Censorship in the Age of Ratings
For nearly forty years now the movie industry has been under the control of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Ratings Board. The self-governing ratings system, put into place by then MPAA head Jack Valenti in 1968, has been controversial since its very beginning. Though arguments can be made both for and against the system, one fact should be indisputable: the ratings system has not ended censorship. Instead it has merely moved the battleground away from government regulation and firmly planted it in the realm of the free market. The MPAA ratings system has seen the end of government intervention, but has created an environment where the real battles over censorship are fought between the artists and the studios.
The studios, through both the Production Code office and the Ratings Board, have been effective in virtually eliminating the threat of governmental censorship in America. The Production Code and its enforcement through the middle of the last century accomplished the largest goal of the studios: keeping the federal government out of film censorship. The Code office did attempt to both work with and put pressure on state and local censorship boards, but by the time the Code office started to weaken in the mid-1960's most of these had been defanged by the Supreme Court and changes in the moral make-up of America. An important case in 1959 struck part of the New York censorship law as unconstitutional. In ruling that it was illegal to censor a film because of the ideas it expressed, the Court drastically limited the scope of what could and could not be censored (Leff 240). Rulings such as this were instrumental in curtailing the power of state and local government to censor film, but they did not mark the end of censorship. Non-governmental agencies such as the Production Code office and the Legion of Decency still held substantial sway over Hollywood because of their influence in the chain of distribution. Not getting a seal no longer meant getting the film's content cut by local boards, but it did still mean that such films would be restricted to the small art-house market. A small market necessitated a small budget, making this route unsuitable for a majority of productions.
In 1968 the MPAA finally gave in to external pressure and adopted a classification system in place of the Production Code seal. Two additional Supreme Court rulings had made it permissible for states to limit the access of minors to certain content and the MPAA needed to quickly put new industry regulations in place that would head off legislative action. Stuart Byron, a reporter for Variety, praised Valenti for creating the ratings system ``before a single state had time to pass a clarification bill'' (Leff 274). The new system included four ratings: G, PG, R, and X. The R rating was accompanied with the provision that children under sixteen not be allowed to see the film without a parent present. Though the ratings system has since been revised through the years -- the PG-13 rating was added, the age for R was raised to seventeen, and the X rating was renamed NC-17 -- the basic structure has survived and fulfilled its goal of preventing government intervention. The Ratings Board has served for close to forty years as self-regulator of the movie industry.
The ratings system brought with it a financial incentive to receive a favorable mark. The X rating was in effect the same as no rating at all. The exhibition market for such films simply did not materialize; by the end of 1969 nearly half of theaters had pledged not to show X-rated films, and several newspapers refused to even advertise them (Maltby 33). The situation faced in earlier years by those unwilling to cut their films to Code standards applied here as well: the film's budget must be commensurate with its exhibition market. Financial pressure was not simply limited to X-rated films, though. Even with exhibitor support, the restrictions placed on R-rated films limited their potential audience. The studios were wary of creating fare that would not be seen by conservative audiences and that could not be seen by children venturing to the movies without parental accompaniment. The choice for studios was rough: either meet the requirements to get a PG rating or lose a potentially profitable market segment. The addition of the PG-13 rating in 1984 was an attempt to reduce this divide and provide additional leeway for films before they were forced into the age-restricted R rating. The studios had financial results riding on the film's rating, and they in turn passed this pressure on to the filmmakers.
This fiscal pressure pits the artistic vision of those in the creative process against the profit-minded distribution system. Those putting up the funds for film production expect to have their investment pay off. Though lip-service may be given to the ideals of artistic integrity, the bottom line is that limited markets can only produce limited results. Historically the biggest budgets have gone to the films that could reach the largest audience, those rated from G to PG-13. Even in this spectrum the blockbusters skew to the end of PG-13; the widest audience includes both children and adults, and the perception is that most adults will not go to see a film rated G. Only very recently has it been shown that the R-rated film can be a blockbuster. A look at the fifty all-time highest grossing films in the US shows only two with R ratings: The Passion and The Matrix Reloaded. Both are films released within the last two years. Similarly only five are rated G (and all have been released by Disney) (``All-Time''). The rest fall in that comfortable middle ground of large markets and maximized profitability.
The need for funding creates a sort of free market system of censorship. Producers need to line up funding in order to get their films made, but this funding primarily comes with restrictions on the final product. The contracts between production companies and distributors often include language requiring the production company to deliver a film that meets a certain ratings target. Filmmakers, always desperately in need of money, have little leverage to demand otherwise, even if they value the integrity of their work over the profit to be taken from achieving certain ratings. Just like in the days of the Production Code, directors appear before the Ratings Board to haggle over cuts and inclusions, fighting to get as much as possible into their pictures while retaining that all-important rating. In the end the stipulations of the contract leave them with little recourse; they can haggle but at some point they have to give in and make the cuts necessary to deliver the promised film to the distributor. Though the rise of DVD unrated ``Director's Cut'' releases has given a new venue for showing films in their originally intended fullness, ratings pressure continues to dominate the theatrical markets. It costs a lot of money to make a money, and it takes a lot of viewers to make that money back, so those with the money dictate the rules. In a true free market system the viewers would decide directly what films succeed and what films fail based on their merits, but the current system is set up to stipulate content before viewers even get a chance to see the film.
Even now, though, the economics of the movie industry are rapidly evolving. Technological advances have brought the costs of producing a cinematic quality movie within reach of even an individual. High end DV equipment is still expensive, but it is orders of magnitude cheaper than the film equipment that precedes it. The cost of film alone has traditionally been enough to make production unobtainably expensive, but today that same production can shoot DV footage onto tapes that cost less than ten dollars per hour. The non-technical aspects of a production -- the personnel, the logistics, etc -- all remain expensive, but the critical technical element of production is now within reach of those that could never have considered it before. A $3000 Apple computer can today do with no drop-off in quality what in past years would have taken an editing suite full of expensive specialized equipment.
Exhibition and marketing are changing as well. Even though the technical merits of digital projection versus traditional film is a polarizing topic, it is undeniable that the proliferation of digital projection will mean a massive reduction in the cost of distribution thanks to eliminating the need for expensive film prints. Comparatively, even sophisticated methods of secure digital distribution look positively cheap and will only get even more reasonable as the cost of bandwidth continues to go down. Marketing too has evolved, but not necessarily in such a uniform manner. This is the digital age, and the Internet has brought about the infrastructure to allow word-of-mouth to spread instantly across the country and around the world just as easily as it can cross the street. Blogs, discussion forums, and instant messaging all offer individuals the chance to share their opinions. This collective word-of-mouth can do for a film much that used to require extensive publicity and expensive advertising on television and in magazines. The Internet population is fickle, and free word-of-mouth advertising is something that's hard to plan, but for underfunded films that do connect with passionate individuals the results can be tangible and very positive.
As the financial equations for production, distribution, and marketing change, so too will that of exhibition. The Internet, after a period of lawlessness, is starting to become a valid distribution mechanism for music content. As home theater and bandwidth technology advances so too will the Internet become a means for films to be distributed for home exhibition. It's too soon to say exactly what effect this will have on the film marketplace as it relates to censorship, but it clearly demonstrates that the censorship war is not over, and it never will be. Governmental and industrial regulations are not the only faucets of the censorship battle. The search for the almighty dollar will continue to be the aspect most important to determining what films are funded and what films make money. The digital age has opened up the marketplace to a new group of potential filmmakers, but it remains to be seen whether it will lead to a substantially richer tapestry of film creations.