written by Mike Shea on 17 October 2003
Kill Bill Part 1 is the most violent movie I have ever seen. Blood soaks the walls, the floor, even the camera at every opportunity. Kill Bill is rated R. Amadeus was recently re-released on DVD and had one scene where a main character bares her breasts. This new cut changed its rating to R. According to the MPAA, the sight of a woman's breast is just as dangerous to young kids as seeing a seventeen year old girl disembowel a Japanese business man. The Motion Picture Association of America rating system is broken.
Though violent, Kill Bill is an excellent movie and one that redefines Hollywood. While I wouldn't recommend it for anyone under the age of 15, it is a movie that made our world a better place and definitely needed to be made. If they had had their way, the MPAA would have removed it from our culture, thrown it into Orwell's "memory hole", never to be ever seen or ever heard of.
The MPAA is an organization who tells you what you are allowed to see. They invented an NC-17 rating, a rating more appropriate to Kill Bill than R, but because no theater in the country will show NC-17 rated movies, no movie is ever released until it receives an R rating. Material is cut out of the movie until it receives an R. In an interview with Brian De Palma, he described the rating of Scarface. One where it was cut and recut to take out the amount of bullets that hit the clown in the nightclub shoot out. Eventually De Palma threatened the MPAA with lawyers and the movie was shown as-is. The MPAA's rating scheme can be manipulated with money and power, just as anything else can.
The Motion Picture Association of America controls what you see. Controlling what you see ends up controlling what you say which ends up controlling what you think. Violence and sex are removed from movies because they are dangerous to children. What determines what violence is too extreme? What exactly is the danger? Is Fight Club a dangerous movie because it shows fist fights or is it is a dangerous movie because it speaks an anti-social message that the removal of violence from our society removes a piece of what we are? Is this not an important message? If it is dangerous, perhaps it is something that needs to be said.
Violence and the method it is show in cannot be simply categorized into neat boxes of G, PG, PG-13, and R. Movies like "The Pianist" are far more disturbing than anything you will find in the comic book like "Kill Bill". Perhaps it is far more important for us to be disturbed over something as horrific as the holocaust, but the loss of innocence is just as damaging.
Good movies cannot be easily categorized as "action", "drama", or "comedy". The best movies simply are what they are. Ratings are the same way. Trying to affix such a simple one letter rating to an art form that is as wide as life is impossible. Just because a movie says the word "fuck" or shows a bare breasted woman does not determine how disturbing the movie is or what audience it is intended for.
Parents are responsible for what their children see. A responsible parent will watch or read up on any movie they plan to take their kids to see. Taking a 13 year old to see Kill Bill probably isn't wise, but in an age where the R rating is almost completely irrelevant, the rating alone cannot tell a parent what the content is.
Far more dangerous is when the rating system is used to censor what we are allowed to see. When a beaurocrat from the MPAA decides that too much blood will give a movie like Desperado an NC-17 rating, they are controlling the content of the movie and controlling who is allowed to see it. Taking this idea to its next logical step would assign ratings to books and cutting out any violent or sexy books from our bookstores. Of course, who determines what amount of sex or violence or language is too "disturbing" for the public?
Censorship is the abolishment of the freedom of speech and worse, the freedom to hear. I want to hear what people want to say. I want to see the films that people want to make. No middle man should stand between me and the material I want to experience. The Motion Pictures Association of America should abolish their worthless rating program and stick to simple reviews of the content of the movie. Movie theaters should show any movie they wish to show regardless of the content of the movie.
No one should control what you see, what you say, or what you think. The Motion Picture Association of America is doing just that.
From: Mike ( mike@mikeshea.net ) on 21 April 2004
Subject: Idiotic article
Any article that includes the quote "Some directors in Hollywood are simply clueless." itself doesn't have a clue. This is an idiotic article of assumptions and a lack of quantitative evidence. The director made the movie. If people don't want to see it, don't watch it. Time Cop...great example.
Tools like this justify the fascism of the MPAA. These are Stalin-like deceptions designed to control what we think. This is lysenkoism.
