When I was younger and highly impressionable – of the age when advertisements over any medium aroused curiosity – I would often pester my mom, begging her to accompany me to the latest, greatest movies. “Pleeeeeeease, can we see” this terribly reviewed action flick or that mind-numbingly idiotic comedy. An entire script couldn’t have contained the ever-augmented “wish” list of films I rattled off.
            The roll was very inclusive of movies rated “R” by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), an affinity I suspect was influenced by that rating’s perceived aura of divinity.

As might be expected, few of my viewing plans came to fruition. At the time, around 8 or 10 years old, my exclusion from “R” rated movies felt terribly iniquitous. Who was Hollywood to tell me what was inappropriate for my viewing pleasure? (Besides Stephen Baldwin and Chuck Norris) it is a bastion of hyper-politically correct, liberal elites!

I would later realize my assessment of the MPAA R rating’s (and the entire system’s) intrinsic unfairness was justified; only I was wrong about its intent, which was not “to torment adolescent boys.” Nevertheless, we are in luck. MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards was kind enough to clearly espouse her organization's ratings philosophy to USA Today: “We don’t try to set standards, we just try to reflect them.” And that is precisely the problem.

The current MPAA ratings system (G, PG...), created in 1968, with a number of tweaks since, was a successor to the old Hollywood "Production Code" that lasted from 1930 until its demise at the hands of the modern system.

The Code, a system of self-regulation by the Hollywood studios, strictly enforced high moral standards (exemplified by bans on criticism of religion, references to homosexuality and depiction of illegal drugs), in lockstep with religious groups like the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures and municipal and state censorship boards. For a time, the restrictions were tolerated. By the late 1960s, the times they were a-changin'.

A mélange of factors heralded the Code's death. A significant aspect was a pair of Supreme Court decisions. One, “United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.,” found that vertically integrated monopolies in the movie industry – studio ownership of every step of the process from production to theaters – were illegal, allowing for the establishment of more art house theaters, which exhibited films that skirted Code regulations. Another, “Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson,” held that films are a form of free speech protected under the First Amendment, making government regulation, a fear responsible the Code’s strict implementation, unlikely.

The Court’s decision on vertical integration compounded a problem already faced by the American movie industry: depiction – or lack thereof – of sexuality and nudity. The proliferation of art houses, purveyors of more frank, and explicit, European and independent films, attracted audiences away from decidedly puritanical Hollywood fare.

But the single greatest blow was television. “The studios’ relationship with television networks was proving particularly nettlesome. The public appetite for theatrical movies on TV was insatiable – in 1967, they aired on at least one network every night of the week but Monday and sometimes drew more than 50 percent of the viewing audience,” wrote Entertainment Weekly’s former executive editor, Mark Harris, in the book “Pictures at a Revolution.”

To reengage the viewing public, studios would have to enter unchartered waters. They did just that in the mid-1960s with two films, “The Pawnbroker” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Both were approved, despite the former containing nudity and the latter having “unacceptable language” on 83 pages of the script. Though the MPAA claimed that “a film of lesser quality” would not have been treated so, implicitly the Code’s legitimacy was lost. In the summer of 1968, the modern ratings system was unveiled.

Looking back, the Production Code was an archaic means of imposing the morals of a select few on the whole country. In contrast, the current scheme is objective and unbiased.

According to a pamphlet released by the Classification and Ratings Administration (CARA), the MPAA’s rating division, “Movie ratings are determined by a full-time Board of eight to 13 parents. Raters have no prior film industry affiliation… Most raters’ identities remain

anonymous to shield them from outside pressures and influence. These raters are parents of children between the ages of 5 and 17…”

Each movie is viewed by the Board, after which raters vote what they believe an appropriate rating would be. So if R receives a majority of the votes that is the movie’s rating; unless, “a filmmaker believes the Rating Board erred in its rating assessment,” in which case “the filmmaker may appeal the rating of the film.”

The Appeals Board is composed of studio, theater and movie retailer executives. A two-thirds majority is required to overturn a Rating Board decision.

Succinctly, Joan Graves, chairman of CARA, wrote, “Ratings adapt with the times and reflect contemporary parental concerns.”

