![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silversolitaireFeel... rant... coming... must... resists... losing... control... ARRRRGH!
I have to rant about this stupid fiction rating craze that's going around right now. Okay, so I know there's the rumor going round of a cease & desist sent out by the MPAA to people who use PG-13 and NC-17 because supposedly it's a registered trademark yadda-yadda. I don't know whether it's true or not, but it most likely is. And it's not because they go "OMG my bootyful logo!", but for one very simple reason: the MPAA's mission is to put movies into a rating system to make it easy and safe for parents to judge whether their kids should watch this or not. This is their ONLY mission. That's one of the reasons why you have to be a parent in order to be on the MPAA board for movie rating. It's no statement on the quality of the movie, nor are they being judgemental about the amount of sex and gore. They just want to help parents. If you read their mission statement you will find this out.
If you consider all this you will understand why they're so protective of their rating system. Because it's not just a rating, it's a guarantee. By awarding a PG-13 rating to a movie the MPAA guarantees you that it will be suitable for your 13 year old teen. This is what they're being paid for. Yes paid. The moviemaker pays them a fee so they look at the picture and award a rating. It helps business to get the rating you desire and people have to edit and resubmit the movie many times in order to be suitable for their target age group. This shelters your children from unsuitable content. This is GOOD.
All if this is the reason why the rating system isn't public domain. People have an expectation in these ratings and they want to fulfill them. Unfortunately a lot of people use the ratings wrong. They rate around wildly for whatever they deem suitable or not. In a way this discredits the MPAA's rating system. And THIS is why they have to C&D people. Not because they have to protect their copyright; they have to protect their very justification to existence.
I really get the feeling a lot of people don't know this. They just rant around "OMG how dumb how much trademark can that be???" without knowing what really is behind all this. Maybe now they know.
And before you trash the MPAA even more, consider this. Without the MPAA you might still be subjected the censorship today. A simple glance at the development of the American movie industry will tell you this. In response to the movie industry becoming increasingly frisky with their movies, trying to best each other by being more experimental and scandalous, the Production Code was introduced in the 30s. Yeah yeah yeah, I know, it was the movie industry's attempt to control their content on their own to avoid the danger of interference from the state, but this is what it effectively boiled down to: censorship. For years movies were cut down, edited, changed and mutilated to reflect the Hays Code, to show the public an image that they deemed "homely and suitable". Things that were deemed unsuitable (among a long list of others) were "open-mouthed kissing", "white slavery" and "homosexuality. Not saying that this period harmed moviemaking terribly. As a matter of fact it created a wonderful movie language that managed to show things subliminally that you weren't allowed to show openly. But I digress.
It was thanks to Jack Valenti in 1968 that this changed. He became head of the organisation whose name slipped my mind at the moment. But he realized that it was time to change things up. That's after nearly 40 years of movie censorship, people. He felt that it was better to let people decide on their own whether they want to expose themselves to something, instead of just cutting it out. This is something we consider a given today, but it wasn't at all then. The first attempt of a rating system was G for General Audience, M for Mature Audience, R for Restricted and X for Adults only.
Can you imagine the jolt that went through the movie industry? Suddenly they could basically put ANYthing on the screen and nobody would tell them they'd have to edit it out or else not be awarded the okay and thus be refused by almost every movie theater in the US. This era of New Hollywood gave birth to movies we consider classics today such as Easy Rider, The Graduate, Harold and Maude or Midnight Cowboy. Most of those were given an R or even X rating at the beginning which was only revised later on. Some have never been resubmitted and still wear the huge fat R on their sleeves. But who cares? The movies were there and everyone had a chance to watch them sooner or later.
Of course, everytime when something good happens some morons have to screw it up. Along with the New Hollywood gems came the exploit movies, the gore, the porn. The XXX-rated flicks that played on the fact that they were MORE than just X-rated. It only took a couple of years to turn every movie with an X-rating into a movie pariah that most theaters refused for fear of harming their reputation. Hello again, censorship. Now, a movie with an X-rating was as good as dead, doomed to play only in seedy backstreet theaters. But hey, the movies were still there and this is why we still can enjoy them today.
