Walking into a screening of Shame, an upcoming film labeled with the dreaded NC-17 rating, I felt a tingle of excitement. No, not the excitement a pubescent boy feels before opening his first Playboy, but the excitement that I was about to witness a quality film. Unfortunately, the stigma of pornography that an NC-17 rating carries has left many independent films like Shame at the cruel mercy of the Motion Picture Association of America. And while this palpable, disingenuous form of censorship has let torture-porn movies like the Saw sequels slip through the cracks, many art-house indie films have been unfairly stamped with the NC-17 rating for their graphic, though contextualized, sex scenes.
According to the MPAA, an NC-17 rating means that no one aged 17 or under can be admitted to the film, even under the supervision of an adult. And while the MPAA does not vocally condemn NC-17 movies as pornographic, their 18-year-old required age essentially places these films on the same ground as pornography. But before judging if NC-17 should be so heavily restricted, let’s take a look at some of the movies the MPAA has deemed appropriate for an R rating.
The Saw series represents the archetypal torture movie. Characters are thrown into chambers where they’re forced to cut off their own limbs, rip piercings from their skin, and dig through other people’s intestines. But what’s the difference between this gratuitous gore and the gore in Saving Private Ryan? Well, Private Ryan’s violence is there to portray the horror of war in its most brutal and realistic sense. Saw, on the other hand, shows gore for gore’s sake—any plot or character developments are tawdry, peripheral justifications for the violence. Yet year after year, the MPAA condones this objectified violence while berating “graphic” sex scenes that a 17-year-old cannot, apparently, handle.
Comparing violence and sex may be like comparing apples and oranges, but the rating system would be doing an injustice if it ignored the context of the sex and violence within the movie. Shame follows a sex addict whose life has become replete with guilt, a loss of control, and in insatiable lust for physical pleasure. Just as Spielberg tried to give the most accurate depictions of war in Saving Private Ryan, Shame shows its lead engaged in relatively graphic scenes of sex. Yet these are not purposefully salacious or idealized sex scenes. By showing the emotional toll of an addiction, the feeling of guilt after indulgence, and the self-destructive nature of promiscuous sex, the graphic scenes are honest, natural, and contextualized. There’s no rape, there are no close-ups of penetration, and really, the sex is not all that excessive considering the subject matter of the movie. So if the MPAA was willing to bend its limits on violence (if it has any limits on violence) for Saving Private Ryan’s gore, couldn’t it do the same for Shame’s contextualized sex scenes?
The tolerance for violence has a pretty simple explanation: major studios have clout with the MPAA. Saving Private Ryan and Saw have more than just violence in common—they’re put out by big-time studios, making it easier to get passable ratings without cutting out too much of the blood. Yet when a smaller movie like Shame faces the MPAA, it’s forced with a tough decision: if it wishes to preserve the director’s original vision, the film will suffer at the box office. As of now, most movie theaters won’t show NC-17 movies, so not only does the rating limit the audience size through age requirements, it tremendously limits the scope of the movie’s release. This usually leaves movies with little choice but to give in to the MPAA, and cut material to get that R rating. Coercing studios to cut movies not only inhibits the artist’s vision, but also does a disservice to the customer who wishes to see that original vision, regardless of how much violence or sex is involved.
In a defiant move, Shame’s distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures accepted its NC-17 rating as a badge of honor. Being in the company of the MPAA’s other victims like Last Tango in Paris and A Clockwork Orange, the studio might have a right to feel this way. But as long as these arbitrary standards for what is permissible exist, the prudes at MPAA will have the upper hand—that is, until Steven Speilberg decides to make a Ron Jeremy bio-pic.
Fulfill John’s sex addition: send him your NC-17 movies at jsapunor@georgetownvoice.com
