How the MPAA Works

You may be surprised to learn those ubiquitous ratings, from G to NC-17, put on movies in America are actually handed down by anonymous employees of a secretive organization that serves as a lobbying firm for Hollywood's six biggest studios.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuke Bryant and Jerry. But where's wal
though right over there apparently, Man, I wish people could

(00:21):
hear in between stuff. I think Jerry was recording that
last one. Oh yeah, I think she used to give
us a neat little outtakes, but she doesn't do that anymore.
Those days are long gone. They exist in the vault though.
How you doing not good? No? No, I don't know
what's wrong with me? I am off today? Out of

(00:43):
your game? Yeah, it's weird. Well, I think this is
the perfect podcast to set you straight. Why because it's
something that we both have some passion about against. Yeah.
I think anybody who's seen um the documentary this film
is not yet rated. Yeah, that would be very difficult

(01:03):
to not be persuaded to feel strongly about the m
p a A and its practices. Yeah, and at least
how they do things. But we're gonna try to be objective. Yeah,
I'm gonna go ahead and say up front, I have
no problem with rating a film's content so parents can
decide whether or not it's appropriate, it's valuable, but I

(01:26):
think there are ways to do it that I don't
think the mp A does. Yes, So how I just
wanted to float that early on. Okay, I think that
was probably smart. Okay, Um, I don't have kids, so
I don't really whatever, But I mean I can understand
the value of that kind of thing. Yeah, but it

(01:46):
gives you an idea, Like I like having an idea
what I'm about to see too. I feel like I
can tell just from watching a trailer previusing a movie poster.
I'm pretty Um, I'm pretty intuitive when it comes of
the marketing techniques of movies. Yeah, but I think like
being a film nerd, it's like, is the new UH?

(02:10):
Is the New Avengers movie gonna be rated? R? That
really tells you something. It won't be. No, it never
would be because PG thirteen is the UH that's the
strike zone these days. It really is. Apparently PG thirteen
movies pull in more money than all other ratings combined,
and it's a relatively new phenomenon. You want to talk

(02:31):
about its origin, let's do it. So Back in a
man named Steven Spielberg had two movies out who Steven
Spielberg right. Uh. He directed one Indiana Jones and the
Templar Doom, and he produced another Gremlins, and both of
them caught He caught a lot of heat from both

(02:53):
of them. Sure Indiana Jones for the heart removal scene specifically, Yeah,
but also the snake, the live snake at the feast thing,
all the snake babies, the eyeballs, all that stuff. Uh.
And then with Gremlins, it was just downright terrifying in
a lot of different places, especially if you're a kid.
And the reason he caught heat was because both of

(03:13):
those movies were rated PG, and so uh. Spielberg went
to the m p a A, the Motion Picture Association
of America, and said, oh, let's do something about this,
because he's clearly aren't our movies, but they apparently aren't
PG movies either, so maybe we should come up with
something in between. And PG thirteen was born. Yeah, And

(03:37):
this was before he had all the sway in the world.
He was influential, but it wasn't like Spielberg today, who
could have just waved his wand and made it happen. Yeah,
but I think even at the time he was important.
He Yeah, there were very few directors at that time
who could have gotten something like that done too. But UM,

(03:58):
so that's where PG thirteen came from. In uh that,
like you said, that's the strike zone now. And the
reason why is because that is the kind of movie
that caters to um, young teenage boys who apparently are
the most successful at getting girls to go to movies
with them. So if you can get a movie rated

(04:22):
PG thirteen, you're going to make a bunch of money.
Plus it makes sense, it's right there in the middle,
you know. But the problem is it's become a means
of almost advertising that rating rather than cautioning parents. It's
a way of attracting the audience. It's like, this isn't
some kids PG movie. This is as close to an

(04:44):
OUR movie as you can get in Yeah, And I
think filmmakers try to achieve that rating UM by either
scaling back their our rated movie or juicing up their
PG movie or adding more violence, because apparently PG thirteen
movies are are UM have tripled in violence over the
last like a few decades, and um they now have,

(05:08):
according to one study, more violence than there are rated
counterparts in different kinds of violence that you didn't used
to see. Yeah. You know, um, all right, I guess
we should go back in time a little bit. Let's
is it way back machine? Sure, let's go. Let's go
away back in time in Hollywood. All right. It's Hollywood

