Hollywood movies. We watch them, we consume them. But how much do we really know about them?
We watch movies with so many different elements: action, violence, romance, drama, comedy. But some elements are shown more often, and in more depth, than others. Why is that? Maybe it’s because others think we might not like them. Or maybe they don’t think those elements should be seen.
If you haven’t already clued in, this is about censorship.
Consider how much sexual material and insinuation is in film today. Though it is much more lenient now than it was 50 years ago, there is still censorship when it comes to the rating system set in place.
Dr. Steve Macek, professor of communications, said that ratings are one way movies can be censored. “The Code and Rating Administration are the people who impose these ratings on finished films based on their appropriateness for a certain age group.”
However, the group of people giving these ratings is very obscure. “Nobody knows who the people who sit on (The Code and Rating Administration) are,” Macek said “These are not trained child psychologists or anything, the website merely says they are just ‘ordinary Americans.’”
So, how do we know that this rating administration is giving completely accurate ratings for movies that we watch?
The short answer is we don’t. Movies that are rated R in the U.S. can have PG-13 or even PG ratings in other countries, especially when it comes to sexual content.
One example of that is “Eighth Grade,” directed by comedian Bo Burnham. The target audience for this film are kids who are in eighth grade, evident by the title.
However, Annabelle Timsit from Quartz.com wrote that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), another organization that controls ratings of films, gave the movie an R-rating because of language and sexual content.
Timsit said that the rating the MPAA gave is “strange, given that sexual experimentation is a normal and important part of the adolescent experience.”
While this may be true socially, films are a different story. Macek said that Hollywood has always been very sensitive to moral criticisms.
“In the 1920s, Hollywood developed the MPAA to self-police themselves against criminality and immorality including sexual immorality,” Macek said.
He mentioned that this could be because of America’s past. “America has a very strong Evangelical and Protestant history embedded in the culture because of who settled here.”
Our history has some serious religious upbringings and therefore would have an effect on how much we want to show the human body. This becomes a problem, though, when we take into account other elements of a film.
Take violence. In a study conducted in 2013, researchers found that approximately 82 percent of PG-13 movies have several violent behaviors shown within a five-minute segment of a film. The study also stated that PG-13 and R-rated movies have the same amount of violent behavior with the only difference being how graphic the material is.
This is drastically different from what sexual content in films portrays.
Macek noted that even though our history is rooted in religious morals, this type of rating system can be harmful to films aimed at younger demographics that have sexual themes.
“If a film receives an R rating, like ‘Eighth Grade,’ that’s really intended for a younger audience, that’s the financial kiss of death.”
The censorship doesn’t stop with American films, either. Foreign films are often rated higher on the MPAA system because they contain more sexual innuendo and nudity.
“Sexual content in European films can be mainly attributed to a difference in culture,” Macek said. “(Europeans) tend to have more of an open policy about it because sex and nudity don’t have the stigma they do here in the U.S.”
Nudity and sometimes actual sexual interactions can occur in European films because the way they censor movies is different. Macek said that European films tend to have more political censorship than anything else.
The “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy is a good example of how censors in Europe and America differ. France is quite lenient with its depictions of nudity and what it deems appropriate for younger audiences. According to Variety, French censors deemed “Fifty Shades of Grey” decent enough to rate it PG-13.
They were the only country to do so.
Yet, the question remains of why Americans censor sexual behavior to such an extent. Yes, we have religious upbringings. Yes, we consider violence a different category to sex.
But what is it that makes us so much more conservative with our bodies in this modern era when foreign films are continuing to further experiment with nudity and sexuality? Our past contributes to this, but there must be a better explanation.
One hypothesis is that younger Americans, like millennials, are more willing to discuss and display sex as normal, but are also more cautious in committing sexual acts.
Another, according to Politico, is that sexual harassment and assault are becoming prominent in social justice. As the frequency of sex and teen pregnancies lower, the more normal and understandable the fictionalization of sex becomes.
The U.S. continues to hold a conservative view of sex compared to several European countries, but we can continue to move forward in understanding the normalcy of sex among people.
