The MPAA

Ultimately, there’s no need for the MPAA. They’re an organization who not only rule over official movie based websites and movies in general, but they want to take control of the only facet for movie makers that have no boundaries: straight to video releases. I do agree with the rating system for television shows like TVY7 or PG because it’s a good tool for parents and I do agree with the movie ratings ala, R, PG, it’s very important we know what we’re dealing with when entering a film but there shouldn’t be any tailoring involved.

Why do we have a rating system if the movie will be tailored anyway for audiences? Simply for marketing purposes and aiming the film at a certain audience for moneymaking. With members from Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc. (The Walt Disney Co., Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Miramax Films Corp.);  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, Unites, Miramax Films Corp.);  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, United Artists Pictures, Orion Pictures); Paramount Pictures Corporation; Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures); Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; Universal Studios, Inc.; and Warner Bros., a division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. what can you expect?

Pretending they’re nothing more but a spin team for a movie is just naive. If they want a movie to aim at a certain target they’ll dice a movie just to fit it, so why do we need ratings? The MPAA ask filmmakers to unnecessarily cut scenes or shorten scenes and they have the most ridiculous guidelines (ex: during a sex scene the actors can have no more than three hump motions). But then, they do tend to tailor their holy ratings for most facets. For a film that has money making potential, they can be very soft on what the content is in the film, but when it comes to an independent film, they’re hard, they’re rough, and they give no mercy. It’s obvious this “credible” organization is in the pocket of every major movie studio and they know they’re rating is important to audiences because ratings also effect distribution which can either drive a film or destroy it.

For the independent foreign film, “Whale Rider”, they gave a seemingly interesting children’s film a PG rating for showing a hardly noticeable and unintentional drug reference in the background, a ridiculous reason to give a kids film a PG rating when all of the content is suitable for children, and they gave it so knowing it’d affect it’s performance, then when Roger Ebert urged all families to watch this with their kids calling this the best family movie in years, the MPAA urged him to take down his comment because of the unknown drug reference, but then they gave “Charlie’s Angels 2”, an adult film with a lot of violence and sexual content a PG-13 rating, a PG-13 rating, simply because it had the potential to make money, a rating that they knew would attract young male boys to the audience. I’m all for informing audiences on what they’ll be seeing in the movie, but be reasonable and have good reasons for giving the movie a rating, but don’t stifle art simply for making money.