(05:34):
and Vine is a viable intersection in Hollywood at the time,
unlike now, although people are gonna say no, they built
that area back up. Yeah. Uh. And that is when
the m p A was born in the early nineteen twenties.
And at the time, it was up to local authorities
or your state or your municipality to either stamps something

(05:57):
as moral or immoral. Um, there were no ratings on movies.
And thanks to a guy named Will Hayes who was
the first president of the m p A, he installed
the Hayes Code and said, um, you're either gonna pass
or fail. It's either gonna be stamped in moral or
moral right. And the reason Will Hayes, who was the
m p a A president, came up with the Haze Code,

(06:21):
which was really extensive. It was like if you, uh,
if you talk about the government, it always has to
be good. Uh, sexuality has to be like repressed and
just basically how you think about all movies from like
the thirties and forties squeaky clean. Basically like the division
between good and evil is very clearly defined that the

(06:43):
good guy always wins, and if he didn't fall into
that haze code, like you said, your movie would be
stamped immoral. But the whole reason he came up with
this code was because local municipalities could pass their own
obscenity laws and that could be bad for business. So
did not even get your film exhibited. Um So remember

(07:06):
in the A c. L U episode where we're talking
about that one um, that one movie that New York,
just the Catholic said no, you can't show that here,
and the A c l You went to work getting
getting the Catholics beaten in court. Right even though it
was just a bad movie, that's something to do with well,
I mean it did, but it shouldn't have been shown
because it was so terrible. Was it bad? I don't remember. Yeah,

(07:28):
I mean it was supposed to be not very good. Um,
but it happened like that kind of thing happened a
lot like local local town said no, we're not going
to show that movie. So Hayes figured out if if
Hollywood policed itself, then they could control what you know,
what movies came out, and therefore everybody could make a
bunch of money. That's right, And that's the point of
the n p A. There the lobbying arm of six

(07:52):
major Hollywood studios there there they work for them. Yeah, well, yeah,
that's one way to say it. But they and it's
just those six two, isn't it. Uh well, yeah, I
mean you there's definitely an arguments these days that independent
filmmakers have a much rougher time with the m B
a UM. But most of the indies too, are eventually

(08:13):
distributed by the majors. Anyway, you know what I'm saying.
Uh So, flash forward a bit in our way back
machine to the nineteen fifties. Things changed a little bit
after World War Two and people, I guess the easiest
way to say is people loosen up a little bit
and didn't mind certain elements in their entertainment any longer.

(08:34):
A big example of this article uses Frank Sinatra got
an Oscar nomination for playing a heroin Addict and the
Man with a Golden Arm. And that couldn't happen in
the nineteen forties. No, millions of people hadn't died in
world War two. Yet that's right. I imagine that kind
of loosens you up as far as the seeing Chris

(08:54):
words and stuff in movies goes. Yeah, like that's not
a big deal, Like World War two is a big deal.
Get your haunches down exactly. That was the That was
the big one, the big first crack to the Hayze code. Uh.
And then they were I think that you said he
won an oscar, right, Yeah, it was a really good movie,
and that kind of opened the floodgate, so that by
the end of the fifties you got some like a

(09:16):
hot Tony Curtis and Jack lemon Are dressed like women
hitting on Marilyn Monroe and um. At that point, it
was pretty obvious the Hayes code was dead. Yeah, I mean,
they weren't passing the code, but they were still getting released.
So once something is subverted like that, it's it's dead
in the water. So there was a that was fine

(09:37):
for a little while. I think the Hayes code just
kind of fell to the wayside and people were releasing
movies without any kind of moral or immoral stamp. But
the rating system as we understand it today hadn't come
about yet. So it's kind of a limbo period until
and a store owner in New York with the last

(09:57):
name of Ginsburg got busted for selling nudy max to
sixteen year old boys, and he took it all the
way to the Supreme Court saying, you can't you can't
say anything about this. There's federal laws about obscenity, not
local laws in the Supreme Court that you know what,
we really think it's such a local municipalities to decide
what they want their miners exposed to or not. That