“Parental concerns” are great and all, but has the movie industry hired James Cameron to obscure inherent prejudice towards certain subjects? Kirby Dick explored the subject in his documentary, “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” to discover startling answers.

Interviews with notable directors and producers, including Matt Stone (“South Park”), Darren Aronofsky (“The Wrestler”), Kevin Smith (“Clerks”), reveal the MPAA’s hostility to films that treat profanity lightly, sexuality explicitly or religion satirically – and a relaxed approach to excessive violence.

Look, for instance, at the 1999 movie “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.” According to its creators, Trey Parker and Stone (and this is disputed by the MPAA), the original title was “South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose,” but that presented an obvious problem. “Bigger, Longer and Uncut” was kept only because it took the MPAA two weeks to “get” the joke, by which time it was too late for alterations – 100,000 posters had already been printed with that title.

A leaked correspondence between Stone and the Appeals Board documents (mostly unprintable) haggling over the film’s content: “We left in the scenes with Cartman’s mom and the horse as per our conversation. This is one joke we really want to fight for.” Another point of contention was a line that metaphorically described God performing a sexual act on a character, as a means of expressing that character’s pain and anger.

Meanwhile, excessive violence, such as Bill Gates being shot in the head at point-blank range, was ignored.

2003’s “The Cooler” was also embroiled in conflict with the Rating Board over its initial NC-17 rating. At issue was a fleeting, one second glimpse of female pubic hair during a sex scene. That surprised the film’s director, Wayne Kramer, who thought its large quantity of violence, if anything, would be the source of an unsatisfactory rating. Eventually, the image was cut to achieve an R rating for theatrical release.

On the other hand, a little known motion picture called “The Passion of the Christ” was treated quite differently. “I said the film is the most violent I have ever seen. It will probably be the most violent you have ever seen. This is not a criticism but an observation…,” wrote Roger Ebert. “The MPAA's R rating is definitive proof that the organization either will never give the NC-17 rating for violence alone, or was intimidated by the subject matter. If it had been anyone other than Jesus up on that cross, I have a feeling that NC-17 would have been automatic.”

Ebert is correct. You have to wonder what “Passion” would have been rated if the National Council of Churches and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops didn’t each have a seat on the Appeals Board; if those organizations weren’t involved in deliberations about whether a rating decision should be overturned. Their presence is eerily reminiscent of the days when a film was rated, based on morality, “condemned” or “morally objectionable in part for all.”

More important, you have to wonder how truly different the current rating system is from the Production Code. The CARA booklet says, and I kid you not, “From the early days of film censorship to a contemporary system committed to providing information and transparency about the content of films, the rating system remains a shining symbol of American artistic and creative freedom…” Joseph Goebbels would be in awe of that shameless proclamation.

The current system is not free, rather it censors more subtly, using economics to encourage conformity. Today’s directors and producers are not overtly banned from distributing a film with supposedly objectionable content, but that is the practical effect when most revenue sources – theaters and retailers – refuse to carry a movie stigmatized by NC-17.

According to the-numbers.com, a website dedicated to Hollywood news and information, the average box office gross of an NC-17 film (released between 1995 and 2010) is $3.3 million; a paltry sum compared to the R’s $15 million average.

A studio is loath to finance a film that does not turn a profit, let alone recoup its production budget. Artistic expression is sacrificed to obtain a desirable rating, so the studio may end the quarter in the black.

If the MPAA, and by extension the six largest studios constitute its membership, were serious about being a shining symbol of freedom, it would do the following three things: First, it would allow the government to rate films, as is the case in most other countries around the world. A bureaucracy accountable to voters adapts more readily than one accountable to few, if any, people (and by people, I mean corporations).

Second, the identities of the raters would be publicized. Any individuals in positions of power must be subject to public scrutiny. Imagine if the identities of school principals, CEOs or elected officials were concealed.

Third, the MPAA would have a Rating Board composed of child psychologists, not average parents. You know, the people who have clinical experience studying the effects of violence in media on children?

The movie industry should learn that America values honest freedom of expression more than gratuitous violence. But, alas, what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.