to the MPAA website and this is what they had to say about the NC-17 rating.

This rating declares that the Rating Board believes this is a film that most parents will consider patently too adult for their youngsters under 17.

That is exactly what was in the Boing Boing article! Then I found the rating itself, the one which is displayed on any movie rated NC-17.

Actually, the rating logo was supposed to be here but I can't upload the stupid thing but it says this:

NC 17: NO ONE 17 AND UNDER ADMITTED

Right there on the MPAA's website it says you have to be an adult to see this movie and yet you don't have to be an adult to see this movie. That's like saying you believe in the freedom to eat peas just before you condemn the pea as a racist! Well...actually it isn't anything like that at all. I guess I'm just annoyed with myself. If I would have just looked on Wikipedia first, the whole thing might have been a bit clearer to me. Funny, that originally the rating allowed seventeen year olds and only later did it disallow them (funny to me since I always thought that was the case from the get go).

A little story bonus for anybody who actually read through this pointless blog entry. Back in my day, my mom always had a blanket ready to throw in front of the television if ever a "naughty scene" would begin to present itself and if the "f" word came up even once...it was movie over. I can remember watching Halloween II at the movies with mom, my brother, and one of our friends and my mom spent half of the time hitting us in the head with the large vat of popcorn so that we would close our eyes when ever one of the nearly two hundred R-rated scenes presented itself. After a while she stopped hitting me since I spent the whole time with my eyes closed anyway. I hated scary movies and, besides that, I thought seeing a boobie at the age of ten would destroy my soul. I only told mom I wanted to watch the stupid movie because the one thing I hated more than scary movies with boobies in them was having my brother hold me down so that he could spit a loogie in my mouth (I could've kept my mouth closed, I know, but I always had to yell for mom at some point and my brother knew it....the patient bastard always knew it).

The image of that is yours to keep.