(10:21):
got Hollywood's attention because all of a sudden, local municipalities
could decide whether or not they wanted to show movies
to miners or not. So the what was old became
new again. And Jack Valenti, who was in charge of
the m p a A, said we need another system
of self another self policing system, and he came up
with the rating system that that we have today. Yeah,

(10:43):
and he uh, I mean Jack Valenti was the head
of the NBA for close to forty years, and he
initially the intention was to stop censorship because he feared
that the movies we're gonna start being censored locally. And
so I think the origins of the mp A rating system.
We're we're art centered, art centered, but also money centered,

(11:07):
because again, if you have if you have town A
showing the movie, but Towns B through L deciding that
the movie is obscene and not showing it, then you're
losing that money and be through L. So what Valenti
came up with was this idea that let us tell
you what is appropriate for minors or not what movie is,

(11:29):
and we'll just make a simple rating system gpg R
or X the old X and triple X, which wasn't
even formally a rating, it was just a marketing tool. Yeah, yeah,
because three x's that's like, I wonder if anybody ever
came out with one with four double X even yeah,

(11:50):
like yeah, we cut out that one part so X uh. Yeah. Christian,
our colleague here wrote a great blog post about the
former X rated movie. Is that right? Yeah, let's to
check that out. It's good for on brain Stuff for
stuff with genius on the brain Stuff blog earlier this year.
And you actually recommended it on your blog the X rating. Yeah,

(12:12):
the best this week. Yeah, I remember recommending one of
his things. I just don't remember that one's good. I
thought about asking him in here, but then I thought
we got it. Um. So yeah, back then it was
G through X and UM, well we'll talk about you
know how that changed maybe after this message break. All right,

(12:34):
so no longer do we have X rated movies. Now
we have something. I guess we should just go through
what these ratings mean today in two thousand and fourteen.
So you've got your G. She's always been G general audience.
Anyone can see it. Yes, and that's your your family
cartoon that kids love and parents are forced to go to. Right.

(12:56):
Then you've got PG. Um that means no drug use. Um,
maybe violence because as we'll learn, the m p A
has less problems with violence and more problems with language
and sex. Huge criticism, huge criticism, Uh, PG thirteen, which
we've you know, kind of been through. Um. Then you've
got your R and that is no one under seven.

(13:17):
This is a suggestion that no one ever seventeen be
admitted without a parent. And uh, these aren't laws though,
that's one thing and supporting to point out those are suggestions.
And then theaters have policies. Yes, it's let's kind of
dig into that. So none of this is legally binding.
None of them are anything more than recommendations. They're basically

(13:38):
saying that this movie has X amount of profanity or
x amount of nudity, or lacks any drug use or
something like that. And so, for what the m p
a A thinks the average moral compass of the average
American thinks about these different things like sex, drugs, nudity,

(14:00):
all that stuff, this movie falls into this rating. And
again it's not enforceable. You don't even need to have
a rating to release a movie. But if you want
to get your movie in theaters, there's basically no theater
chain out there right now, no major theater chain out
there right now that will show an unrated movie. Yeah,
it's a completely voluntary system to submit your film to

(14:23):
the m p A Ratings Board. But it's defect though,
but you have to do it. Yeah, that's the rub
is that they say it's voluntary, but you actually have
to pay a fee to submit your movie if you
ever want to have it shown in theaters, right and
the fee is anywhere from like twenty five dollars for
a big budget movie to seven fifty dollars for a
short um. And so you're you submit your movie, well,

(14:48):
we'll get into it in a second. Let's talk some
more about the rest of the ratings. Yeah, well, there's
only one more, and that's n C seventeen, which replaced X,
and that means, uh, this is and it basically means
that it's for adults on me and you should not
come in if you're under eighteen, and also means these
days as foreign or about lesbian or gays. Yeah, not fully,

(15:11):
but sure, it's pretty close. Yeah. Um, and n C seventeen.
The first movie to come out with that was Henry
and June, not to be confused with Benny and June. Uh.
And it basically sunk that movie because everybody was like, oh,
this is X now right n C seventeen. If you
jumble it all together, it looks like X. And the

