New and Improved MPAA Ratings

The MPAA is the bête noire of filmmakers and goers alike, for it is the final arbiter of what makes it onto the big screen and into our eyeballs. The organization was created in response to a turn-of-the-century Hollywood getting uppity about showing real life instead of reel life. An industry no longer willing to portray husbands and wives having separate beds, battle veterans saying "gosh darn it" when their buddies explode, or boxcar vagrants dressing in a coat and tie. Technicolor existence was emerging butterfly-like from the Politburo-style graywash of what had come before. Somebody had to push back against the immorality of reality, lest the nation's youth take up jazz and burn their draft cards. Thus was the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America born, later re-branded as the Motion Picture Association of America.

---

These days an MPAA ratings logo graces every Hollywood offering, or at least it does if you expect your film to get a wide release. A silent chaperone whose disapproving gaze we all must suffer before enjoying our tawdry spectacle. For its trouble, the MPAA has been frequently taken to task by bloggers and respectable critics alike. Although submission to the rating process is ostensibly voluntary, the tacit complicity of distributors has established the MPAA as a de-facto censor. As such, critics claim, the organization is at best stifling creativity and at worst subverting the First Amendment.

I suppose there is food for thought in this (although one can't help but wonder what Thomas Jefferson would make of Human Centipede). Yet, if the intent of the MPAA was to serve as a entertainment purity ring, they have failed spectacularly. In the five score years of the MPAA's tenure, America has become a culture largely of, by, and for teenage boys. Heutzutage, there is no depravity so depraved that it cannot be found in some dank cinema, scrambled cable channel, or incognito Netflix queue. (Note to Democrats: When the olds pine for the "good old days," this is what they are voting for.) The MPAA has been about as effective at keeping American debauchery away from impressionable minds as the Berlin Wall.

Not that I'm complaining (LabKitty's formative years were a steady stream of Troma and David Cronenberg). However, one must evolve or die, Kramer observed and the MPAA is no exception. The organization has made occasional changes in the past -- punctuated equilibrium, we might say (a little joke there for the TAs) -- largely in the guise of new rating categories. The NC-17 was created to differentiate arty mature films from base X-rated raincoat fare. More famously, the PG-13 emerged in response to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Apparently parents were fine with Spielberg chopping up Nazis with airplane propellers and melting their faces with Jesus rays, but monkey brain eating crossed a line. (Ironically, the rating has since become a box office sweet spot, a irresistible siren luring youngsters to the cineplex for their lurid thrill fix, or at least those who don't have broadband.)

New rating categories are nothing new, is my point. Precedence, the legals say, which gives us license to invent our own. We have a soapbox with which to inform and educate the public -- why waste that opportunity telling the audience what they already know? Nobody goes into A Serbian Film or I Spit on your Grave expecting Muppets. And, thankfully, these films do not feature Muppets, although I would pay good money to see that. However, too many directors are happy to spring something entirely unexpected upon the unsuspecting viewer. Something you'll be explaining to a therapist for years to come. Here is an opportunity for the MPAA to shine.

Let me illustrate with Black Swan, the film that planted the thought seed of this idea in my fertile mind-soil. Perhaps you, too, experienced the LabKitty Black Swan experience. I shall let the rating speak for itself:

Ne pas? The Black Swan Incident, as we now refer to it at Thanksgiving dinner if we speak of it at all, is a perfect case study to illustrate how a proper ratings label would protect and serve the movie-going public. Imagine: You and mom pick out good seats. Put the cell phones in airplane mode. Chow some popcorn, take the trivia quizzes. The houselights dim. Then, Bam! This film rated lambda. Uh, I think I left the iron on. Guess we'll just have to catch this on cable. Crisis averted.

And so on that note, LabKitty gives you a selection of new and improved MPAA ratings. Some of the ratings are generally applicable, while others, like the lambda, were inspired by a specific film. I've identified a few prime offenders in the alt-text so you can turn this into a sort of quiz game with your friends, assuming you have those and they're into that. However, what's important is we keep the MPAA relevant in a changing challenging world. And if they're able to keep the sanity from being burned out of our head holes the next time some crafty auteur decides to put the scar in Oscar, then I say it's time and money well spent.

New and Improved MPAA Ratings
(c) 2015, LabKitty Global Media Empire