By Jim Delmont*

August 1999 – President Clinton has a good point when he urged Hollywood to rethink its Motion Picture Association of America ratings and to get tougher with movies that feature violence. I say this because I made the same point in a recent column.

When the American motion picture industry changed from a production code to a rating system back in 1965, no one at the time foresaw the rapid drop in standards that would result. Association spokesman Jack Valenti explained at the time that the new code would not change movies much but would allow Hollywood to do a realistic version of a Tennessee Williams play, for instance – labeled R, for mature audiences.

The objective was not to change movies drastically, but to allow some room at the edges for more mature work.

Unfortunately, movies went downhill fast. Within three to five years, violence, sex, and profanity were common – and for more than 20 years now, the majority of films made each year have been R-rated. Worse, movies that would have drawn R ratings 20 years ago are now being rated PG-13. Movies that would have been X-rated are now rated R – my main gripe with the system.

In general, puritanical America attacks sex with more enthusiasm than violence. When a rare mainstream film is rated X (NC-17 now), it is usually for sex or nudity, rarely for violence.

As I pointed out recently here, many violent films of the past several decades deserve an X or NC-17 rating. That would have drastically restricted their circulation both in theaters and later in video.

There also is too much profanity in movies. It actually detracts from the scripts, demeaning both story and characters.

Hollywood itself can clean up its movies while still making hard-hitting films... Any intelligent person can tell the difference between gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity and what is necessary for a realistic movie that deals honestly with the dark side of human nature. It is mostly a matter of common sense and common decency.

I would argue vigorously against censorship of what might be called “the fine arts” – books, live theater, art gallery showings, art films at festivals or on cable venues... Also, the audiences for plays, art galleries, and art films are generally sophisticated and well-educated – not likely to go out and destroy society because of something seen in a play or at a gallery.

Mass-audience entertainment is something else. Movies, TV shows, the Internet and pop music are seen and heard by tens of millions, including huge audiences of impressionable children and teenagers. Minimal standards of decency make sense for these larger venues – and that is one of the reasons we have the rating system for movies. Putting all the responsibility on parents may have made sense 40 years ago, but today a third of America’s children are in one-parent homes – and with welfare reform booming, that parent probably is at work when the children are watching Jerry Springer or something worse after school.

All these ventures do practice censorship, including MTV, cable TV, network TV and movies (to avoid the NC-17 rating or to make the PG-13 rating if that will help at the box office). Newspapers and magazines practice censorship, including MTV, cable TV, network TV and movies (to avoid the NC-17 rating or to make the PG-13 rating if that will help at the box office). Newspapers and magazines practice self-censorship (the best kind). A tougher rating system – perhaps one not managed by Valenti, who is very cozy with Hollywood – would help. Valenti said recently that Natural Born Killers was based on the infamous murder spree by Nebraskan Charles Starkweather. But in fact, Killers was a gross distortion of the Starkweather events, glamorizing and glorifying two killers. It should have been rated X. Better yet, it shouldn’t have been made – but that would have required common sense and common decency (plus honesty) from director Oliver Stone. Not likely.  

* Jim Delmont is a movie critic for the Omaha World Herald. Reprinted with permission of Omaha World Herald.