(15:32):
whole reason they came up with NC seventeen to replace
X because X was associated exclusively with pornography in the
minds of movie goers. Yeah, exactly. Um, alright, so let's
get into this the actual ratings board. There's the m
p a A and then working for the m p
A is the Classification and Ratings Administration CARA, and uh,

(15:57):
CARRA doesn't say whether your movie stinks or not Kara
is eight to thirteen people and they're called raiders, and
they are overseen by senior raider and they sit down
and watch these movies and take copious notes on what
they think based on their standards. Is uh, I don't
want to say offensive, but just noteworthy, Like maybe they're

(16:20):
not offended, but they think the average mom and sheboygan
might be offended. Right supposedly, but which is a kind
of a thing because the whole rating system, as you
just kind of pointed out, is a subjective, totally subjective.
They supposedly. Uh. Here, here's the other rub is it's
all secret. You can you can find out of federal

(16:42):
judges name and address, but you can't find out who
a raider is for your films. It's all conducted in private.
None of this stuff is released. And that's one of
the big rubs in that documentary and with filmmakers in general,
is it's all, you know, done behind closed doors. There's
never any explanations provided. These people are supposed to have
kids between ages of five and seventeen, but many of

(17:05):
them do not either have kids at all or have
kids that are older than eighteen. Um. It basically frees
them up from any accountability. Yeah, to do this all
in private and in secrecy. And until that movie um
By Kirby what is Kirby's last name? Henry and June
No no, the documentary Oh yeah, this film is not

(17:28):
yet rated. Yeah, when until Kirby Dicks, um, this film
is not yet rated came out, Like all of this
stuff was just conjection, conjecture and Hollywood legend. He was
the first one to really basically he tailed these people,
tailed them to lunch to find out who they were,
and eaves drop on them and like did some digging

(17:50):
and found like these anonymous people did not fall into
the requirements that the m p A said they did,
And so not only was it in secret, it was
it was fraudulent. Basically, this rating system, so according to
the standards, you submit your film, this group of people,

(18:11):
this anonymous group of people, watch it, they rate it,
and then they come together and vote on a rating
and then they passed. There there um vote along to
a senior rat who talks to the movies distributor or
director or producer says, here's the rating, here's why we
rated it like this, and then you you're faced with
the choice. You can accept the rating. You can edit

(18:36):
your film as per the uh c a r's recommendations.
Take out these bad words, cut the sex scene a
little early, leave all the violence, yeah um. Or you
can reject the rating and just release your movie is unrated, which, well,
you can try to release it, but since no one

(18:57):
will show it, it's really sort of a misnomer, right,
but it's becoming increasingly a thing again. You need the
rating to get your movie shown in movie theaters. But
what happens if you don't care if your movie comes
out in theaters, video on demand, yeah, or just releasing
it to the internet. Now, I'm curious about that. How
that's going to change the landscape. Well, right now, it's

(19:19):
a huge threat to the m p a A because
all of the power they wield is found in this
rating system. And if for theaters, yes, if one's going
to theaters, then the m p a A A loses all
of that power, which is a big deal, especially now
because the m p A is needed more than ever
as a lobbying group because of online piracy, which we'll

(19:40):
talk about some more. So it's a very precarious time
for the m p A right now, and it's a
terrible time for them to be under as much scrutiny
and public attack and critique as they are. So it's
I mean, they got spears sticking out every which way
and their trunk is failing in their honking. That's true.

(20:00):
One thing I should point out is I said it
is that there's no accountability. That's what the n p
A says. It's the good thing about the secrecy is
that it frees them up. That anonymity does. It frees
them up from accountability. Um, I just don't agree, right, Okay,
So the if you want to appeal there there was
apparently a change made in response to Kirby Dick's movie, Um,

(20:24):
the documentary before if you were appealing your rating, which
is very difficult, Um, almost never was done and you
never want that's for sure. And when you were appealing,
you couldn't reference any other film. It was totally done
in a vacuum, which is pretty preposterous. Yeah, Like that's

(20:46):
the only way to be able to tell us like,
wait a minute, if you said this about this, then
why not this for my movie? Which meant that there
was no real standard that that you could point to,
or there were standards you could point to, they just
would be considered yeah, or at the very least, if
they do have written standards, they don't release them, so
you don't even know what they are, right. So, Um,

