The Ineffectiveness of the Film Ratings System :: Movie Film Essays

John Small, a fourteen year old boy in Uptown St. Paul, proceeds into the Suburban World Cinema, nauseous to see Abel Ferraras Bad Lieutenant. He is equipped with a parental pull down, replete with the phone number where his parents can be reached to verify that they did indeed author the note should its authenticity be questioned. John pushes seven crumpled-up dollar bills and the folded note into the metal dugout under the box office window, only to be met with a tinny, chivalrous voice booming through the round silver speaker mounted on the window No children under seventeen allowed Sorry. This note isnt gonna cut it. The incidental exemplifies a pressing issue in the ever-topical discussion of the oft-vilified film rating classification dodging in our country. Is the movie rating system, originally designed to service parents in guiding the movie-going habits of their children, actually preempting parental choice? To at least some people, however, Jack Valenti, the man respo nsible for devising the Motion Picture experience of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners, is leading the effort, as editorialist James Wall put it, to protect children (1227). Valenti wrote, The voluntary Movie Rating governing body has one objective to issue advance cautionary warnings to parents so they can make their own decisions about what movies their children should or should not see. No one -- appointed, anointed, or elected -- ought to insert themselves into individual parental decisions (87). But the film classification system, designed to assist parents in making decisions about their offsprings film patronage, often thwarts that really purpose and, in the process, actually stifles the creativity and honesty of the film industry as well. Although Valenti and the Rating Systems advocates claim that parents should have the final choice in what their children view, the system may, in practice, obstruct that purpose for parents who decide that their chil dren should see some films. For films with the controversial NC-17 rating, the theatre is prevented from letting young John Small and his under-aged ilk from seeing a film despite his parents permission. In fact, had John actually been accompanied by his parents, the theatre would have had every right -- some would even say accountability -- to refuse his admission. The printing of the NC-17 rating often does not read -- as would be reasonable -- Intended for Adults Only but rather the more unfaltering Not to be Attended by Children Under Seventeen.