MOTION PICTURE ASSN.: RATERS OF THE LOST ART?

Censor n. An official with the power to examine publications, movies, television programs, etc. and to remove or prohibit anything considered obscene, libelous, politically objectionable, etc.

censorship n. The act or a system of censoring.

Censorship is alive and sick in America. It is called the motion picture ratings system, and with almost no opposition or discouragement, it is deciding what we, as moviegoers, will be allowed to see.

The movie ratings system, now 19 and old enough to know better, calls itself a voluntary, self-regulating guide designed for the sole purpose of advising parents on film content. In the vast majority of cases, it is as harmless as the alphabet soup it resembles. It has no legal status, and of its two restrictive ratings--R and X--one is routinely unenforced and the other is extinct.

Richard Heffner, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) film ratings board, claims allegiance to Jeffersonian principles of free speech, and defends the self-applicable X rating (anybody can apply an X to any movie) as an attempt to preserve freedoms even for the most audacious abusers. In reality, the ratings have gone a step further . . . and two steps back.

The system has become a useful tool for pornographers, who have taken the X, multiplied it by three (Triple X-rated!!! Really filthy!!!), and run it up the marquee. At the same time, the X has become the bane of the serious film makers’ existence. It is pertinent that we can catch an unexpurgated double bill of “Desperate Women” and “Sex Toys” this weekend, but Alan Parker’s “Angel Heart” is opening today, minus 10 seconds worth of film that the ratings board found too offensive for an R.

Heffner, a historian and Rutgers communications professor, is passionate in his defense of the ratings system and adamant in his belief that his board does not practice censorship. In a telephone conversation this week, he angrily denied Parker’s accusations that the board wouldn’t specify what they objected to in “Angel Heart,” and he said that certain critics and writers--including this one--were giving the board a bum rap.

Judging by the mail response to two recent columns I wrote on “Angel Heart,” Heffner is not alone. Most of the letters echoed the opinion of Madeline Baker of Whittier, who said “Censorship is a wonderful thing. Perhaps if we had more of it, we would see more good worthwhile movies and less trash.”

“If it’s pornography that interests you,” wrote Christine Holfcroft of Brentwood, “I suggest a filmic red light district.”

“Film makers have always exploited the gullible into taking their clothes off for such reasons as ‘artistic’ and ‘essential to the plot,’ ” said Mona Ackerman, of Los Angeles. “What phony hypocrisy!”

Setting aside the support for censorship as an ideal, the interesting thing about the public response to the “Angel Heart” story is the assumption, by virtually everyone, that the ratings board gave it an X because it contained scenes of pornographic sex. The X rating is not reserved for films of excessive sexual content, but because hardcore pornographers have adopted it, that is its implication.

What has caused the temperature to rise among critics is that there is nothing in the original version of “Angel Heart” that hasn’t been seen numerous times in films rated R. The violence is far less graphic than that in dozens of exploitation films certified R each year by the board, the nudity is minimal (and non-genital) and the brief glimpse of simulated sex was no more explicit than what we have seen in other R-rated films.

“Angel Heart” is a strong film, with uncomfortable themes, and Alan Parker is a gifted broker of moods. It has been suggested that Parker’s mistake was in making the film too well. It was obviously too much for the ratings board.

Early in the current rating system’s history, a few mainstream movies were released with X ratings. “Midnight Cowboy” went out with an X in 1969 and won the Academy Award for best picture. But over the years, the X evolved into a skull and crossbones. Some theater chains, facing suburban competition from porno houses, stopped booking all X-rated movies. Many newspapers and television stations stopped accepting advertising for them.

With those advertising and delivery outlets sealed, the X is commercial suicide for mainstream movies and today, no studio will attempt to release one. In fact, it has become routine for studios to insist in their contracts with film directors that the final cut must emerge from the ratings trial wearing a letter no more damning than an R.

The effect is that a film deemed too strong for an R--measured against the totally subjective standards of Heffner and his raters-- must be edited until it slips below that imaginary line over which one steps on his way to an X.

So, while hard-core sex films--made and rated outside the purview of the rating board--continue to moan and groan all the way to the bank, a few serious films get the cleaver.