(21:08):
the m p a A is, Uh, they've got their
rating system, they've got the appeals process, which was also
in secret, unless that's changed, right, I think I think
the appeals board. Not only was the appeals board in secret,
but they weren't even just raiders. They were people from
the industry, right, and the Theater Owners Association exactly, whereas

(21:33):
the people who were raiders are supposedly unaffiliated with the
movie industry and are just like average ordinary parents representing uh,
your Middle America. We'll just call it, even though I
think that's insulting. The thing is, though, is a lot
of people criticize the mp A and say, these raiders
are um really representing the six major studios who rake

(21:55):
in the ten point nine billion dollars made in the
United States, Um in theaters alone, just ticket sales, not
DVD or anything like that. Um. And that's what the
m p a A does in addition to rating. They are,
like we said, the lobby arm for these six studios.

(22:17):
That's right, and they I guess we should talk about
piracy now. Huh. That's one of their other big besides
from rating movies, they are heavy in the lobby against UM. Well,
especially now with online piracy, because the digital distribution network
is it seems like the way forward as far as
distribution goes, right, Like, it's the future. It's not the future,

(22:39):
it's the present and the future. And the m p
A has a they're accused of UM basically trying to
quell new technology by just saying like, well, let's just
keep people from peer to peer file sharing in total
so that they can't steal movies. In part UM and
if you go back to the early eighties, Jack Valenti

(23:01):
was known to have UM railed and lobbied against the
legality of VCRs. UM people are just gonna be recording
things and handing them out to their friends exactly, So
there was a The n p A is a long
history of basically like just doing anything at Canada stifle
innovation in order to protect the profits of these big
movie studios. The other problem with them lobbying UM in

(23:26):
favor of the six movie studios is that they inherently
have a conflict of interest against the studios that are
not part of these six that they represent, but whose
movies they still rate. So they've been accused of um
more scrupulously or scrutinously rating the movies of rival studios

(23:48):
or foreign studios when assigning a rating. Well, and that's
why filmmakers call consistently for transparency. It's it's I don't
think there are many filmmakers out there saying should be
no rating, we should just maybe some like a large Fontarier,
you know, or Werner Hertzog. They're probably no way things
at all, But I think they just want transparency, like

(24:11):
open it up and let everyone know how this is
all done, who these people are, and give us an
idea on what in the world we're submitting to voluntarily interesting.
So you were talking about online piracy, um and with
digital distribution being a big deal now, the mp AS
needed more than ever because they have to lobby Congress

(24:34):
to fight online piracy at a time when more and
more people are distributing online and going around the m
p a A. So it's losing its power, but it
needs its power more than ever. So, like we said,
it's a precarious time for the m p a A
and they tried a few things. They were successful with
the uh what was the first one? In two thousand,

(24:55):
the Digital No the Digital Millennium Be Right Act, which
basically that up until then it wasn't a federal crime
to share movies on peer to peer networks. That one
did it, and they got that past. The m p A.
A lobby then got that past. They've cracked down on

(25:16):
camcorder recording. Ye Like when you're in New York City
and someone has a brand new copy of Godzilla on
a video cassette for you, that's because if you've seen Seinfeld,
someone went and set in that theater with a camera
recorder and just made a stupid, awful quality pirated version. Yeah,
and it says that those are the most common. I

(25:36):
guess I kind of believe that they're also the worst quality.
Like sometimes people will like get up and move in
front of the camera, like they go to the bathroom
or something, and yeah, it's I've never seen one, but
I think they're terrible. Um much. I don't want to
say more common, but probably more common these days are
like copies of screeners, Like they send out DVDs to

(25:58):
everybody who's members of the Academy to vote on movies,
and so around Oscar time or before Oscar time, it
seems like the Internet gets flooded with way more high
quality copies of these major movies that are up for awards. Yeah,
I think now they have, um, thanks to the n
p A, have something coded to your name now on

(26:18):
your copy, so like they'll know who leaked it or whatever.
I think, So I'm not I'm not surprised by that. UM. Apparently,
if you want to show uh Frozen at your church, yeah,
you better have a public performance license because it is
illegal to show a movie outside of your home. Yeah,

