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• Wednesday, August 30, 2006 10:40 PM

  MPAA is not helpful

  I don't know if it amounts to censorship, but the MPAA can be amazingly inconsistent sometimes. Of what use are the ratings when they don't really make sense?

  For instance, "Whale Rider" rated PG-13 for "brief language and momentary drug reference." I'm not sure where the language occured, but the drug reference amounts to, and I counted them on DVD, essentially 50 frames, about 2 seconds, of someone hiding a bong. If you didn't know what a bong was already, you would not have known what the hiding was about. In other words, the MPAA was protecting children from something they would already know about.

  A quick search of recent PG-13 movies brings up, among others last year's "War of the Worlds," a brutally intense film featuring disintegrating humans, total destruction, mob violence, the death of hundreds in a Martian attack on a ferry, children in peril of being eaten by the Martians' organically powered war machines, a literal rain of blood of already devoured humans, and a child forced to watch as a parent is nearly devoured in front of them - Not that there's anything wrong with any of that!

  The point is, the MPAA board somehow looked at these two films "through the eyes of a parent" and apparently were completely unable to see any difference between them. This is insane. Sure, no one is "required" to submit their film for rating, but lots of luck getting it released in theaters without it.

  —Tideswimmer Read Tideswimmer's other letters
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