For the Young, Nightmares in the Dark

Most of us know the six categories of the movie-rating system, and think we know what the system is for. Yet there’s an immediate disparity if you think of that other story-telling form -- books -- where readers and volumes muddle on together, where we take our chances in the dark, as it were, without the help of an outside arbiter to tell us whether they’re too violent or too dirty or inappropriate or profane.

But movies are different. At this moment, “House of Wax” and “Kingdom of Heaven” are being screened with an R rating: No one under 17 can see them unless in the company of a parent or an adult guardian. Theaters more or less try to enforce that code, not because it is the law of the land but because it’s part of a scheme that facilitates the running of the movie business.

Not too many of us remember that that’s how the ratings system came into existence. Fearful that their films would be prosecuted or banned -- especially at the local level -- the studios elected to regulate themselves through the Motion Picture Assn. of America and its then-president, Jack Valenti. They didn’t do it in the public interest so much as in their own interest.

What does an R rating really suggest? First, that just about anyone over 17 can be a legitimate “guardian.” Any child of any age or sensitivity who can find an adult outside a theater -- or who has idiots for parents -- can see “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Psycho,” “Braveheart,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Sin City,” “Kill Bill” or “Reservoir Dogs.”

I am not attacking those films. Even the poorest of them is entertaining; the best are ... pretty good. But not even if he were surrounded by his family, his most responsible friends, his favorite teachers and a company of saints would I want my 10-year-old son to see “The Silence of the Lambs.” You see, company at the movies is no great protection. The light finds the lone imagination in the dark, and pierces it. It can cause nightmares and dread.

Yet in the eyes of many theater managers, it is entirely acceptable to have a 3-year-old watching Dr. Lecter eat his victims, so long as his seat and the seat next to it are paid for. In the end, this really is the role of the R rating: to keep seats filled when people cannot afford (or be bothered) to hire a proper baby-sitter.

In most European countries, this is simply not tolerated. Children are barred from seeing troubling films. Their liberty is restricted -- just as when they are ordered to be educated, not to drive, not to drink, not to take drugs. It is a very welcome admission from society that children have imaginations that are subject to damage.

Yet Americans are unwilling to impose such a restriction; instead, the ratings system depends entirely on the responsibility of a child’s parent, baby-sitter or whatever other adult is available. This is different from the way we treat books. Essentially, we have agreed that books wait to be discovered. And if some unsuspecting infant (of whatever age) finds himself reading something shocking, then he’ll throw it down, or fall asleep.

Of course, this ratings system is a game. Among filmmakers it is common knowledge that members of the ratings board -- the Los Angeles-based group of eight to 13 people who make the ultimate decisions about each movie -- can’t always remember what they saw the last time. So if a filmmaker tells them he’s gone back and changed the scene, the board may accept it. Equally, if a filmmaker knows he’s got a battle coming, he can put eight questionable scenes in, four of which are deliberate sacrificial victims in the ensuing negotiation with the board. In the end, that strategy may save the four scenes the filmmaker really wanted.

Several years ago the ratings board introduced the NC-17 rating, in part because of all the compromising attached to the R. Thus, the NC-17 -- like X before it -- was meant to keep anyone under 17 out of the theater. By implication, this came to mean that any film with such a rating was to be considered “filthy,” or worse.

And that is the final damning of the ratings system.

A civilized society ought to be able to have NC-17 material accessible only to grown-up minds and imaginations. Granted, being 17 is no assurance of a grown-up mind. But NC-17 is now taboo: It restricts the places where a perfectly good film can play and be marketed. Make no mistake what that means, that in the greatest and most enlightened of nations (I know I’ve heard this somewhere) there is effectively no place at the movies (an art or a business that many see as an American invention) for material, talk and scenes requiring adult experience and understanding.

We should guard our young more carefully, if only because that may permit a proper terrain for adults.