(26:39):
that surprised me. But there are a lot of especially
in the summertime, a lot of community screenings, like every
city now has uh, you know, Atlanta shows them in uh,
I think at Oakland Cemetery some other places in New
York to have them all over the place, and technically, yeah,
they're supposed to have a license to do so, I'm
sure they do the big ones. Yeah, the big ones
I'm sure do. But like at your community pool when

(27:02):
you want to show et and uh, the Feds could
come kick the gate down around the pool. I bet
they don't love HBO these days because you know HBO go, Um,
people steal that. They're just like, hey, dude, what's your
log in? And HBO came out and they're like, who cares?
People are watching it? Yeah, go watch a True Detective.

(27:25):
Maybe you'll sign up for HBO because you liked it,
or maybe you'll just support the show period on social media,
even though you're getting it for free, Like we're making
enough money basically, yes, And that's something that a lot
of people say, you know, film industry, we don't really
feel that bad for you, Sean Austin sit down, because

(27:45):
you guys made ten point nine billion dollars in America
in ticket sales alone in two thousand thirteen. We don't
feel that bad about this whole conundrum that the m
p a a Is facing. What seans and steel he
was voices, Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, I don't think I
knew that. Yeah he was. I can't remember that. There

(28:08):
was like a whole um kind of push an anti
piracy pushed a few years back. Part of it. Yeah,
and he looked really mad about things too. But um,
speaking of piracy, I remember there was a story that
came out recently. It was if you think about it,
at first it's like wow, wow. But then if if
you really kind of lend lend had some thought, it's

(28:30):
really disturbing. Um, there were there was a report of
prisoners at a prison being shown pirated movies, and some
of the prisoners were there for pirating movies, and I like,
really think about the injustice behind that, Like that's just

(28:50):
crazy town. Imagine if you've been like selling counterfeit first
and you go to prison and all of the all
the guards are wearing counterfeit for coats pretty swing in prison.
It would be weird, but it would also be unjust.
Yeah yeah, true. But in relation to this is just
more and more widespread every day. It feels like it's

(29:12):
it's a losing battle. I think that the n p
A is fighting right now. Well I think I read
somewhere today that they think they might release a few
of the Raiders names per film, not all like thirteen.
But I need to look up that look that up again,
because that I don't know. I don't see the why
releasing a three out of thirteen names does anybody any good?

(29:33):
It does zero good. And speaking of doing zero good, um,
the this there's kind of a new attachment to the
rating system that they have now it's called check the box.
And um, it's it's basically a brief description of why
a movie is, like PG thirteen, So it'll say like

(29:55):
intense sci fi action or something like that, or some
drug use. Yeah, that kind of thing. Um. And some
critics of the m p a A say it's just
basically like shooting a laser beam into like a fifteen
year old boy's brain, like brief nudity. Come see it
PG thirteen, Check it out, kid, um. And I think

(30:18):
a lot of people are looking at it like it's
it's just kind of a disingenuous advertisement, cynical advertisement, because
the the m p a A is accused of not
regulating or even potentially directly marketing to kids under the
age of the movies that are being advertised. So like

(30:40):
you're seeing a lot of ads for like R rated
movies on websites that are like very popular among like
the seventeen and undercrowd. Um, there's a lot of tie
ins for PG thirteen movies with like kids toys for
kids who are under who are under thirteen. Um. And
so there's like this idea that there's the mp is

(31:00):
supposedly serving America's moral moral compasses, but really at the
same time, they're undermining that morality that they're supposedly defending
by marketing and exploiting kids. Yeah, that'd be like a
cigarette company having a cartoon animal as their mat Scott.

