Subjective Nature

In 1909, The National Board of Censorship controls the film industry. They censor topics such as prostitution, childbirth and masturbation. In the 1930’s, the film studios hold to a production code to ensure proper content. This self enforced censorship included several tenets such as “evil can’t go unpunished,” ‘no profanity,” “limited scenes of passion,” and “no inter-racial romance.” Filmmakers such as Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock pushed the envelope and challenged the boundaries of what was allowed. Orson Welles’ film “A Touch of evil” broke nearly all the rules, it was violent, the Sheriff (played by Welles) was actually the bad guy, and the lead character was a Mexican detective (played by Charles Heston) married to a white American woman. The production company actually chose to re-edit the film to take out all the bad stuff while Welles was in Europe working on another project. He wrote a long letter explaining how the film should have been properly cut and from that letter the film was reconstructed in 1998. Alfred Hitchcock was infamous for pushing his movies to include dirty things just as he is famous for having cameos in his films. He got in the most trouble with his famous movie “Psycho.” The shower murder scene was extremely provocative because of the violence and nudity (albeit cleverly barely hidden). The film was rejected by the production code, and the studio told Hitchcock to make changes. So he waited a couple months and sent the film back, unchanged. They believed he had made the changes and thanked him for doing so and the movie made it to the theaters intact.

The government once again got involved with the film industry in 1939 when the US Department of Justice tried to break-down vertical integration. This meant that studios could not book a whole block of films together because they would mix a few good films with a bunch of worthless ones and that the studios could not own theaters. The Government struck down unjustly in 1947 when the Un-American Activities committee black listed 100’s of people in Hollywood because they were considered t be communist sympathizers. In 1968 the production code is terminated and is replaced by the current MPAA rating system. The MPAA rating system is a voluntary system that filmmakers comply to. The system is determined by group of families who oversee reviewing and rating the films. This systems works because it does not censor any content or topics, but rather acts a a warning label for viewers. A viewer can know what to expect in a G, PG, PG-13 or R rated feature. It also works because anyone that wants to make money of their films understands that people want to know what something is rated, and if the filmmaker understands his target audience the films content and rating will fit the needs of that audience.

The current system of MPAA rating looks to be the best solution. It is done without government intervention, or any cost to tax-payers. The rating system warns customers of explicit content. The only problems have to with the actual standards used to rate a film. Often filmmakers will include just enough bad language or just one brief shot of nudity to get the R rating for their feature. A movie like this doesn’t really seem to be the same R rating as a movie that has constant cursing and nudity. The problem there isn’t necessarily the rating system though, but rather the subjective nature of people’s tastes and attitudes towards sexual content, graphic violence and foul language.