MPAA Nixes X, Previews NC-17

The movie industry made Hollywood history the other day. It left on the cutting-room floor the dreaded silver-screen scarlet letter: the controversial X rating. Cheering was heard all over town.

Films with themes too adult for R (Restricted) will no longer be dumped in the X bag--long associated with blue movies. The Motion Picture Assn. of America simply replaced X with a new NC-17 rating--No children under 17 admitted. The change neatly defused challenges to a recent spate of X ratings pinned to movies that, while clearly marketed at adults, hardly deserved to be lumped in the same sordid category as, say, “Debbie Does Dallas.” Indeed, the whole point of the new, copyrighted NC-17 rating is to free movies with strong adult themes from the pornographic stigma of X. Irate producers and directors had begged for an alternative rating so their films could secure a lettered label acceptable to theater owners, who typically do not show unrated or X films.

The MPAA also added a most useful requirement for providing written explanations to R-rated films (under 17 must be accompanied by an adult) to indicate what it is in the film that’s a problem--whether violence, explicit language or sex.

But, for all this, has the MPAA gone far enough?

The criteria for assigning an NC-17 rating is the same as it had been for the now banished X film. One has to wonder whether it leaves the door open for pornography to seek legitimacy by securing a NC-17 rating. No, says Jack Valenti, president of the MPAA, who maintains that the hard-core pornography theater business is “extinct as far as we’re concerned” because it is now largely a video business.

Perhaps. Valenti’s intent is to return the adults-only category back to the days when it embraced films such as “Midnight Cowboy,” “Last Tango in Paris” and “A Clockwork Orange.” A noble attempt. Let’s hope it works.

And let’s hope movie theaters assiduously monitor whom they’re selling tickets to. There may not be many X-rated films in theaters. But there are a lot of teens going to films. Thus the code’s enforcement is key.