(31:22):
Can you imagine the weird uh Well, one thing about
the the subjectivity of it and the fact that it
is a closed book and they filmmakers don't even know,
you know what, how to tailor their movie to achieve
a certain rating, I mean to within a certain degree,
but they've learned how to manipulate it because there is
no set standard by if you watch that film is

(31:45):
not irrated. And you've heard plenty of stories over the
years about filmmakers intentionally putting in things that they never
intend to be in the final movie just to sort
of distract from some of the other things. So they'll
shoot something kind of really outrageous, uh uh to get
the m p A's Raiders haunches up and what they
were never going to keep that part anyway. So they're

(32:07):
subverting the system because there is no set standard, and
they're just the stuff they want to keep in is
comparatively exactly more palatable and if you don't have the
set standard where you can go and I wonder what
those sheets look like on the interior, you know, I
mean that's the great mystery. Yeah, surely they have their
own interior standards. They're not just like watch it and

(32:28):
see what you think. Well, they have group discussions too, man,
I'd love to sit in on those. So the uh
I read. Another criticism of the m p A is
that the difference between PG thirteen movies and our movies
these days is the profanity and the sexuality. Um, that
they're similar in violence, if not more violent in PG

(32:50):
thirteen movies, and that this is kind of messed up
that the m p a A has very little problem
with violence, but when it comes to bad words or
sexuality of almost any nature except for women being objectified
and men being gratified. Um, then the m p a

(33:11):
A suddenly puckers up. Well, yeah, and any a woman
achieving receiving sexual gratification or a homosexual couple, yeah, virtually
like guaranteed or depending on how they do it, are
if it's coming out of like one of the major studios.
So in other words, a man can receive pleasure from

(33:35):
a woman and of course it's scrutinized somewhat, because any
kind of sex is more heavily scrutinized than violence. But
if a woman does like you said, or if it's
a gay couple, it's all over so homophobic, misogynistic, do
you decide, right? And um, fetishistic of violence, you know. Yeah. Like,

(33:57):
here's one example. There's a great article called don't Expect
any major changes to the n p A rating System,
and it's basically Chris Dodd, who's the new head and
the gang, digging in and saying, you know what, we
talked to your average parents and we pull them and
this is what they want. Um. But they released none

(34:19):
of those studies released, None of those conversations are released. Um.
A movie like Filomena, which you saw, was rated to
our Yeah. It was about a lady looking for a
long lost sun. It was so far from an our movie.
It was ridiculous. Yeah. But it had a couple of
F bombs in it. Um, So they cut those out
and they bring it to a PG thirteen. You might think,

(34:40):
who cares cut up the F bombs make it PG thirteen.
But there's something bigger going on here, you know. Yeah,
there's a great A V Club article about um, how
just totally out of step. A lot of the ratings
are and they have fifteen movies listed and basically talk
about their ratings. Um, like the first one they talk

(35:03):
about once that romantic Um, it wasn't like a romantic comedy, wasn't. No.
I would say it was sweet, just a modern day
romance told through music. It wasn't a musical, but there
are a lot of musical numbers. Highly inoffensive love story. Yeah,
very sweet movie. Uh, it had the same rating as

(35:25):
hostile to just basically torture porn. They both got the
same rating. Yeah, we should read this first line from
the A B Club. In early summer two thousand seven,
two films were released with our ratings. One featured a
scene where a naked woman is suspended from a ceiling
while another naked woman slashes her with a scythe and

(35:45):
base in her blood. The other featured to Dublin musicians
singing songs together, falling in love and opting not to
act on it. Like there was never any sex scene.
They didn't even get together. Really. They're both rated. Are
both rated are because of profanity rushmore rated R for
the scene at the end whether Max is putting on

(36:08):
the play, the Vietnam play, and there is a shot
of a couple of little kids looking at on on
the set. There's some Playboy centerfolds up in the locker
like on the Vietnam set. And these shows these little
kids like looking at those like a twelve year old
would probably do. And it got an R for that,
got an R for that happiness. Todd Solon's one of

(36:29):
my favorite movies of all time. Uh. They tried to
give it an n C seventeen rating, and he said,
you know what, I'm not cutting anything. You can just
go take a long walk off a short pier, is
what I think he famously said to them. And uh,
he released his movie as unrated. Really, yep, I don't

(36:49):
think I knew that the way to go, Todd Solons.
Or if you're looking at some serious homophobia, Um, the
Great nine movie A Long Time Companion features no real
sex X at all, nothing explicit. Um. In fact, the
A V Club says it could show on network TV
today with just a few alterations. Um, but it was

(37:11):
about a gay couple and uh so I got an
n C seventeen. Yeah, there's something called Afternoon Delight, which
was a um A movie about a woman who hires
a gigelow and it apparently is heavy on the the

(37:32):
woman receiving sexual gratification. It got an R rating despite
and it got an R rating after apparently the director
cut a lot of stuff out and the director said,
what the hey after um Wolf of Wall Street came out,
like have you seen this movie with like some very
graphic apparent sex scenes between a man and a woman.

