It’s Time to Eliminate the Present Movie Rating System

Since its inception, I have fought against the rating system. I have felt it to be a ploy to ward off federal legislation, but in point of fact, I believe it has brought the motion picture industry closer to federal regulation than it ever was.

Personally, I have nothing against sex or violence in any film for anyone--provided that it not be gratuitous. When it is, it should be castigated for what it is--bad filmmaking. I believe in the American people’s ability to discern for themselves.

These two paragraphs were the opening ones I wrote for the op ed page of the Los Angeles Times on July 13, 1975. Fifteen years after the article, I continue to feel the same way.

Indeed, from its inception in 1968, I was the first producer of record to decry the rating system. I did so in spite of the fact that I was also the first producer to be commended in a joint session of Congress for my films; in spite of the fact that all of my films have been commended by such groups as the Catholic Film Office, the Protestant Film Commission, Morality in Media, the National Education Assn. and Parents magazine. I state this not out of a self-congratulatory sense, but rather to set the record straight; my filmic history has always been one wherein I have decried gratuitous sex and violence. Nevertheless, I will still defend anyone’s right to make any film that he or she wishes to make.

The Motion Picture Assn. of America and the Classification and Rating Administration have always stated that the rating system is “cautionary or advisory.” This rationale is simply word playing. A tree is a tree is a tree; and censorship, no matter what it’s called, is still censorship.

For Richard D. Heffner, chairman of the motion picture’s Classification and Rating Administration (“Guidance to Parents, Not Profits, Governs Movie Rating System,” July 2) to say that a director “signs away his creative autonomy” when he agrees to deliver an R-rated picture to a studio merely skirts the issue.

As Heffner well knows, most contracts between independent producing companies and MPAA members (for this read primarily the major studios) demand that certain ratings be delivered with the final cut of the picture--sometimes a G, sometimes a PG, sometimes an R, but most assuredly no X’s!

A director must direct in order to live. An actor must act in order to live. A writer must write in order to live. They do not happily sign away their creative autonomy; rather, they are put into a bind where they must do so or not work. The position is not unlike the present disgrace at the National Endowment for the Arts wherein the artist’s work, and therefore his or her income, must fall within their guidelines.

When Heffner takes on the fourth estate along with the creative community, he muddies the waters even further. He would prefer that filmmakers not protest ratings decisions and that the media not bother to report on their protests, i.e.: “It s what the media and particularly the community of critics . . . do to obfuscate . . . meaning.” Are filmmakers to remain quiet? Are they wrong to question? Or is it possible that the emperor is indeed naked?

What does Heffner make of a New York Times editorial that questioned the code and of L.A. Times Arts Editor Charles Champlin (June 17, “Dropping the X”) raising “a larger question (of) whether the industry’s voluntary self-policing in the form of ratings is still necessary”?

Other issues that pertain to the rating code also need to be looked at seriously. CARA and Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA, claim that the code is a cautionary device for parents, and that is the extent of it. In truth, that is not the case, for if a film ends ends up with an X rating, the impact will be felt by adults as well. Virtually no distributor will take it on, and virtually no theater will play it. This, of course, gets into a constitutional and First Amendment prior restraint issue, as it denies not only the child but also an adult access.

The ratings--G, PG, PG-13, R and X have all taken lives of their own. It is possible to make a G-rated film of content--I would like to feel that the G-rated “Sounder” was such a film--yet in today’s market, the moviegoer equates the G with pap and suet. Producers avoid it like the plague, going so far as inserting a scene to get a PG. While the current X rating has come to signify pornography, I believe that it is possible to make a film of content that, under the present code, could receive an X!

The code’s original intent to ward off federal state and local censorship boards was worthy and understandable, yet, I felt it was a desperate attempt and did not pierce the main issue. That issue is encompassed in the First Amendment. My own belief is that the industry would have been far better off to fight the federal state and local boards--not to mention what are now an ever-increasing group of watchdog societies that wish to model our country in their image--to fight the issue in the courts as a First Amendment issue. Anything else puts off the inevitability. Those who wish to tell us what to see and what not to see will always be with us. As long as the industry continues to be its own judge and jury, it will continue to be a target.

It is interesting to note that in spite of the code and its 22 years of existence, motion pictures today have, as the New York Times suggested, “a level of content--not to mention obligatory sex scenes and freewheeling language that has soared, along with the understandable concerns of parents and monitoring groups.”

Is there any question that in those 22 years our screens have become more violent? For the directors of the code to simply state, “Well, we warned you with our ratings” is to play a sham game--caveat emptor--with the public.

It is time that we ask: What has the code succeeded in doing? Is it still viable in 1990, if indeed it ever was? There are those who would say that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. I, for one, believe that the water is no longer healing--indeed it has become fetid.

See letters to Counterpunch, F6.