What Are Movie Ratings and Why Are They Important?

Months before its release into theaters, the most highly anticipated summer thriller of 1992 was already gathering steam. Basic Instinct -starring the up-and-coming beauty of the silver screen, Sharon Stone, along side an all-time box office favorite, Michael Douglas- was a sure-to-be hit. In fact, the film had already accosted so much attention from Hollywood reporters and movie critics that it was dubbed “the steamiest movie of the year” and “a guaranteed blockbuster,” before it had even been submitted for rating.

Two years earlier in June of 1990, another film was scheduled for release later that fall. Although met with less fanfare and anticipation, Universal Studios and director Philip Kaufman had high hopes for their film adaptation of excerpts from the first volume of Anaïs Nin's personal diary. Henry and June was to be a drama that, among other things, through explicit, hetero- and homosexual content, would challenge both the artistic and social limits of the media of film. Both of these movies would however, when all was said and done, have a dark shadow cast over them and their makers.

Henry and June would eventually become the first film ever to receive the infamous NC-17 (No Children under Seventeen) rating from the Codes and Rating Association (CARA), a sub-board of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Basic Instinct was also initially rated NC-17.

There was however, one problem: only roughly half of the movie theatres in the country would even consider carrying a film garnishing such a classification. Paul Verhoeven, director of Basic Instinct, was under contract with TriStar entertainment to produce an R rated film and the potential loss of as many as nine hundred theater bookings as a result of not achieving such would be a gargantuan price to pay for a film with an estimated forty-nine-million-dollar production cost .

Kaufman, whose film's budget was nowhere near that of Verhoeven's chose not to edit and made virtually all of the movie's insignificant profit overseas.

The MPAA then, is an organization that “rates” the movies that Americans watch. That organization's role however entails more than simply stamping an arbitrary combination of letters and numbers on the movies that we as consumers are allowed to view. The MPAA, as one of the most powerful content monitoring organizations in the world, has the daunting responsibility of telling the “average American parent” what is and is not age appropriate for their child. Therefore the people who exert power over and within this system find themselves in a position of incredible influence on our culture in that they determine what is acceptable viewing for the public eye. The way in which the system began - and evolved into what we currently use - is in large part a story of power and persuasion, in which most, if not all, of the participants push an agenda motivated by personal benefit. This raises the question of how our rights as individuals have changed as a result of these political dealings and perhaps more pertinently how have the artist's rights changed when it comes to freedom of expression?

The following will discuss the multifaceted history of the MPAA by explaining how such an organization came to power, then examine the stunning political influence such an organization exerts and finally interpret the repercussions of said power on society. The greater conflict in all of this is the MPAA's historical confrontation with the American viewers, the US government and the labor force and finally with the artists themselves.

Background: The Rise of a New and Modern System

The first component in understanding how the MPAA functions as a cultural barometer is understanding how and why this system came to fruition. Much like many great American stories, this one begins with none other than a mailman: the Postmaster General, William H. Hays.

In the early nineteen hundreds, beginning with silent film and continuing on into the era of movies with sound, was an apparent trend of increasingly risqué content within the movies. Popular culture in the beginning of the century had not yet seen things like bad language in fiction, or even women in clothing displaying their knees and there was still relatively universal conformity to the socially appropriate consideration of topics in art and quotidian life alike. The public perception that the studios were becoming careless and irresponsible, along with growing outrage at Hollywood's audacity concerning the release of generally unchristian content, prompted the heads of the studios to form the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and search for a known figure who exuded sober responsibility and commanded public respect to head up the operation. In 1922 they selected Hays who had previously served, as the chairman of the Republican National Committee, and was largely supported by powerful figures in Washington.

His job was essentially to get the public off the collective backs of the studio owners: “the Motion Picture Association has always been about public relations; making sure that everyone in America is happy with the movie industry. The movie industry appears socially responsible, etc.” . In other words, the studios sought to appease the people who were ultimately responsible for their financial success: the consumer, the movie watcher, the everyday American. They realized that allowing public scorn to continue would be highly detrimental to their business, simply because it is ultimately the viewers who pay the studios' bills.