(37:54):
But Leonardo DiCaprio is the one enjoying it the most,
So it's fine. It's an our, right. Blue is the
warmest color. Yeah. Last year that a teenage lesbian love
story and got a lot of attention, and there were
some theaters that allowed uh high school age kids to
go see that anyway, because again, this isn't law, it's

(38:17):
not binding, it's up to the theaters. Yeah, it's just
so strange that such a small group of people have
such influence on such a large industry. And yeah, the
more you dig into it, the more conflicts of interest arise,
and the more arbitrary the standards become, the more blood
boiling it is. I highly recommend you go read some

(38:38):
stuff like raded are for ridiculous by Kirby Dick his
little uh, his little um op ed about the m
p A. A um that one US News and World
Report article you wrote or suggested was good. I wish
I wrote it had you been uh, there would have
been used correctly. Out do they misuse it? What? Yeah?

(38:59):
I know? And that's terrible. Uh So the n p
A will defend themselves and they say that there's no
such bias and that we all these objectionable scenes are
rated on the graphic quality and how graphic it is. Um.
But if you just look at the you'd have to
be a dummy nut to see these correlations and the

(39:19):
fact that they don't seem to care that much about
violence in this age where I don't know, does it
influence people to go shoot up a school? Who knows?
Did you see that John Oliver quote that's going around, Yes,
but what was it? It's like somebody unsuccessfully tries to
carry a bomb onto a plane in their shoe. We

(39:41):
all take our shoes off. Right, there's like thirty something
school shootings after Columbine and absolutely nothing's changed. Yeah, Or
the onion article that's going around two now, is this
is something that can't be prevented, says the only country
where this kind of thing happens all the time. Something
like that. I'm paraphrasing, Oh yeah, that's the onion. Yeah,

(40:05):
good stuff. Mp A, keep keep doing the fighting, the
good fight. Yeah good check out, Like, just go start
reading up on it. It's funny how much we just
take this stuff for granted, but when just start digging
just slightly beneath the surface at the very least, see
this film is not itt rated. It's really good, um,
really engrossing. And you know, for every hundred documentaries that

(40:26):
come out, what five of them are like really great,
Most of them are pretty good, some are terrible. So
any really good one is worth seeing just in and
of itself. Agreed. Uh. If you want to learn more
about the m p a A, type those letters into
the search part house to works dot com and I said,
search parts, it's time for listener mail. Uh. I'm gonna

(40:48):
call this wild parrots um. Josh mentioned in the Tattoo
podcasts that he had heard parrots like to hang together
went free, and I wanted to burst in the podcast
booth and tell you about the wild arts of San Francisco.
I'm not going to get into it, except to say
that over the course of my life, the parrots in
San Francisco were sort of living legend that one would
occasionally get the privilege of spotting now and then. However,

(41:09):
about three years ago, I moved in with my aunt
in the little Uh, San Francisco suburb of Brisbane, and
apparently the famous flocks of parrots were also making their
home there. Since it was warmer unless windy. Uh, these
parrots were often hanging right outside my bedroom window, which
is pretty amazing. I don't know, she says, amusing. I
say it's amazing, but also somewhat annoying, especially since my

(41:33):
first son was just a little guy then and a
very light sleeper. And these suckers are loud. That's true,
they are very loud. Also, guys, I'm sending you the
link to watch the preview of the two thousand three
documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. So I didn't
know there was a documentary. I've heard that. I've heard
of that before, I never knew what it was about. Amy.
I will check that out. Thank you, thank you for

(41:53):
writing it. Yeah, thanks a lot, Amy. Uh. If you
have a documentary recommendation. We are always interested in those.
You can tweet them to us at s y s
K podcast. You can post them on Facebook dot com,
slash stuff you Should Know UH, and you can send
us an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff works
dot com and has always joined us at our home

(42:14):
on the web, the Beautiful Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com.