And the MPAA reacted to this and awarded ratings accordingly, being a lot less generous with dishing out the Xs. And they revised their M category (which was often misunderstood as being harsher than R) into GP for General Audience / Parent Guidance suggested and later into PG. In 1984 the PG group was split up even further into PG and PG-13 to allow even better classification. In 1990 they added NC-17 and explanations on why a certain rating was awarded.
And this is where we are now. If you consider all this you realize why the MPAA rating was so important for each and everyone of us and why it's important for them to actively defend it. This is why it's not public domain. Because if people start using it without their consent they will lose credibility and if this happens, who knows what'll happen to our movies. The religious right might suddenly step down on certain content and force studios to edit it out again. Many horrible scenarios come to mind.
But, we don't want to paint the worst picture here, do we? Naturally, if a fic author uses NC-17 to rate their fics it won't hurt the MPAA all that much and it won't bring about a dark world of movie censorship and movie rating nazis. But it's a slow process and they just want to keep their rating's integrity. I think we ought to respect that.
That said, I have one last thing to say and this is why I'm really feel all that ranty today. Most people already have no fucking clue how to use the ratings! They mix and match current and obsolete rating terms as they please and slap them on their fics randomly. Because it isn't self-explanatory. You'd need to actually look it up and read what exactly this means and people just don't do that. We see the MPAA rating every day when we watch movies and trailers. We're sorta familiar with it, so it's okay. But now with this C&D panic everyone starts creating their own rating systems and it just makes me think... What. The. Fuck. Why on earth do we have to start dicking around with Ts and Ms and K+s and Xs and Q2s and whatever now? What is your problem? Just say "12+" and it's fine! Then everyone will understand it right away! >.<;;; It happened more than once lately that I looked at a fic rating and went "Uh... okay, what the hell does FRB mean???"
*groans* Haven't you people learnt ANYthing?
I have to rant about this stupid fiction rating craze that's going around right now. Okay, so I know there's the rumor going round of a cease & desist sent out by the MPAA to people who use PG-13 and NC-17 because supposedly it's a registered trademark yadda-yadda. I don't know whether it's true or not, but it most likely is. And it's not because they go "OMG my bootyful logo!", but for one very simple reason: the MPAA's mission is to put movies into a rating system to make it easy and safe for parents to judge whether their kids should watch this or not. This is their ONLY mission. That's one of the reasons why you have to be a parent in order to be on the MPAA board for movie rating. It's no statement on the quality of the movie, nor are they being judgemental about the amount of sex and gore. They just want to help parents. If you read their mission statement you will find this out.
If you consider all this you will understand why they're so protective of their rating system. Because it's not just a rating, it's a guarantee. By awarding a PG-13 rating to a movie the MPAA guarantees you that it will be suitable for your 13 year old teen. This is what they're being paid for. Yes paid. The moviemaker pays them a fee so they look at the picture and award a rating. It helps business to get the rating you desire and people have to edit and resubmit the movie many times in order to be suitable for their target age group. This shelters your children from unsuitable content. This is GOOD.
All if this is the reason why the rating system isn't public domain. People have an expectation in these ratings and they want to fulfill them. Unfortunately a lot of people use the ratings wrong. They rate around wildly for whatever they deem suitable or not. In a way this discredits the MPAA's rating system. And THIS is why they have to C&D people. Not because they have to protect their copyright; they have to protect their very justification to existence.
I really get the feeling a lot of people don't know this. They just rant around "OMG how dumb how much trademark can that be???" without knowing what really is behind all this. Maybe now they know.
