“There is too much sex and violence in television and film.”
We have heard the same mantra for years. Parents com- plain their children are exposed to too much explicit content, but media producers continue to create material that parents deem unsuitable.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) follows a general?set of guidelines for creating film ratings that help parents decide whether to allow their children to see these movies. These ratings decide what is appropriate for audiences, warning potential viewers of what material will be shown in the media.
But there is a discrepancy in the ratings. While those complaining about the content in media tend to tie sex and violence together, the ratings for these two categories differ. There are different criteria for choosing whether children are allowed to see the incarnations of sexual and/or violent acts, and that’s a problem.
The MPAA rates the violence in films according to far more ambiguous criteria than the sexual content. While films can change from a PG to PG-13 rating for a single instance of female nudity in a non-sexual context, the criteria for violence follows such guidelines as “more than mini- mal,” “stronger than mild” and “too rough.”
How could anyone consistently rate the violence in movies according to such vague guidelines? They are far too subjective to provide any real consistency to their ratings. In comparison to these violence ratings, the guidelines for sexual acts and nudity in films are far more structured and rigid.
As the years have progressed, the MPAA has attempted to step up its game, but it has only created more of an issue and more of a mess. The descriptor of “male nudity” in film ratings, which was added?in 2010, has become a major subject of
criticism. While showing a woman’s breasts will give a film a PG-13 rating, showing any form of comparable male nudity — with the exception of simply not wearing a shirt — will likely propel the film to an R rating or higher.
Critics of the MPAA rating system suggest that the MPAA views the bod-?ies of women as “less objectionable” than those of men, therefore justifying the lower ratings they receive for appearing nude on camera. It seems to me, that in the eyes of the MPAA it is a greater issue to sexually objectify a man’s body than a woman’s.
Although I don’t shy away from the presence of violence in media, and I understand that violence does occur in real life and therefore heightens the reality of a film, no one can deny that the inconsistency between sex and violence ratings is profound. By restricting sexuality in films to such a degree, ratings make it more difficult for a film to reach wider audiences, a problem that does not exist for highly negotiable violence ratings.
The issues lie with the discrepancy? between ratings for sex — as well as non-sexual nudity — and violence in films. When sex is vital to life and violence is?not, why do we shun the appearance of?any nudity in films? Why is there such a difference in how male and female nudity is weighed? And what in the world does it even mean for a film’s level of violence to be considered “more than minimal?” These are some of the questions the MPAA needs to answer, and fast.