The MPPDA therefore became the “ first formal attempt on the part of the industry as a whole to institute self regulation” . Hays was given the job of creating and instituting the Motion-Picture Moral Code, later known as the “Hays Code”, which because of fear of being labeled as a censorship organization, was made up of a loose set of guidelines instead of a concise enumeration of specific words and actions deemed acceptable or forbidden. The code was written in a list format, and organized by categories like “Crimes Against the Law”, “Sex”, “Vulgarity”, “Costume”, “Religion”, “National Feelings” and others. All of the limitations put forth within the code were aimed at appeasing the so-called average American by restoring “decency to the movies” according to “Judeo-Christian morality” and silencing the vast media and public criticism of the industry's scandalous behavior.

The question then is why would the movie studios be interested in regulating themselves, therein limiting what ultimately they allow themselves to say and do? There are two basic answers to this question. The first is the above-mentioned, and globally accepted importance placed on public relations to stimulate profit. The second and significantly more important reason is the fear of government involvement. By 1922, when Hays was appointed, there were already six states with their own forms of censorship boards . These boards became relatively powerful within their respective regions because they all called for absolute freedom to cut, edit or ban films at their own digression. There were further local boards that exercised comparable control. The problem with these individual boards is that the movie studios were consequently held responsible for distributing differently edited prints and film reels to the various regions in the country, a highly cost - inefficient endeavor. In fact, by 1932 there were estimates that “50 percent of the nation and 60 percent of potential revenues were affected by local censors” . Furthermore, this phenomenon was not stagnant and the “owners of Hollywood” saw the necessity to put a stop to these financial losses.

According to Richard Heffner - the former Ratings Board chairman - the studio owner thought that “if there weren't ratings and there was censorship, there would be fifty different censor boards” , presumably one in every state. Then it was decidedly out of self-interest, both monetary and political, that the industry pushed for self-imposed regulation, therein moving government involvement out of any significant sphere of influence. The heads of the industry, even as early as the twenties and thirties, were highly successful in creating a system (and later on, a series of systems) in which they controlled every aspect of production, post-production and distribution.

Jack Valenti and The Search for More Power

The studios and filmmakers continued to follow Hays' Motion Picture Moral Code tranquilly until, in the forties and fifties, things began to change. Films appeared that would push the boundaries of what was acceptable and for the first time the Production Code Administration (PCA) was entering troubled waters.

The reasons for this transition are many and far reaching. One was the “revolution in communications that occurred between 1945 and 1968” . With technological advancements that made film and sound recording equipment more affordable and portable, a larger pool of people were capable of making movies. This period interestingly marked the beginning of Independent filmmaking in any significant sense of the term. Mainly however, the change had to do with the industry's will to remain zeitgeist: “ it was clear that for Hollywood not to look hopelessly antiquated, they were going to' have to figure out a new way to bring reality into the movies” . Films like, The Moon is Blue (1952) and Crime Wave (1954) which featured new and shocking language as well as increasingly prevalent sexual references and the arrival of the antihero into American fiction, were rapidly applying pressure to the system, which had -for political and marketing reasons - changed its name to the MPAA in the late nineteen sixties . It was clear that the studios were going to have to change their ways despite the perfectly controlled system in which they so comfortably operated.

In 1966 , the transformation became apparent, when Jack Valenti replaced Hays' successor, Eric Johnston as the new president of the MPAA. The son of a deeply religious clerk at the county tax office in his hometown of Houston, and grandson of Italian immigrants, Valenti used his tremendous likeability and keen political eye to graduate from Harvard business school and eventually become President Lyndon B. Johnson's special assistant between 1963 and 1966. His familiarity with high-ranking political circles in Washington as well as his reputation for going about his work with “a shrewdly underplayed savvy” is what initially attracted the heads of studio to him. As Richard Heffner, who worked closely with Valenti put it “He came to serve their interest. He came as their lobbyist” .