And before you trash the MPAA even more, consider this. Without the MPAA you might still be subjected the censorship today. A simple glance at the development of the American movie industry will tell you this. In response to the movie industry becoming increasingly frisky with their movies, trying to best each other by being more experimental and scandalous, the Production Code was introduced in the 30s. Yeah yeah yeah, I know, it was the movie industry's attempt to control their content on their own to avoid the danger of interference from the state, but this is what it effectively boiled down to: censorship. For years movies were cut down, edited, changed and mutilated to reflect the Hays Code, to show the public an image that they deemed "homely and suitable". Things that were deemed unsuitable (among a long list of others) were "open-mouthed kissing", "white slavery" and "homosexuality. Not saying that this period harmed moviemaking terribly. As a matter of fact it created a wonderful movie language that managed to show things subliminally that you weren't allowed to show openly. But I digress.
It was thanks to Jack Valenti in 1968 that this changed. He became head of the organisation whose name slipped my mind at the moment. But he realized that it was time to change things up. That's after nearly 40 years of movie censorship, people. He felt that it was better to let people decide on their own whether they want to expose themselves to something, instead of just cutting it out. This is something we consider a given today, but it wasn't at all then. The first attempt of a rating system was G for General Audience, M for Mature Audience, R for Restricted and X for Adults only.
Can you imagine the jolt that went through the movie industry? Suddenly they could basically put ANYthing on the screen and nobody would tell them they'd have to edit it out or else not be awarded the okay and thus be refused by almost every movie theater in the US. This era of New Hollywood gave birth to movies we consider classics today such as Easy Rider, The Graduate, Harold and Maude or Midnight Cowboy. Most of those were given an R or even X rating at the beginning which was only revised later on. Some have never been resubmitted and still wear the huge fat R on their sleeves. But who cares? The movies were there and everyone had a chance to watch them sooner or later.
Of course, everytime when something good happens some morons have to screw it up. Along with the New Hollywood gems came the exploit movies, the gore, the porn. The XXX-rated flicks that played on the fact that they were MORE than just X-rated. It only took a couple of years to turn every movie with an X-rating into a movie pariah that most theaters refused for fear of harming their reputation. Hello again, censorship. Now, a movie with an X-rating was as good as dead, doomed to play only in seedy backstreet theaters. But hey, the movies were still there and this is why we still can enjoy them today.
And the MPAA reacted to this and awarded ratings accordingly, being a lot less generous with dishing out the Xs. And they revised their M category (which was often misunderstood as being harsher than R) into GP for General Audience / Parent Guidance suggested and later into PG. In 1984 the PG group was split up even further into PG and PG-13 to allow even better classification. In 1990 they added NC-17 and explanations on why a certain rating was awarded.
And this is where we are now. If you consider all this you realize why the MPAA rating was so important for each and everyone of us and why it's important for them to actively defend it. This is why it's not public domain. Because if people start using it without their consent they will lose credibility and if this happens, who knows what'll happen to our movies. The religious right might suddenly step down on certain content and force studios to edit it out again. Many horrible scenarios come to mind.
But, we don't want to paint the worst picture here, do we? Naturally, if a fic author uses NC-17 to rate their fics it won't hurt the MPAA all that much and it won't bring about a dark world of movie censorship and movie rating nazis. But it's a slow process and they just want to keep their rating's integrity. I think we ought to respect that.
That said, I have one last thing to say and this is why I'm really feel all that ranty today. Most people already have no fucking clue how to use the ratings! They mix and match current and obsolete rating terms as they please and slap them on their fics randomly. Because it isn't self-explanatory. You'd need to actually look it up and read what exactly this means and people just don't do that. We see the MPAA rating every day when we watch movies and trailers. We're sorta familiar with it, so it's okay. But now with this C&D panic everyone starts creating their own rating systems and it just makes me think... What. The. Fuck. Why on earth do we have to start dicking around with Ts and Ms and K+s and Xs and Q2s and whatever now? What is your problem? Just say "12+" and it's fine! Then everyone will understand it right away! >.<;;; It happened more than once lately that I looked at a fic rating and went "Uh... okay, what the hell does FRB mean???"
*groans* Haven't you people learnt ANYthing?