From: Rob ( bustabust@hotmail.com ) on 14 April 2004
Subject: For all you doubters and "art" lovers
Some of you questioned the lack of credibility to my claims in prior posts. Take a look at this article which has a link to a scientific study that deals the economics behind rated R movies. This is not one of the articles I originally referred to but it still supports my statements about demand for rated R movies.
I'm sure several of you will disagree with my opinion and that of the article's author, but you will be hard-pressed to refute the scientific study. I am excited to see how Hollywood deals with this new technology and if it will be a significant selling point for consumers.
By the way this site is great for all your home theater questions. It's geared more towards those who already have a lot of HT knowledge but there are some good articles for newbies as well.
http://www.audioholics.com/news/editorials/sexinmovies.html
From: Rob ( bustabust@hotmail.com ) on 5 January 2004
Subject: You missed the point.
I think that you missed my point because your post did not address what I wrote. My point is that there is no MPAA conspiracy to control our thoughts (as ludicrously suggested in the article) and that dismissing the system would only hinder the pleasure of most viewers and expose children to inappropriate content more frequently. If you like conspiracies you might check into the Republican Party and see how they influenced the showing of the Reagan movie. It was scheduled for CBS originally but was then aired on Showtime for specious reasons. That was interesting.
I agree with you in some regard in that I quickly dismiss anyone who blames his or her actions on a movie, music, art etc. Ultimately, every person is responsible for there own actions. I do not blame the arts for society's woes. We bring it on ourselves through individual actions. I merely stated something that has been known for a long time and has been scientifically documented, media can influence our thoughts and by doing so can influence our behavior. It is called propaganda.
Just as an aside, you wrote “You can site all the "studies" you want, but that doesn't mean that these people didn't already have a predilection toward that type of behavior already.” Well Cameron, it does not mean they did have a predilection towards this type of behavior either. That’s why psychological studies include a device called a representative sample of the population. By the way, I like the quotation marks around studies too. Since you have problems understanding my intent I will directly address this quote, “You can't blame the art for the state of society.” Even though I just stated my thoughts in the previous paragraph. I do not blame the art for the state of society. Okay, we should be clear now.
Your asinine comment has some truth to it though. Some people do have a predilection towards certain behaviors. Age is a major determinate of our behavior. I think I mentioned more than once in my post children are especially impressionable and are more likely to imitate what they see. Knowing that, it lends responsibility to whomever creates content that is targeted towards children or supplies content that can be viewed by children. Hollywood must take some responsibility for the messages and images they repeatedly send out. This is why the MPAA exists. They strive to ensure the material can only be shown to the appropriate audiences.
I would advise someone not to watch certain movies because of their content but I do not think the media should ever be censored. Adults are free to fill their minds with whatever images they choose, positive or negative. This does not mean they are not adversely affected by it. The MPAA must bare the burden of deciding how much is too much for a given age, which you can debate all day. In the end we are still free to view whatever ever we want as adults and even as children with parental approval.
From: Cameron ( noemail@inmyinboxfromhere ) on 1 January 2004
Subject: False
Sir, your entire argument is based on the assumption that people will imitate what they see, regardless of what it is. I just don't believe that that is the case. You can site all the "studies" you want, but that doesn't mean that these people didn't already have a prediliction toward that type of behavior already. You can't blame the art for the state of society.
I, however, am of the opinion that people actually have the ability to think for themselves, whether or not they choose to use it. Movies are much less influential on people's behavior than some people might like to think. It's an easy excuse for someone who has done something that they may regret.
From: Rob ( bustabust@hotmail.com ) on 9 December 2003
Subject: Your logic is completely flawed. Where to start?
The R rating is given to a film that has any content that is not appropriate for children. This can be nudity or gore or even just grown up situations. The ratings are simple. It does not mean that one depiction is more offensive over another just that all of them are not appropriate for general audiences or for anyone under the age of 13 or 17 etc. The MPAA was setup to ensure that people who wanted to see a movie could determine the kind of content contained in the film. Moviegoers can decide if they, or their children, should see the movie.
