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Topic: Children shown "Insidious 3" instead of "Inside Out"

Justin Hamaker
Film God

Posts: 2253
From: Lakeport, CA USA
Registered: Jan 2004

posted 06-26-2015 01:05 AM

Bobby, I more or less agree with what you're saying. Unfortunately there are still large swaths of the country where nudity and sexuality are still frowned upon. Having sat in on several MPAA ratings compliance meetings, I have a better understanding of why nothing changes.

First, the MPAA doesn't believe anything needs to change. Despite the fact that social norms are changing on many things that get an R rating - especially language, they remain firm that no change is needed. And part of this is because the ratings board is made up of parents from various parts of the country who go by ideology rather than reality. Plus they often have clergy consult on their ratings discussions.

The second reason is politics. You have numerous different theatre companies from different parts of the country, all with different opinions. As a result, very little gets done.

I sat in on a meeting about 5 years ago where there was discussion about a yellow band for trailers to identify those intended for PG-13 movies and up. However, this ideas was largely tabled for a variety of reasons, including the potential of liability for some theatre getting it wrong. Instead they wound up going with a subtle language change on green band trailers "Approved for appropriate audiences" and "Approved for all audiences". With the latter identifying trailers intended for PG-13 and R rated movies.

I have said before in other forums that the US has become much too large and diverse to effectively govern in a way that serves everyone well. The MPAA ratings are just an example of how a one-size-fits-all system really winds up being a less than ideal system for most, but is still better than nothing.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 06-26-2015 02:11 AM

Yeah we'd probably get along better if we were divided into about five separate countries. Trouble is, each section needs things the other section(s) have. Like if you sawed off California from the rest of the country, they would still need billions of gallons of water from points further east. Or Montana, we are such a large state but we have a small population so we get more federal money for highway maintenance per person than many other states might.

Bottom line, if we tried to change the system much at all, civil war would probably result. We're probably pretty much stuck with what we've got, at least until we're completely bankrupt and China forecloses on us.

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Lyle Romer
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1400
From: Davie, FL, USA
Registered: May 2002

posted 06-26-2015 06:15 AM

quote: Mike Blakesley
We're probably pretty much stuck with what we've got, at least until we're completely bankrupt and China forecloses on us.

I heard an analyst once explain that this can't happen. He said that since our national debt is in dollars, if China (or any other creditor) called in the debt, we could just print dollars to pay them.

That would cause other issues like historically high inflation and devaluation of the dollar. His point was that it is impossible for the US to go bankrupt because our debt is in our own currency.

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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 06-26-2015 09:26 AM

quote: Justin Hamaker
Bobby, I more or less agree with what you're saying. Unfortunately there are still large swaths of the country where nudity and sexuality are still frowned upon. Having sat in on several MPAA ratings compliance meetings, I have a better understanding of why nothing changes.

I think nudity and sexuality is still frowned upon across nearly all of the country. Some regions are more Puritanical about it than others. I think I live in one of those regions. The funny thing is hypocrisy abounds in all of this. It has become a pop culture cliché for the minister or politician preaching against homosexuality and extramarital sex to get busted for indulging in one or both. Here in my town two civic leaders the past couple of years were busted for having hardcore porn on their work computers; one even had child porn and was trying to arrange meetings with minors (he's fixing to go on trial). It seems like the more fiercely political and religious leaders try to legislate morality the more it creates a seedy underground. The more society leaders try to control and forbid sex the more the public wants it.

The United States' culture is suffering from a pretty strange Madonna/Whore complex. George Carlin has written pretty funny comedy routines about this nonsense.

quote: Justin Hamaker
The second reason is politics. You have numerous different theatre companies from different parts of the country, all with different opinions. As a result, very little gets done.

The MPAA is funded by the handful of major movie distributors in Hollywood. Politics does indeed affect the MPAA's ratings on moral grounds. But there are other questionable things going on in how independent movie distributors are treated in the process. A movie production going through a major distributor will get very specific suggestions on what to change to avoid the dreaded & useless NC-17 rating. An independent production won't get those suggestions. They'll just have to keep guessing and cutting their content until it gets an R-rating. Matt Stone and Trey Parker saw both sides of this with the movies they've made.

While the MPAA may think they have a lot of power in this, they're really only helping premium cable channels and Internet streaming services become more compelling outlets of content.

An indie company can release a pretty tame R-rated cut of a movie in a few theaters and then release the more intense unrated cut on Netflix. Even major studios are indulging in this marketing scheme to their own detriment. Some of it is bullshit though -like the "unrated" cut of Dodgeball that only added a few extra curse words; at worst it would have went from a PG-13 to a very mild R-rating.

quote: Justin Hamaker
I have said before in other forums that the US has become much too large and diverse to effectively govern in a way that serves everyone well. The MPAA ratings are just an example of how a one-size-fits-all system really winds up being a less than ideal system for most, but is still better than nothing.

quote: Mike Blakesley
Yeah we'd probably get along better if we were divided into about five separate countries.

I agree the United States has become very diverse. But the differences in viewpoint aren't divided neatly among various regions. Americans move from one part of the country to another more frequently now. We're a lot more connected and exposed to different viewpoints via the Internet. If anything, our leaders in politics, business and religion need to learn how to lead better starting with broadening their own perspective. Doing things the same old way isn't necessarily the smartest way.

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Allan Young
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 125
From: EGHAM, Surrey UK
Registered: Jun 2011

posted 06-26-2015 09:33 AM

quote: Bobby Henderson
It has been a long time since a movie ran afoul of the MPAA over violent content. The original cut of Robocop and Man Bites Dog are the last movies I know of that got threats of an X-rating over violence.

Natural Born Killers springs to mind, but that was still over twenty years ago.

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Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 06-26-2015 12:51 PM

quote: Justin Hamaker
Plus they often have clergy consult on their ratings discussions.

They ought to get our pastor on their board! In last week's sermon, he quoted one of Schwarzenegger's lines from Conan the Barbarian (as an example of unchristian behavior - seeking revenge rather than turning the other cheek). He prefaced it by commenting that, "I've a feeling that many of you won't be familiar with this picture...". Of the around 2,000 Seventh-day Adventists he was addressing, about half giggled and the other half didn't react at all: I suspect because not only were they not familiar with the movie, but they hadn't even heard of it and therefore didn't get the joke.

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 06-26-2015 02:09 PM

(Don't let Jerry Springer invite any of the patrons on his show, for that would really blow things out of proportion.)

But, something went wrong and the media grabbed on to it knowing it would gather attention real quick - how they make money.

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