At the heart of the new struggle for Valenti and his MPAA, or so it appeared, was the simple fact that the Hays Code had become dated. What was considered socially acceptable language and film content had evolved since 1930 but the code had not. His ultimate goal was to strike a balance: Valenti felt, initially, that he did not want to limit the artist's freedom but that he had to instate some kind of policing service to adhere to social and governmental pressures. He quickly changed his tune however, proclaiming at a press conference in the late nineteen sixties that “No film can ever survive the brazen hiss of public scorn,” . Valenti eventually did what he thought was best for his employers.

He finished by creating the Motion Picture Rating System of 1968. There were originally four ratings: G (Suggested For General Audiences), M (Suggested For Mature Audiences), R (Restricted Persons Under 16 Not Admitted Unless Accompanied by Parents or Adult Guardians) and X (Persons Under 16 Not Admitted) . Although he had initially been opposed to a rating system, particularly one based on age, Valenti publicly sang the praises of his new policy as a near perfect balance, resolving all of the quarries at hand . He would please his critics all the while allowing the industry to evolve with the times.

The simple problem of remaining current however does not fully encapsulate the issue that pushed Valenti to create this system. Much like in the thirties, there was growing interest within every level of society (the viewers, local and federal government) to instate some form of a rating system even if - need be - by the government: “Senator Margaret Chase Smith pushed for a movie classification system on the national level” and “In Dallas, a film classification board, the first of its kind in the United States attempted to use viewer age as the criterion for rating the appropriateness of films” . Despite fairly unanimous opposition to strong government involvement of any sort, Valenti feared that the brewing debate over the ratings would result in the studios' loss of power and/or money, particularly in the area of distribution . So once again the MPAA updated their system by adhering to the demands of government and population to avoid the loss of money and influence. Valenti's next hurdle however would not be so easily dealt with or manipulated.

Unions, McCarthy and The Blacklist

In the forties there were two large labor strikes. The first was the Disney strike of 1941. The workers, angered by the empty promises of profit sharing on Snow White and insulted by various legal maneuvers by Disney lawyers, began a strike on May 29 . The Strike lasted five weeks after which the labor won a clear victory in that the negotiations mediator, sent by president Franklin Delano Roosevelt sided with the Union on “nearly every issue” .

The second and substantially more violent was the Warner Brothers strike, which began in March of 1945. In the years preceding the strike, the Set Decorators had been floating between several official unions and representation organizations. “In 1937 seventy-seven Set Decorators broke away from the IATSE to form their own association, the Society of Motion Picture Interior Decorators (SMPID,) and negotiated an independent contract with the Producers”. Briefly, after a long and diluted series of affiliations and structural changes within the set decorators' unionization, the dispute stemmed from the Producers' unwillingness to recognize Union Local 1420 as the set decorators' official bargaining agent in 1945. When the studios then sought to solve the problem by finding new painters and carpenters, things took a turn for the worst: “On October 5th, some 300 strikers gather at Warner Bros. main gate at 4 A.M. on a typically warm day during this pivotal month. Shortly thereafter, strikebreakers, Chicago goons and county police attacked. They were armed with chains, bolts, hammers, six inch pipes, brass knuckles, wooden mallets and battery cables. The county sheriffs marched two and three abreast, steel-helmeted and reinforced with tear gas masks, and night sticks. Some carried 30-30 Garrand rifles and two were weighted down with an arsenal of tear gas bombs,” . Needless to say, the situation was grim for all the parties involved, and the political headway that the studios had made with the improvement of the ratings system was beginning to dissipate.

During all of this, the studios had been losing both money and power at a previously unparalleled rate. Over the next ten years, the increasing severity and frequency of the strikes was incredibly costly for the producers and had substantially increased the pull unions had over the studios' actions. They needed to put an end to the struggle and to the labor force's push for power. Luckily for Richard Heffner's “owners of Hollywood” and their new and improved ratings board, a little known senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy, was about to change the climate in which artistic freedom existed in American domestic politics.

The heads of studios found their solution at the heart of the McCarthyist movement. Roughly between the late nineteen forties and late nineteen fifties , Senator McCarthy was able to instill a fear of communist infiltration into the American populous. Suspected persecutors were pursued, interrogated and tried accordingly. Luckily for the film producers, their struggle with the unions was happening at the same time.

