Ratings Board an Affront to First Amendment

Every time it looks as though we might finally get a movie with honestly explicit sex scenes, the prudes comprising the Motion Picture Assn. of America rating board step right in to castrate it. This is the case with “Sliver” (“Paramount’s ‘Sliver’ Loses Some Steam and Finally Gets an R Rating,” Calendar, May 6). One source was quoted as saying that, among other things, the film was having its problems with the ratings board because “the MPAA perceives as unconventional” a lovemaking scene not done missionary style.

So what if they do? And who are they to say what’s unconventional?

These are 10 anonymous men and women--all parents or grandparents--who are paid to sit in visual judgment to determine if a given movie is suitable entertainment for children. They are not paid to censor content or pass moral judgment for an intended adult audience or keep visual content in lock-step conformity--and yet they do.

Furthermore, comparing available figures with the MPAA payment scale, Paramount paid $13,000 for “Sliver’s” rating because the movie cost $40 million.

That’s right. The studios fork over thousands of dollars to the MPAA (usually $6,000 to $15,000 per picture depending on negative cost, the studio’s revenues for the previous year and its financial involvement with each movie) for the privilege of being told by the rating board to “tone down”--that is, censor--their movies to make them acceptable to these 10 people and the MPAA appeals board, had Paramount decided to fight the ratings.

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Why do the studios continue to put up with this scam, this affront to free enterprise and the First Amendment? In part, at least, they do it to avoid federal or state attempts at censorship (which, in reality, would violate the First Amendment).

Even worse, why does the moviegoing public continue to put up with this jury of 10 dictating mass cinematic tastes? After all, the ratings are not law, never have been and can’t be because of the First Amendment.

The board’s double standards are blatant. Explicit acts of nonstop murder are acceptable in an R movie, but explicit sex acts are not. All kinds of female nudity is OK, but male frontal nudity is not--”The Crying Game” being a rare exception to that taboo.

MPAA head Jack Valenti has said that if a moviegoer is over 17, the rating board’s judgments do not affect what that moviegoer sees. That’s not true. Of course, they affect what we see or every movie with sex scenes of any kind would automatically be rated R (allowing those under 17 to be admitted with a parent or guardian) rather than NC-17 (which would ban anyone under 17). So movie makers go out of their way to get that R rating, even if it does affect what everyone sees.

I have a simple if radical solution to these problems: Disband the rating board, let sexual content be unfettered and compel the studios by law to self-rate movie ads for sex, violence and language. We would thus make the studios responsible for information on the one hand, while making parents and adult guardians responsible for what their children see on the other. That would save the studios money and finally give us the right to see what movie makers want to put on the screen.