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May 29, 2022
In 1970, at the age of 28, Stephen Farber joined one of the first incarnations of the MPAA, as part of a program intended to bring younger board members into a system that had been run up to that point by remnants of the old, censorious Production Code. He left a year and a half later in disgust at the way the operation was run, and one of the products of that disgust was this book. To this day it remains one of the few documents of how the MPAA has worked, from the inside, at any time during its existence. It is, to say the least, unkind.
A key disconnect Farber identifies in the book is between the Board itself and the public it allegedly serves. At the time, mainstream moviemaking was becoming bolder and tackling more adult topics, partly as a way to drum up revenue lost to TV, and partly because of the relaxation of the restrictions originally imposed on mainstream films. The MPAA came about as a way for the movie industry to self-regulate and avoid government classification of films a la the British model. But it ended up becoming an oppressive system of its own, forcing filmmakers to re-edit their movies to avoid an X rating or simply a less restrictive one, in theory to avoid injuring their commercial prospects. If that sounds familiar, it should: it's a sign of how little the whole thing has evolved in the decades since it was devised, and how it remains a mechanism by which movies are watered down.
Farber disliked the way the Board existed as an extension of the old Production Code (many of the same people were involved). But he was doubly incensed by the attempts to modernize the board under Dr. Aaron Stern, who simply provided a new vocabulary of high-flown jargon to justify punishing some of the most interesting and creative filmmaking going on at the time with restrictive ratings or meddling re-edits.
The most stunning thing about the book is, again, how it could have been written yesterday. All the same old meddlesome techniques are in play, by a group that remains anonymous and outside of accountability, and who retain their power by dint of being the theoretical lesser of two evils (the greater being, presumably, government classification). The end-run around the ratings system provided by streaming services and direct-to-video releases has been just that: an end-run, not a sensible rethinking of a system whose basic goal of delivering sensible advice about the suitability of movies to audiences is second to its need to change those movies, proactively or retroactively, to fit those audiences.
See also Kirby Dick's recent documentary, "This Movie Is Not Yet Rated", for further evidence of how little things have changed.
A key disconnect Farber identifies in the book is between the Board itself and the public it allegedly serves. At the time, mainstream moviemaking was becoming bolder and tackling more adult topics, partly as a way to drum up revenue lost to TV, and partly because of the relaxation of the restrictions originally imposed on mainstream films. The MPAA came about as a way for the movie industry to self-regulate and avoid government classification of films a la the British model. But it ended up becoming an oppressive system of its own, forcing filmmakers to re-edit their movies to avoid an X rating or simply a less restrictive one, in theory to avoid injuring their commercial prospects. If that sounds familiar, it should: it's a sign of how little the whole thing has evolved in the decades since it was devised, and how it remains a mechanism by which movies are watered down.
Farber disliked the way the Board existed as an extension of the old Production Code (many of the same people were involved). But he was doubly incensed by the attempts to modernize the board under Dr. Aaron Stern, who simply provided a new vocabulary of high-flown jargon to justify punishing some of the most interesting and creative filmmaking going on at the time with restrictive ratings or meddling re-edits.
The most stunning thing about the book is, again, how it could have been written yesterday. All the same old meddlesome techniques are in play, by a group that remains anonymous and outside of accountability, and who retain their power by dint of being the theoretical lesser of two evils (the greater being, presumably, government classification). The end-run around the ratings system provided by streaming services and direct-to-video releases has been just that: an end-run, not a sensible rethinking of a system whose basic goal of delivering sensible advice about the suitability of movies to audiences is second to its need to change those movies, proactively or retroactively, to fit those audiences.
See also Kirby Dick's recent documentary, "This Movie Is Not Yet Rated", for further evidence of how little things have changed.
Displaying 1 of 1 review