This Film is Not Yet Rated

(Movie Review)

First of all a small confession: I did not rent this film from my local video store in Japan. (I doubt the American Film Rating system would be of much interest to the average Japanese video renter). Instead I found an uploaded copy of it off of TV links. I had a couple hours before I started work the other day and I thought this looked kind of interesting, so I gave it a click.

And interesting it was. I have a few quibbles with it which I'll get to below, but it held my attention for the two hours I sat watching it and I learned a few things, and that's really all I generally ask for from a documentary.

As the title suggests, this is a documentary of the film ratings board, and the problems behind it.
As for my own views on this (big picture): My own political views do not approve of censorship at any time for any reason. However I also believe in freedom of association, and if the film industries of America want to create a voluntary ratings board to rate (not censure) the film for the benefit of informing the consumer about what they are going to watch, I have no problem with it. For me this is an outgrowth of my anarchist political philosophy, but at the same time I believe most average Americans probably feel the same way.
The problem with the MPAA ratings board according to this documentary is that:
1) Because studios and distributors refuse to handle films that aren't rated, the voluntary rating system is de facto compulsory.
2) Because many studios and distributors won't handle films rated NC-17, the film ratings board acts as a de facto censorship organization.
3). The film ratings board is more friendly to big studio films than independent films,
They are inconsistent.
They are more tolerant of violence and slasher films than sex.
They are more tolerant of straight sex than gay or lesbian sex.
And they are more tolerant of male sexuality than female sexuality (scenes of female orgasm or masturbation much more likely to receive the NC-17 rating)

As an indictment of what is wrong with the current system, it is compelling. Everyone who watches films regularly (which I think is all of us) should watch this documentary to be an informed observer about what we are seeing and (more importantly) what we are not seeing.
As to what the best alternative would be, the film is a bit more muddled.
For example: I don't think anyone would argue that our rating system is much more tolerant of graphic violence than it is of graphic sex. This should come as no big revelation. But whether it is fair to lay all this at the feet of the ratings board, or whether the ratings board is simply reflecting the cultural values, is another question.
Anyone who grows up in America, and especially in the Christian schools or church, knows that sex is demonized and vilified in a way violence and war never is, from the pulpit all the way down to the parent. When it comes to war, at worst the church has been at the front of the charge leading the saber rattling. At its best, the unified church has never outright condemned any war in history at the time it was occurring. But they've never been slow to condemn masturbation or fornication.
Our current political climate provides an excellent illustration of this. George Bush won in 2004 in part because the American church going public was more outraged by the idea of homosexuals getting married than by the bombing of civilian populations in Iraq.
...But I'm digressing. (Having grown up in the Church, this is always a topic that gets my blood boiling). The real point I'm trying to make is that perhaps the rating system is only reflecting society's vilification of sex. And as a warning label for parents and puritans, I would have no problem with it. If people want to be puritans in the privacy of their own home, and want to avoid renting movies with sexual content, and they want a rating system to help them do that, that should be covered under their freedom of association.
The big problem to me is that the board acts as a de-facto censorship organization, preventing some films from being released or forcing them to be modified. Here we get into the problem of corporate monopoly of the media (a subject touched on very briefly in this film, and which really should have been expanded on), and corporate censorship. One of the filmmakers interviewed in the film goes so far as to say the ratings board is a fascist institution, while another says if the films have to be censored than it would be preferable to have the government censor the films, because at least the government has accountability.
But later in the same documentary the case is made that violence has is more damaging to children than sex, and the case is even made that film violence is partly responsible for incidents like Columbine, and should be regulated by somebody. Implying that there should be a censorship or ratings board. But if you accept the necessity of oversight, how do you decide who should sit in judgment? Is it the puritan or the pacifist?
Which again ultimately says to me the problem isn't really the ratings board, but the distributing system (which refuses to distribute NC-17 ratings). And corporate monopoly of the media.
To be fair, some of these issues are outside of the scope of the film (which seeks to highlight the problem), but I think if we are looking for a solution to the problem, these are more the issues we are going to end up focusing on.

This documentary also deals briefly with a few other issues, like the movie industries lobbying congress against Piracy, and the draconian anti-piracy laws that have been produced as a result
...And the Pentagon's influence in Hollywood (this later being something I've been concerned about for quite some time):
Any film that wants to use any of the Pentagon's equipment has to submit five drafts of the script in advance to the Pentagon. The Pentagon has the power to cut out anything they believe portrays the military in a negative light. A pentagon adviser is on set the whole time during filming to make sure the military is shown in a good light. And the finished movie is screened in the Pentagon for approval before being shown to the general public.
To me, this is much more deeply troubling than a director getting his lesbian sex scene cut, and yet it was only given 5 minutes in the documentary (although granted a very strong and succinct five minutes). If I were in charge of making the next documentary, this is what I would put most of the focus on instead. As one of the commentators said, most people never know about all the films that are never made because of this rule. And the heroic image of the military in Hollywood films is one of the reasons the American public has been so warlike in recent years.
And for films that do portray the military in a positive light, the Pentagon's equipment is lent free of charge. Which means your government is using your tax dollars to propagandize (against most people's knowledge) you when you go to the movie theaters.
Update: Mr. Guam responds to this post on his blog here, and continues the discussion.

Link of the Day
On a slightly related note a Media Mouse commentary from this past January:
Popcorn and Propaganda: Movies, Militarism and Mad Mel

This Film is Not Yet Rated: Movie Review (Scripted)