It is true that some PG-13 movies actually seem more disturbing than some R movies but the occasional inconsistency, based on individual opinions, does not call for the complete dismissal of the ratings system. It is also interesting to note that those altruistic Hollywood directors actually add arbitrary nude scenes, violence and explicit language to achieve an R rating. This is to appeal to a target audience. Because the MPAA IS consistent, viewers assume that a given movie about “Subject X” rated PG cannot be as graphic/realistic as an R movie about “Subject X.”
You wrote, “What determines what violence is too extreme? What exactly is the danger? Is Fight Club a dangerous movie because it shows fist fights or is it is a dangerous movie because it speaks an anti-social message that the removal of violence from our society removes a piece of what we are?”
The measures taken are there for many reasons. Everyone has heard of desensitization by now and how it affects us all. I am sure you have heard about the copycats who watched Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Probably the most important is the impact that graphic images have on not just children, but anyone who views violent/graphic sexual films. There are numerous scientific, psychological studies that prove the close pairing of violence and sex (e.g. slasher flicks) forms a latent cognitive association between the two. More simply, sex + violence = sex is violent or violence leads to sex. This is just one of many common scenarios that affect the way people associate behavior. So it is with good reason that some type of rating is imposed on a movie so that younger or more impressionable viewers do not have access to this content. If you really want the sources for the studies, give me a few weeks to find time and I will post them. By the way, you mixed up “the message” of Fight Club with a review of A Clockwork Orange.
You’ll be happy to know that the standards for what will pass as an R rating have moved towards the more violent/graphic end of the movie spectrum. Take for instance, the last film mentioned, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. This initially had an X rating that was later given an R rating with no changes to the content, though it did take a while for the rating change to occur. Full frontal nudity, both male and female, is more common place and does not call for an NC-17 rating. The fact that MOST theaters will not show NC-17 films is an accurate reflection of demand not the MPAA trying to keep you from seeing graphic and mentally destructive content. Most consumers do not want to see such graphic depictions. You are an exception to the rule. The thing that is most striking is that you are old enough to view, rent, or buy any type of film you please but it seems from your writing you are concerned that children cannot see objectionable material or are at least partially protected from it. They can see whatever they choose with their parent or legal guardian, with the exception of NC-17 or higher rating. This does not matter of course because according to you no theater shows these films.
You stated, “Controlling what you see ends up controlling what you say which ends up controlling what you think.” All media can impact the way people view a given topic. I think that television programming is more influential than movies, only because of the repetition of exposure, but both definitely influence what we think. Repetition of a portrayal has become truth for many. You should be more worried about Hollywood producers rewriting history. Unfortunately, many people only have historical knowledge that is based on a true story. I bet you actually think that Larry Flynt is a hero, an upstanding citizen, champion for the Bill of Rights, instead of the truth; an evil man who sexually exploits women, which has included molesting his own daughter numerous times. Try reading his daughter's account.
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From: JMF ( JMF_611@hotmail.com ) on 7 September 2004
Subject: ok guys ur both got good ideas
ok , yeh fine but i thought i needed to comment on this , how can one committee control what a whole country(S) can see, even though the violence
in kill bill is completely grotesque and probably not needed, but you get a great felling once u have finished watching the second one and you feel like it was worth watching that!!!
Of course some of the films they ban are completely useless and have the purpose of a snuff film (a recording of people getting murdered) but some movies need this high content such as adult themes and sexual references to make a point, didnt you feel great , when Uma Thurman sliced up all the people that had hurt her or was in her wayof revenge and the violence helped this effect because it made people watch and understand the pain the woman was going through to kill all those people like that!!!
And if you make a documetary as such about all the things that do go on in school, your going to get a whole lot of coarse language and sexual reference because we all know that kids get up too real horrible "stuff" in the schools, and the point of this film is too educate people about what happens, so why should the comitte ban these sorts of film cause they used the word "Fuck" too many times so let the public view the film and if it is too graphic for us and we cant handle it , well there is a red button on our remote!!!!