Because unless it does you should shut the fuck up. And by FUCK I mean fuck in all its glorious greasy nasty monkey sex ways. Otherwise stay on the Church Bus. Thanks. I for one am sick of the MPAA believing first and foremost that the whole world is designed to wrap your little whore, who's already giving blowjobs by the way, in cotton wool to protect her from YOUR dirty little thoughts.

i guess we all take for granted that children shouldn't see "glimpses of nudity" or hear curse words. Rarely is the question asked, what is so inherently bad about it that we should protect our children from it? Is it the residual christian shame of nudity and fear of sex? Curse words, after all, are merely words. If jimmy hears "fuck" on a show, and even starts saying it, so what? It's especially absurd that, by the time their children reach around the age 12, myabe 12, some parents believe that their children still don't know curse words or where babies come from or what a boob is, and feel the need to "protect" their progeny from whatever harmful effects seeing a tit may produce (i can't really think of any).

Your thoughts on these alleged harmful effects?

Anyone see "The Salton Sea"? No, 'ratings' as it were have to do fundamentally with sex, sex, sex words related to body functions. You have never seen an American film given and NC-17/X rating for violence or drug use. That's a myth.

When showing a tit garners an R rating, but having someone decapitated (no blood though, cause that's probably an R) gets only a PG-13, how can anyone take movie ratings seriously?

Am I supposed to believe that exposing my child to violent images at an early age is fine, but showing them a boob would fuck them up? The sexually repressed gun-toting USA movie business will continue to rate movies however it pleases, but I'm not really paying that much attention.

Okay, so this article got my goat. As the parent of an 8-year-old girl, I rely on movie ratings to determine what may or may not be appropriate for her to see. It's a tool. We frequently see PG-13 movies together if my research indicates they won't upset her. Graphic sex scenes and realistic, gory violence upset my kid. I'm glad that she is upset by these things because it means she's still a child and I believe she's entitled to a childhood. It's part of my job as a parent to make sure she gets one.

As a published novelist and a screenwriter, I'm not a fan of censorship. None of us who delve into the creative arts are. We all want to express ourselves and tell stories. In fact, I think it's safe to say we're driven to do so. Creativity is a big part of who I am. But, here's the deal. When you create things to share with other people; when you put your work out there in the public eye, you need to spend some time thinking about your audience. Who will see/read/experience your work? Who will appreciate it? You also need to make choices. There are an endless number of stories to tell and ways to tell them. What will advance the story, and what will just be fluff? What is the purpose of a scene or a detail or a bit of language? Is it necessary to shock the audience? Sometimes it is, to tell the story you need to tell. Sometimes, it's gratuitous.

Too many screenwriters use shock to advance the story because they don't have anything better to say. They use graphic sex and violence to advance the plot when they can't think of anything else. If they want a broader audience, they make a different choice as an artist. In many ways, it's more of a challenge, and that's not always a bad thing.

Pulp Fiction was on cable the other day. Of course, it was so watered down I had to work to remember how the real film went. I love that movie, which may seem a contradiction. I love it because it's an exercise in desensitization. The first time I saw it, I felt traumatized through the first part of the film -- overwhelmed with the violence and the constant stream of foul language. But, by the end, I was swept along and fascinated, and strangely comfortable with the warped and deeply disturbed characters and their horrific actions. For me, it's a lesson in why children don't need to see graphic sex and violence in movies.

I'm sure the MPAA is not a perfect organization. We're all human and subject to human frailties. But, if they manage to bully some filmmakers into making movies that allow kids and teens to have a few more years of their childood, that's a good thing.

You have got to be kidding. It seems that the main concern here is not censorship, but money.

Abolishing ratings so filmmakers can make more money? That's unbelievable. Yeah, I think kids should be protected and I think that most parents don't rely solely on ratings when decided what is appropriate for their kids. But ratings are useful in giving audiences a rough idea of where a movie falls on the sex/violence/nudity continuum. This may come as a shock, but not everyone wants to view that stuff and not everyone has the time to read up on the myriad of movies constantly churned out to find out which are appropriate. It’s not fair to dump that burden solely on the viewers and the parents. The film industry should shoulder some of responsibility. And if that cost you a little money, well too bad. I have very little sympathy.

Railing against the MPAA is a little like railing against Roger Ebert. The members of the MPAA have a right to their opinion. I disagree with their opinions about the relative dangers of sex and violence, but I don't dispute their right to hold opinions or to express them. I even think they do a net public good by advising people as to their estimations of the appropriateness of movies for children, teens, and adults.

I also don't dispute the rights of multiplexes to listen to the opinions of the MPAA. They don't have to; they could ignore the MPAA and come up with their own rating scales for movies.

The problem is really about media monopoly -- or oligopoly. A few chains own the vast majority of movie screens, and they get to decide which films are shown on the screens they own. A few chains sell or rent the vast majority of DVDs, and they get to decide what movies are seen at home. A few conglomorates own the vast majority of television stations, of newspapers, of radio stations, and of billboards, and they get to decide what films are advertised.

Because so few companies make these decisions, it's not surprizing that so few different decisions are made. It's also not surprizing that the art -- and probably the business -- of filmmaking suffers when bottomlines of films, both independent and "mainstream," are so strongly affected by the decisions of so few companies.

But it's not Roger Ebert's fault that people listen to him (or don't), and it's not the fault of the members of the MPAA that people listen to them. The problem is that so few people get to listen.