Age restrictions has always hindered teenagers from seeing what they want to see for years. And ever since those restrictions have been in place teenagers have fought them. One of the biggest fought against age restrictions is the ones set by the MPAA for movies.

        Most movies in America are rated by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). In order to rate a movie, they assemble a group of anonymous parents to watch the movie and rate it. They either rate a film G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17. Even though many parents find a lot of the ratings useful, many people don’t realize how corrupt the MPAA and the ratings board really is and how they completely destroy the Indie movie market by suppressing art and limiting its box office potential.

        A NC-17 rating is pretty much a death sentence for any movie. Most movie retailers will not carry an NC-17 film, and same with most big chain theaters.

         “The difference between an R rating and a NC-17 is millions of dollars in box office returns.” Said box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian, in the 2006 documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated, “Maybe on some films 10’s of millions of dollars, because it limits your potential to market your movie to the general masses.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

        The MPAA ratings board was established in 1968 by Jack Valenti. The Ratings Board replaced the then popular Hays Code. Before that most movies with more brash topics, were all together censored. The MPAA (then the Motion Picture Production and Distributors of America) established the Hays Code to fight against the government interventions with the virgining American film scene. The system was working for many filmmakers and parents until Valenti pointed out some holes in the system, and brought up the idea for a system where the parents of America decide the ratings for movies, this later turned into the ratings board we have today.

        “The MPAA is in bed with all these Studios.” Said Trey Parker at a conference at the Paley Center for Media.

Trey Parker, with long time friend Matt Stone, created the long running Comedy Central show South Park. They built their offensive show from the ground up and are now very respected not just in the world of comedy, but in the world of filmmaking in general.

So back in 1997, back before South Park started running on television, Stone and Parker wrote, starred, and directed a film called Orgazmo.

“We had done Orgazmo which was completely independently, no studio, no nothing, we just did it,” said Parker, “It had to get rated and the MPAA gave it an NC-17.”

The two young filmmakers had no money left to make more cuts to make it into a R, so they asked the MPAA what they could cut to get an R, and they said, “We can’t tell you what to cut because that would make us a censorship group.

So they had to settle on a NC-17, but a few years later Stone and Parker, were making a new movie called Team America: World Police. Shockingly the movie got a NC-17 (as you would expect). So when they asked the MPAA what they could to get an R they said to Parker and Stone, “You can cut this shot here, bleep this out, switch this with this and you can get that R,”

So what was the difference between Orgazmo and Team America, it is made by the same people has the same offensive sense of humor behind it, so why did one get a lot help by the MPAA and the other get nothing? Well, when Parker and Stone made Team America, they had Paramount as a backer, and as already stated Orgamzo was funded completely by themselves.

Which even if you look at a movie like Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry. Boys Don’t Cry was written, directed, produced by Kimberly Pierce. When the movie was finished, it worked the indie film festival market for a year until Fox searchlight decided to distribute it. American Pie was a Universal movie from the beginning, made for millions of dollars and was meant to make millions of dollars. Both of them had extremely different ways that got into the popular lexicon of general public. And the one movie that didn’t go through the normal way, got the NC-17.

        Those are only a few examples that are out there. Legendary filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Terry Gilliam, and even Martin Scorsese have fought against the ratings board over there stupid decisions. Yes, certain ratings can be helpful to parents, but people need to realize that a lot of these movies are not made for kids. If these people keep rating films as if they were made for kids, then it is not just the filmmakers who lose out on things like box office returns, the film lover committee as a whole loses out on great experiences just because a certain word is said instead of another one.