"Art films make people feel funny," says Kirby Dick of his new documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which maligns the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) much like Roger & Me did General Motors and Supersize Me did McDonald's.
In his film, which opened on Sept. 1, Dick takes the MPAA ratings board to town. He casts the secretive organization, established in 1968 by Hollywood studios to keep government censors off their backs, as one of America's last bastions of censorship. The board's power to brand a film with an NC-17, the scarlet letter of ratings, keeps many independent films out of theaters, off of Walmart's shelves, and thereby financially unviable. That the board is not required to reveal how it makes the unabashedly subjective distinctions between PG-13 and R, R and NC-17, is what really cooks Dick's goose.
Why, for instance, does Scary Movie, which depicts a woman pinned up against the ceiling by a cartoonishly exaggerated surge of semen during a sex scene, garner an R rating, while John Waters' A Dirty Shame gets slammed with an NC-17 when clothed characters merely discuss some off-kilter sex practices?
According to Dick and the frustrated indie filmmakers he interviews throughout the film, blockbusters like Scary Movie rarely do more than amuse or repulse. It's in artsy flicks that try to portray something authentic where that ineffable "funny feeling" kicks in. And it's precisely this, the "funniness" of a complex emotional response, that the ratings board wants to protect America's children from experiencing.
Hollywood studios, whose bottom line is usually product, rarely art, are happy to cut a thrust here, a female orgasm there, in order to earn a rating that will lead to financial, if not critical, success. Filmmakers like Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don't Cry), Mary Harron (American Psycho), Matt Stone (South Park), John Waters (A Dirty Shame), Kevin Smith (Clerks) and Atom Egoyan (Where the Truth Lies), all interviewed by Dick, are the ones whose artistic visions suffer censure because of NC-17 ratings.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated reveals some unsurprising truths about the American film industry: sex, more often than violence, is considered inappropriate for children's eyes (yawn). Gay, lesbian, or "kinky" sex (i.e. any sex not performed missionary-style between one man and one woman) is also deemed unsuitable for malleable young minds (naptime!). Dick's more novel revelations are the identities of the "regular American parents" who sit on the ratings board, which he exposes with the help of two private detectives.
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