One of the more enlightening things I've heard when discussing censorship, especially of swear words which we all know, was when I went to see Ira Glass speak here in Bloomington. He talked about how NPR has been fined for letting some swear words slip during This American Life and went into a show about interviewing children about swear words they knew. The result: obviously they knew them all and ain't nothing you can do about it.

But what caught my attention was the more than "they're just words" argument. He went on to say, "why don't we use swear words" and "why DO we use them?" He admitted to using them, who doesn't? But who uses them around their grandmother? And why not? Because he wants to be polite to his grandmother. Politeness. Not because his grandmother has never heard the words. So we don't use the words in professional situations, amoung family (some of us), etc because we want to show respect. An accidental slip, a word to portray a character in a film: they exist for reasons.

We all know the words. Children know the words. Do people who rail against these words and see them as pure evil on innocent children's ears not know how language works? Not know that the words communicate disrespect to the PEOPLE WHO HEAR THEM. And if a fictional character is uttering them to a fellow fictional character, only people in fiction should be offended. Or people who do not live in reality, i.e. the MPAA.

If only that little whore known as your mother had given a blowjob instead. We could have saved the 11 seconds it took to read your crap.

The boogeyman of the NC-17 rating is something that spooks a lot of filmmakers... and forces them to cut movies so they can get an R rating and be considered "acceptable" in most theatres and get advertised. There's no doubt there is truth to that.

The content that determines NC-17 is often very poorly or certainly non-uninformly applied, and that is a legitimate point that this article, and others like Roger Ebert, have brought.

The idea for an "A" rating, which is what NC-17 was supposed to be, a movie solely for adults, isn't a bad one - but it has to some how lose the stigma surrounding NC-17 if it is to work. NC-17 is basically the same as X now; it didn't have its intended consequence.

As many people have noted, these ratings have power only because people pay attention to them, and I know my parents followed the MPAA to the T. I was 13 before they'd allow me to see a PG-13 movie in the theatre, for example.

By and large, parents do have to take an active role in what they think their kids should be watching, and they have the MPAA ratings and plenty of other web sites to consult on these matters. I think the problem with the MPAA ratings isn't what-should-kids-see... it's the impact that the 'we must cut this to get an R' has on the "vision" of the filmmaker.

Is this a major crisis of our time? no, of course not. But should the rating system be exposed to a bit more transparency rather than the secret and rather strange system we have now? Yos, I think that'd be good.

But if more theaters/studios/newspapers/tv stations/filmmmakers just ignored the MPAA system, which is voluntary, it would rapidly lose its effectiveness.

What bothers me much more than the MPAA, is parents who bring their children to movies that are totally inappropriate. I've seen adults bring their very small children to violent R rated movies or other films with very adult content. This to me is a bigger problem than whether someone has to cut out some sex scene from a movie to get the R rating ... which will be on the DVD release probably anyway.

I've been amused, if a bit queasy, to watch Salon swing back and forth over the past year. A few months ago, we had the spate of "It's so hard to be a mommy!" articles. Lately we've had nine "God is dead" pieces, and now we get "Hey, we're not all breeders, you know". Next week: the puff piece on Baudrillard.

I am not a parent, and I still don't want kids seeing sex and ultra-violence when they're ten, because they're emotionally immature. Others may disagree, as is their right (though I want to smack parents who bring six year olds to films like War of the Worlds), but I have no problem with having a rating system. I think they have a much less deleterious effect on filmmaking than this "investigation" would have us believe. If things are so bad, how did Boys Don't Cry get made and see wide release?

Lastly, speaking of (self-)righteous, isn't Stephanie the same "thinking adult who cares even remotely about the vast artistic possibilities of moviemaking" who nominated Pride & Prejudice for EVERY category in Salon's last Oscar poll?

In my house growning up, there were real restrictions on violence, but pretty much none on sex (no, we didn't watch hard core porn) but flashes of nudity or sexual dialogue were not seen, by my parents as the devil's work. My mom took us to see the Art Carney movie "Harry and Tonto" when I was a kid. Great movie! Wonderful story! and...a woman flashes her brests. And I would have been none the wiser, had my mom's friends not told her how awful she was exposing us to naked breasts. I also heard plenty of bad language when I was a kid (most of it, not from the media but adults.) My childhood was not destroyed by this, the lasting effects are exactly zero, and I am still trying to find the evidence of its harm. Look, children are oversexualize today, but that is an active, rather than passive process. When department stores sell thongs for 8 year olds, and little girls are dressed up like 20 year old streetwalkers, we really aren't going to blame sex and sexual language in the movies are we?

As a 41 year old adult with no children, I am tired of how people feel the need to eliminate adult culture, by elimating those times, places and ideas that are not appropriate for children. Remember the controversy about people bringing their baby carriages into bars, when the owner posted a sign that they are not welcome and the up roar? Will parents be bringing their children to topless shows in Vegas and demand the showgirls cover up? Perhaps soon.