I don’t believe that either Heffner or his boss, MPAA president Jack Valenti, enjoy the media flash-fires that accompany these occasional lapses in the system. But their contention that it is the distributors, and not the board members, who ultimately decide whether a film is released or not is bureaucratic buck-passing. They know that no studio will release an X-rated movie and that when the board affixes an X, it is forcing changes.

Censorship, ipso facto.

Over the years, many critics of the ratings system have suggested that the X be changed to an A, which would remove the pornographic stigma and presumably allow distributors to book and advertise mainstream movies targeted for adult audiences. (Often forgotten in the fading cycle of sci-fi epics and slob comedies is that the medium can be used for themes of interest mostly to educated adults.)

Valenti says that changing X to A wouldn’t alleviate the problem because it would still be self-applicable (the most severe rating is not copyrighted) and that pornographers would simply switch with them. It’s an assumption that the sex-film people say is ridiculous.

“The X is our stock in trade, we’ve spent 20 years establishing it,” said David Friedman, chairman of the Adult Film and Video Assn. “The X says what we’re selling and people know what they’re buying. We would definitely not use the A.”

If Valenti wants to preserve the X as an open-ended rating, fine. Why not draft an A, as an additional rating sandwiched between the R and the X? That idea is being proposed by film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert in a special half-hour television show devoted to the ratings system this weekend (Channel 7, Saturday at 1 p.m., Sunday at 5 p.m.).

“In pragmatic terms, the industry is only making movies that can be seen by people under 17,” Ebert said, before Wednesday’s taping of “Siskel and Ebert and the Movies.” “In theory, the MPAA doesn’t believe any film can be made by a reputable director that cannot be seen by anyone under 17.”

Ebert said that he and Siskel will be showing clips from other benchmark films in ratings history and comparing the content of “Angel Heart” to films that were R-rated. Both of the Chicago critics said they thought the original version of “Angel Heart” should have been rated R.

“I have seen R-rated films with content far more extreme and potentially disturbing to teen-agers than ‘Angel Heart,’ ” Ebert said. “In ‘Nightmare on Elm Street 3,’ there’s a scene where a nurse lures a mentally disturbed teen-ager into a room, takes off her clothes and seduces him, then ties him to the bed with a human tongue. He is then suspended over fires of hell and spirals down into them screaming.

“Gee, that’s pretty strong stuff. ‘Elm Street’ is obviously aimed at teen-agers and it has an R rating. If that’s an R, why isn’t ‘Angel Heart?’ ”

Valenti has consistently been opposed to changing the rating system, on the grounds that change merely promotes change. The only significant change in the system since 1968 has been the addition of PG-13 in 1984. It is an ineffectual rating (it is not enforced) that was used by the industry as a fire extinguisher to put out the flames lapping at Steven Spielberg’s heels when the abundantly violent “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” reached theaters waving a PG.

If it’s the number of categories that Valenti is concerned with, why not dump the G (for general audiences) to make room for an A? The G is also the commercial kiss of death for films aiming at a wide audience, and is barely seen these days on anything other than a Care Bears movie or a Disney classic.

Today’s release of the R-rated version of “Angel Heart” is not going to end the controversy over the X rating. Alan Parker is the big loser in this instance, but those of us who can endure and enjoy an occasional jolt in a theater seat are losers, too.

Tri-Star Pictures is the big winner. A movie that figured to be a tough sell has suddenly sold itself, with a little help from its enemies.

It would be unrealistic to expect Valenti, Heffner, et al. to respond to the current debate with a new rating, but if we read the signposts correctly, they will have to address it eventually. In the last year, Hollywood has discovered that there is big money to be made from adult moviegoers. The population curve is shifting and kids can no longer be expected to carry everyone into the black.

As more and more adult-theme films get made (and seriously, Madeline, that does not mean pornographic films), the ratings board is going to be assessing more and more of these kinds of movies. The ratings system was designed to help parents protect their children from harmful material, but it has evolved into a moral guardian for adults, too.

If we were talking about books, or paintings, or sculptures, the intelligentsia would not tolerate the prosaic touch of the ratings board. But these are only movies, and the fact that so few people--in or out of the creative community--seem to care that the medium is subject to censorship merely encourages it to continue.