The key then for the studios was to make the involvement within a union a dangerous act. By aligning the unions and their participants with communism by way of association with McCarthy, the studios were able to take advantage of the American travesty that was about to unfold. The Hollywood Blacklist and McCarthyism are not however indistinct events: “People generally associate [the blacklist] with McCarthyism. Well, it had nothing to do with McCarthy at all.” “Once the MPAA got on board, the MPAA did it all themselves” .

The unions witnessed the appearance of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which inquired into possible communist penetration of the Hollywood film industry. They therein associated being in a Hollywood union with being a communist. For example, a typical question asked to artists during the hearings was: “are you a member of the communist party and have you ever held any position in a Screen Writer's Guild?” . Asking the two questions together inherently implies that there is a connection between the two and therefore makes saying yes to either one, a dangerous act.

A further oft-overlooked point concerning this period is the fact that the actual Blacklist itself had nothing to do with the government. It was decided upon and enforced by the same people, who strived to evade government involvement in the rating system, who pay the bills for Jack Valenti and the MPAA, and who (most pertinently) sought to dislodge the power of the labor unions in Hollywood. Once again, the Heads of the major movie studios' keen ability to resourcefully manipulate political circumstances was on full display in this period.

Political Structure and The Importance of Money

Over the course of this examination of the MPAA's history, it has become clear how such an organization came to power, and to some extent how and for what reasons it exerts such a power. It is, to this point however, unclear exactly how a seemingly simple rating given to a film can truly affect the greater ideals of artistic freedom, especially in a society such as this one that places so much value on freedom of speech. Jack Valenti defends his system in saying that “if you make a movie that a lot of people want to see, no rating will hurt you. If you make a movie that few people want to see, no rating will help you,” . There are several facts in defense of the MPAA's rating system that must be taken into account. First of all, no filmmaker is required to accept the rating given to his or her film by the CARA. Furthermore, if an artist feels that their project has been misevaluated, there is an elaborate appeal system into which they may enter.

It is particularly when approaching the NC-17 rating that things become less cut and dry. Box office analyst, Paul Dergarabedian explains the situation as follows: “ The difference between an NC-17 and an R rating could […] mean the difference on some films maybe even tens of millions of dollars, because it definitely limits your ability to market the film. If you are limited on your ability to market a film, people […] are not going to know to even go to the theatre to see that movie” . In other words, if an artist receives an NC-17 rating on a film, or refuses to take the rating, they are virtually guaranteed a loss of money on the film, and most major film studios will not even release it. Many studios even provide for contractual agreements with directors that obligate them to produce a sub NC-17 rating .

In that light the ratings board obviously plays a very large role in determining what will and will not be exposed to the American viewers. That power, so long as it is applied equally in all areas, may not be such a travesty. This however is not the case. Take for example, John Waters' 1972, NC-17 rated comedy, Pink Flamingos. Independently produced and financed, the entire film was shot on weekends and cost only twelve thousand dollars to make. The rating was given on the grounds of overly sexually explicit material and “tough content” . That same year, another director released a film containing horrendously graphic depictions of violence and gang activity. Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather was produced by Paramount studios and boasted an estimated six million dollars in production cost , an unheard-of sum of money to spend on a film at the time. The Godfather was rated R despite “startling close-ups, vivid death agony sequences and Technicolor blood spurting everywhere” . The film grossed one hundred and thirty four million dollars , Pink Flamingos made a fraction of that. This is only one example of the MPAA's consistently recurrent disservice to the independent filmmaker.

Finally then, one must ask, what could possibly account for this difference in treatment? Why would the MPAA care about one film more than any other? The answer, not surprisingly, is a simple question of dollars and cents and can be traced quite easily back to the funding of the organization. There are six companies that pay for the MPAA to exist. They are Warner Brothers, Universal Studios, Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Sony Pictures. Interestingly, these six studios control ninety five percent of the American film business. So then, the independent filmmaker would be ridiculously illogical to think that they were being treated equally, seeing as ninety five percent of all films that the MPAA rates, are made with the same money that enables their existence. The seeding of the injustice however goes far deeper than simply the movie studios. Each of those six production companies are owned by larger media conglomerates: Time Warner, General Electric, The Walt Disney Company, Viacom, NewsCorp and Sony, who in turn control ninety percent of all forms of media in the united states. There is no objective nature to the MPAA's justice, nor - in light of the above - should this be a surprise .

