Parents, in my experience, don't "trust" the MPAA ratings system; certainly, as a parent I never hesitated to take my son to see a PG-13 film before he was 13 or to take him to an R before he was 18. Some parents may follow it, but many will simply read the reviews and the information available in newspapers and elsewhere and make an informed judgment.

What's really happening is that there is a self-contained follow-the-leader syndrome going on among studios, multiplexes and media outlets, each of which is dominated by huge corporations. If Disney/Fox/NBC Universal/Viacom CBS won't touch a property, that's a lot of the potential lost for both distributing and promoting a film. Just a few companies control the vast majority of movie screens as well. Add in a few other newspaper companies (Gannett, NYT, Tribune) and you've covered the easiest means of distributing information to the mainstream public in the country. What independent filmmaker, faced with the need to recoup the cost of a film, is going to buck the trend if none of those companies will spit in the face of the MPAA?

It used to be worse, of course. For God's sake, "Some Like It Hot" was released without a seal of approval from the old Hays Office (by then, it was the Shurlock office). But it cost a lot less to make a film in those days; someone investing $100 million is less likely to thumb his nose in the face of this conspiracy of silence. And what media outlet is covering itself well enough to ask whether a ban on advertising from unrated or NC-17 films is making any sense?

Eventually, it will probably take some form of online distribution, whether by replacing traditional media as the advertising medium of choice for avant garde films (but see the conventional wisdom involving "Snakes on a Plane"), or by allowing distribution of the content directly from the internet (which of course takes away the different experience of watching in a large group in a dark room with a projected wide screen), that will break the monopoly. Until then, we're all hostages to this, parents and children and non-parents alike.

"....while sexual content, particularly anything pertaining to gay and lesbian sex, gets the board's big white panties in a twist."

Right...I had a close male friend, now dead, who had sex with Jack Valenti in New York several years ago. It freaked him out when he realized who it was.

It's a reactionary group, in terms of how it evaluates movies. They famously re-rated Midnight Cowboy R after it won the Oscar. Jaws had to have a short shot cut to get a PG (the leg that falls to the ocean floor intially stood up on the bottom of the ocean for a second), and it's said that if Annie Hall had come out in the 80's instead of the 70's, the coke snorting scene would have gotten it an R (supposedly the pot smoking scene is what warranted John Hughes' The Breakfast Club an R in the mid-80's).

But to me, this is beside the point. A movie theater can show a non-rated or NC-17 movie if it wants to. A newspaper can advertise it. Audiences can check it out. All along the way in this scenario we have individuals (or business groups) making decisions about what products they want to handle. It's not very different than the choices chain book or record stores vs. independants make in terms of what they stock.

And I have no sympathy with Hollywood. At times when an R rating has been necessary to secure audiences, movies were pumped with extra sex and violence to get the rating. At times when only PG movies were doing strong business, movies have been cut. And if NC-17 were guaranteed box office, we'd have tons of explicit sex scenes whether they were appropriate to the movie or not.

In terms of earnest, independent efforts, I think the distribution problems with such movies are pretty strong no matter what the rating, so I don't see the MPAA's response as the kiss of death.

I'd like to see papers and cinemas have a more independant mind. Somehow, I have trouble believing either would be seriously picketed or boycotted for advertising or running an NC-17 picture. I'd also like to see people choosing to buy or partonize businesses with a more independent mindset. That's the sort of action that could really change the sort of movies we see, and the sort of movies that get made.

By the way, thanks everyone for the kind response.

Hey, here's an idea for a business. Set up the NPAA to give ratings. The MPAA definitely needs some competition, MPAA, NPAA, people won't know the difference. You could get the rating you want, you won't have to say it's not rated.

Any venture capitalists here?

How sad to see a Salon writer shamelessly cheering on as a PI digs up photos and personal info about the MPAA board members, paparazzi style. And I thought the far-right was the only group that liked to publicize home addresses and photos of their perceived political opponents and encourage their readers to "go for the golden ring" and research where NYTimes reporters send their kids to school, etc.

Then Stephanie Zacharek indulges in paranoid left-wing fantasies of clerics and corporate executives "censoring" and "watering-down" our culture, and somehow enforcing "heteronormal sex" as if they had the power to turn gay citizens straight.

Critics of any attempt to label certain films as less appropriate for children apparently like to mock parents' legitimate desire to prevent their kids from premature exposure to mature content. These critics react with cries of "censorship" and a defense of "artistic possibilities." Zacharek joins in with mocking and crying of her own.

If guides like the ratings board simply disappeared as Zacharek and Kirby Dick might wish, many parents simply wouldn't let their kids go to any film. And there goes the film industry as mass entertainment...

In fact, some think that the MPAA is too lax and scattershot about their ratings. An excellent 2002 Boston Globe article took a hard, insightful look at a real ratings story: the controversy of the PG-13 rating, which has become the favorite zone of filmmakers targeting teenagers who think they're too grown-up to see a PG movie but who can't get into R movies by themselves. The Globe illustrated how violence, gore, sex, nudity, and language have been steadily creeping upwards in PG-13 films, all with the passive approval of the MPAA. Meanwhile, the article also pointed out the absurdity of giving a PG rating to a film like "Star Wars Ep. II: Attack of the Clones," which had plenty of violence including dismemberment, decapitation, and a child holding the severed head of his father close to his own forehead.

I would encourage mothers and fathers to consult websites like screenit.com and kids-in-mind.com to check up on movies' content and come to their own conclusions. Parents with a far-left attitude towards film content who wish to show their children mature material can keep taking them to R movies. They can even let them watch NC-17 films at home. Just don't expect all filmgoers to abide by your relaxed standards, and don't look down your noses at more "conservative" parents.