Can someone tell me the difference between “intense sequences of violence” and “strong bloody violence”? How about “grisly bloody violence” and “strong sadistic horror violence”?
Here’s another. Parse for me, please, the distinction between “sexual material” and “sexual content.” And this, my new favorite hair-splitter: “brief smoking” versus “momentary smoking.” What’s the difference there, three puffs? Two?
How little on-screen smoking would have to take place for the smoking to be designated “fleeting”?
Each week, in its ongoing campaign to become sillier and more perplexing, the Motion Picture Association of America’s Classification and Rating Administration (MPAA and CARA for short) contributes another series of film ratings, along with reasons, briefly (or “momentarily”) stated, for those ratings.
Today, for example, “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” opens. Its PG rating carries the explainer: “for sci-fi action violence throughout, brief language and momentary smoking.” The momentary smoker is Ziro the Hutt, a relative of Jabba, whose oiliness and weaselly nature is signified by his use of a hookah. Just like Sydney Greenstreet.
I suppose the CARA board is just trying to help, and lately it has done all it can to stress the evils of nicotine. Meantime, though, CARA keeps shoveling all sorts of heinousness into the profit-friendly R rating category (“Hostel: Part II” being the prime example of recent ratings hypocrisy — if that slop doesn’t merit an NC-17, nothing does). Because the MPAA is in charge of promoting as well as policing its products, the language so torturously meted out in the ads often sounds hopelessly conflicted.
Take the word “strong.” Please. CARA loves that word, and it means nothing; it sounds good, in fact, and I suspect it’s meant to. It sounds so much more admirable than “explicit.” Spike Lee’s new film, “Miracle at St. Anna,” will carry an R rating for, among other reasons, “strong war violence.” As opposed to weak?
Sometimes, the more you try to explain, the less you end up explaining. My real problem with the way movies tend to be rated in this country goes beyond goofy phraseology, or the guesswork distinctions between “peril” and “menace” and “terror.” My problem is with the way the MPAA gives violence a pass, while taking a puritanical stance with everything else. It is the American way. Shoot first, make your fuzzy-headed explanations later.
Now, you tell me. What gets your goat about the way the ratings explain themselves? E-me at mjphillips@tribune.com or, better yet, hit the comments board at chicagotribune.com/talkingpictures.
Do it. If you don’t, you may find yourself in a scene of intense peril plus some thematic elements.
No, but I enjoyed it
Off and on for two years now, and weekly since March, Richard Roeper, Roger Ebert, producer Don Dupree and the folks at ABC/Disney have been good enough to allow me to undertake an impossible task: filling in for Roger on “At the Movies With Ebert & Roeper.”
The fill-in gig comes to an end this weekend. A revamped “At the Movies” continues next month with two new co-hosts, Ben Lyons of the E! Network and Ben Mankiewicz of Turner Classic Movies.
I enjoyed it, every minute. Even (or especially) when Richard was defending “Hell Ride.”
– – –
Some creature violence?
Recent examples of reasons issued by the Motion Picture Association of America for their ratings:
VIOLENCE
Strong bloody violence
Sci-fi action violence
Violence and gore
Strong graphic violence and gore
Strong sadistic horror violence and torture
Grisly bloody violence and torture
Strong war violence
Adventure action and violence
Some western violence
Some creature violence
Some terror
Some peril
Some menace
SEX
Some sex-related comments
Some sex-related material
Sexual material
Sexual content
Some sensuality
Brief sexuality
A scene of nudity
RANDOM
Momentary smoking
Brief smoking
Some mild rude humor
Some thematic material
Thematic elements
–Compiled by Lisa Angelo