The MPAA then, is the result of a series of self-created and policed policies, anti-communist pursuits and counter government actions. The result is a seemingly indestructible organization, which surpasses the responsibility of guiding parental decision making in an effort, once again, to maximize profit.

Conclusion

Most recently in 2005, writer and director Ang Lee released - after much editing to appease the ratings board - his award winning film, Brokeback Mountain. The movie won three Oscars and 76 other awards world wide, despite its controversial theme involving homosexuality. Lee's newest film, Lust Caution has already won the Venice Film Festival and is pending release in the US. There is however one caveat: he has elected to allow the film's release bearing an NC-17 rating. The question then, is will a bold decision by a foreign director at an opportune moment mark the beginning of a new chapter in the history of American film? Could this be the first step in undermining the rampant censorship in today's film industry, not by changing the censorship organization itself, but in shifting the perception of the society within which that organization functions?

Albert Camus once wrote: “Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others”. So then, we can only hope that for the sake of the continued life of art, Lee will be but the first of a long list of directors to live within entirely self-imposed restraints. And perhaps someday, essays will be written about the causes and consequences of the fall of the MPAA and the dawn of true artistic freedom in America. But for now we must live without such things. For now, such things are still rated NC-17.

 

Everyday the success of this local Nigerian movie industry keeps appreciating for all the good reasons. From the use of VHS tapes in the early nineties to where we are now, churning out movies after movies on VCDs.

Brief History

Some people have said that the story of the Nigerian movie success is spurious as it is said to have started when an importer of VHS tapes due to lack of patronage have decided to experiment with his imported goods. Some people even used the term apocryphal, which is most unfortunate considering the fact that envy is at the back of the minds of users of such term. I was a teenager in the nineties when Mr. Kenneth Nnebue came out towards the end of 1990 or thereabouts with a blockbuster home movie titled: Living In Bondage. He owes the fortune that came with the success story that Nollywood has become today as the third highest earning movie industry in the world after Hollywood and Bollywoood of India.

Nollywood is a story of conquering adversities and life's perfidy with a little less than US$3,000. Even less than this amount could help a movie producer come up with a blockbuster. Of course you and I know that this is unheard of in Hollywood and Bollywood where mega money is expended on the making of movies/thrillers. Why I ask that foreign investors come in is because of the success of Nollywood movies on the African continent. The more of professionalism and higher investments, the more the returns on investments.

Challenges

Nollywood has come to stay with its loose storylines that dwell rich on Satanism, adversity, women's right, politics, and cultism etcetera. The stories are purely told in the form of normal African folktale plot that leaves nothing to suspense. This is where we need help. This is where we begin to see the loopholes in our storylines and start comparing with the well-established movie industries. There have been cases of terrible and poor adaptation of blockbuster movies from other industries, which have left professionals thoroughly embarrassed. We lack the digital technology to give us a break at least so that Nollywood will take its place worldwide. Poor script writing and lack of sophisticated film technology which all require training and financial assistance are areas I call on sister movie industries' practitioners to come in and help us take Nollywood to the next level.

There are so many websites that provide the latest information on upcoming movies. People generally enjoy watching movies in theaters on a big screen rather than watching it at home on a small screen.

The film industry has become very lucrative and recently movie stars have been in great demand. People are crazy about movie stars and some people also have stars as their idols. Every movie is advertised before its release to generate publicity and hype so that it can attract large crowd in theatres.

Newspapers also rate movies and describe their opinion about the movie, the cast and the director. Movies which do go business and are successful at the box office are declared as hits. This generates publicity for the star cast of the movie and the other members like the director, script writer, lyricist, music composer, singer etc.

However, some films perform terribly bad at the box office and are declared as flops. In such cases, the producer who finances the movie can even go bankrupt. Overall the movie industry globally has been doing well and people do not even get the tickets for some movies during the early week of its release.

With the advent of the cable industry and CDs and DVD’s this industry is getting a great boom and has been well accepted by people.