A Rational Look at an Irrational System

For the last 10 years, critics have been saying that any rational person who takes a serious look at the movie rating system will see it for the sham it has become. On Thursday, a rational New York judge named Charles E. Ramos did just that.

“The present system of rating motion pictures is an effective form of censorship,” Ramos wrote in a 15-page opinion announcing his decision in a suit brought against the Motion Picture Assn. of America by Miramax, the distributor of Pedro Almodovar’s X-rated “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” “It is censorship from within the industry rather than imposed from without, but censorship nevertheless.”

Ramos’ harsh indictment of the rating system seems even harsher considering that he ruled in the MPAA’s favor. The judge ruled that because Miramax failed to prove that the adults-only X rating had been given to the film capriciously and because the petition asked for a rating--the less restrictive R--that even their own testimony suggested was inappropriate, there was no case.

In direct and sometimes angry tones, Ramos lashed out at the rating system, calling it a “marketing tool” rather than a system devised for the well-being of children. He accused it of allowing filmmakers to absorb “huge profits pandering to the appetite” for certain kinds of films “while neglecting the welfare of children,” and ultimately urged the MPAA to revise the system or abandon it.

“This Court . . . .concludes that the rating system’s categories have been fashioned by the motion picture industry to create the illusion of concern for children, imposing censorship, yet all the while facilitating the marketing of exploitive and violent films with an industry seal of approval.”

Strong stuff, and it put MPAA President Jack Valenti in a fighting mood Friday.

“The judge made the right decision in the case, but when he got into the rating system, he was barren of any knowledge about it,” Valenti said from his Washington office. “He presented no evidence for his charges, no data. . . . If you make a claim, shouldn’t you have some supportive evidence for it? (The judge) defecates in the middle of the table and walks away to leave somebody else to clean up the mess.”

You gotta love Jack Valenti. He can leap from Socrates to scatology in a single bound, and--when his duties call for it--he can cover about the same distance in logic. He is smart, passionate, well-prepared and a brilliant orator; in the 24 years he has headed the MPAA, he has given his employer more bang for the buck than Rambo.

When Valenti framed the rating system in 1968, he created an extraordinary machine, a vehicle that would allow filmmakers complete freedom while defusing the power of church and community censors. If pornographers hadn’t come along to use the non-copyrighted X, the machine would still be rolling along without serious problems.

If the rating system were a car, the porno heist of the X would be a flat tire, and all Valenti would need to do to get it back to speed would be to change the tire--give the adults-only rating any designation but X (A for Adults and NC for No Children have been suggested). But instead, he’s planted his feet, using an annual survey of parental support for the overall system as a mandate to keep the status quo, flat tire and all.

On Friday, Valenti reiterated that the system was designed to provide cautionary labels that would help parents decide which films are OK for their children to see. Valenti accuses Ramos of shooting from the hip without knowing the facts, but the only fact Valenti cites for not revising the system is the annual survey.

Valenti is outraged at those who say his defense of the system on the grounds of popular support lumps him in with bluenoses who would limit creative expression wherever a majority of Americans find it offensive.

“That’s about as perverse a description as ever I’ve heard,” Valenti said. “I’ve been an implacable foe of censorship. I have kept government out of our business.”

Ramos saw through the argument that the rating system is for parents’ guidance only and said the MPAA has created both a system of censorship and “an illusion of concern for children.” He said the economic impact on films that fail to get certain ratings is “clear and severe” and warned that more suits may be inevitable if the MPAA doesn’t revise the system.

The judge did make one mistake and raised one subject that even opponents of the current system see as a can of potentially tangled worms.

In saying that producers can withdraw from the rating process and release their films unrated, Ramos was wrong. The major studios that make up the MPAA are obligated by their charter to carry MPAA ratings on each of their films, and that means the producers (and directors) of most films released in the United States have no choice.

Ramos’ suggestion that the rating board be made up of professionals from fields of medicine, child psychiatry and child care would invite a snarl of censorship that would gridlock the entire film industry.

Valenti is right in saying none of these cases belongs in court. Ratings disputes should be settled within the film industry itself. But the inequities that have evolved in a system that puts its entire stock in seven laypeople guessing what more than 50% of American parents would do in their shoes has led to a situation that should not be acceptable to either filmmakers or anyone who favors free expression.

The steadfast refusal of Valenti and the MPAA to make the most minor change--in an hour they could solve the adults-only problem by replacing the X--has left America as one of the only countries in the Western World where non-pornographic films intended for adult audiences are virtually proscribed.

Valenti said Ramos’ opinions have not swayed him and there will be no change in the rating system. “I am feeling no pressure from anybody on this,” he said. “This system is not for producers, or filmmakers, or studios or critics. It’s for parents of children under 13. And in the last survey, 73% of them said they find the system very to fairly useful.”

On that flimsy evidence, the defense rests.