‘Harlem’ Trailer Ignites a New Ratings Rage : Movies: Miramax reclaims the spotlight--for now--saying the rulings on two of its previews proves the Motion Picture board is out to punish the company.

In the trailer for Bill Duke’s upcoming “A Rage in Harlem,” there is a scene where a mugger pulls a knife on a priest and the priest responds by drawing a pistol out of his hollow Bible and poking it in the stunned mugger’s face.

Without seeing the movie, it’s obvious that the scene is comic; indeed, it’s clear that the movie is some sort of grand farce. Later in the trailer, we see a man escaping a jam by holding a gun to a dog’s head.

But because the Motion Picture Assn. of America has it written into its ratings guidelines that previews acceptable for showing before general audiences cannot include scenes where guns and potential victims appear together, that trailer has been “red-banded.”

There are only two ratings for movie trailers--those approved for everyone to see, the “green-banded,” and those for audiences watching movies rated R or NC-17, the red-banded. If Miramax insists on that scene with the priest and the gun, the MPAA says the “Rage” trailer must be restricted.

Now, there’s a rage in TriBeCa, some 70 blocks south of Harlem, where Miramax Films executives are squawking that the MPAA ruling on that preview, and on another for a coming Madonna documentary, are evidence that MPAA President Jack Valenti is out to punish them for the court battles Miramax waged last year over X ratings given to “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” and “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.”

Harvey Weinstein, one of the Miramax principals, provided a colorful quote that would fit nicely here, but like the “Rage in Harlem” trailer, it’s restricted.

“He’s killing us,” Weinstein added, plaintively.

Well, the theme of this ratings controversy is that ratings controversies aren’t what they used to be. Miramax deserved the respect and goodwill it earned among critics and filmmakers last year by taking the MPAA on in court and smoothing the way for the eventual abandonment of the X rating. But at the same time, the small independent distributor became addicted to the publicity those battles generated and it’s proving a tough habit to kick.

The truth is that the questionable scene in “A Rage in Harlem” is of no consequence to the overall impact of the preview. In fact, parents of small children may find the sexual content more discomforting. The movie hasn’t been officially rated yet, but judging by the trailer itself, the picture ought to weigh in with at least a PG-13.

The preview for the Madonna movie--”Truth or Dare,” a documentary on the singer’s Blond Ambition Tour--was red-banded because of a scene where Madonna, while plucking petals from a daisy, says “He just wants to (obscenity) me.” The obscenity is bleeped, but, as an MPAA spokeswoman pointed out, it’s an easy one to lip-read.

Even Miramax acknowledges that “Truth or Dare” has no chance of being rated less than R (an NC-17 is even a possibility), so why would they want the trailer shown before general audiences?

“It’s just like TV advertising,” says Miramax’s marketing chief Russell Schwartz. “You want to expose your product before as many people as possible. Maybe some 16-year-old will tell his older brother to see it.”

If you detected a little wink in that statement, consider yourself ratings savvy. The R rating never bars under-17-year-olds. And Madonna’s aggressive vulgarity figures to make “Truth or Dare” a big draw with adolescents.

The lesson in all of this is that the ratings system has been finally neutralized as a major marketing tool for independent films. By doing away with the X, which had evolved into institutionalized censorship, the MPAA threw the ball back in the filmmakers’ court. There is no censorship now; films ranging from “The Little Mermaid” to “Debbie Does Dallas” can be made, rated and marketed--some, albeit, with more difficulty than others.

Looking back, the X rating was vanquished by a phony opponent. For years, it was the small distributors such as Miramax that suffered most from the application of the X. The MPAA signatories, the major studios, were almost always allowed to go farther with content in R-rated movies than the independents on the outside. Only after Miramax and other struggling independents had fought the good fight did Universal Pictures step forward, in an act of almost singular cynicism, to force the ratings change in time to market Philip Kaufman’s “Henry & June.”

Since calling for that change, Universal has not attempted another NC-17 movie. Nor has any other major studio. Nor have many independents. Most of the NC-17s given since last fall have gone to old porn movies re-rated for video.

The only thing that has really changed is that those of us who whined for so many years about the MPAA’s de facto censorship can no longer justify whining. It’s up to filmmakers and distributors to figure out how to sell movies to the audiences for whom they are intended, and generating controversies--especially over issues as trivial as the content of trailers--is no longer an effective option.