3. The Contemporary Movie Rating System in America

EVELYN RENOLD

ONE of the most important and controversial American films released in recent years was Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. In this bold, disturbing film, the director works out his familiar themes—man’s innate propensity for violence, the link between sex and aggression, the power of the male bonding inst net—in new and provocative ways.

However, the version of the film seen by most critics and by the general public was not quite what the director had intended it to be. Just before release, Straw Dogs was cut—not at the behest of the studio that had finished the film, but rather according to the instructions of the Motion Picture Association of America’s Ratings Board. The climax of the film, in which the erstwhile shy, inhibited mathematics professor goes on a bloody rampage, brutally murdering a group of ruffians who have raped his wife and tormented him, was shortened; more importantly, the daring rape sequence was severely cut, thereby obscuring the meaning of the scene, and, to some extent, the meaning of the film itself. (The wife is assaulted twice; she responds with pleasure and excitement to the first attack, but is horrified by the second, a more violent, anal rape. In the release version of the film, the second rape is almost eliminated.)

Unfortunately, the last-minute alteration of Straw Dogs does not represent an isolated instance of Ratings Board interference. Far from it. Close to half the commercial films made in the United States are in some way reshaped by the movie industry’s censors, an isolated group of seven people who work in Beverly Hills, California.

The ratings system, largely the brainchild of MPAA President Jack Valenti, was inaugurated in fall 1968, with the blessings of the nine major studios (the member companies of the MPAA) and of the organizations representing industry exhibitors (NATO—National Association of Theater Owners) and distributors (IFIDA—International Film Importers and Distributors of America). In announcing the newly devised ratings scheme, Valenti officially sounded the death knell for the industry’s highly restrictive Production Code, which had governed the content of American films since 1934 had lost much of its potency by the midsixties. As the social climate in the country changed, and the movie-going public indicated its readiness to accept more sophisticated, adult material on the screen, studios began releasing films without the sanction of the Production Code seal. In 1966, the Code was watered down considerably to accommodate the subject matter of the more daring films that were surfacing; at the same time, the Code office was empowered to designate such films “suggested for mature audiences.” Finally, the decision was made to scrap the Code and formulate a new structure.

The original rating categories announced by Valenti were (as also noted by Arthur Lennig in the previous chapter) : G—general audiences, all ages permitted; M—suggested for mature audiences (later changed to GP and then to PG—some material may not be suitable for pre-teenagers); R—restricted, under seventeen requires accompanying adult; and X—no one under seventeen admitted. The ratings system was billed as a self-regulatory classification device, pure and simple—one designed, in other words, to provide information about films, and not to censor them as the Code had.

From the outset, however, the ratings operation bore more than a casual resemblance to the Production Code program it had ostensibly replaced. The ratings system, despite pious proclamations to the contrary, was basically conceived as a holding action, a protection against the threat of censorship beyond the confines of the motion picture industry. That same threat had breathed life into the Production Code, some thirty-four years earlier. (As former Code office official Jack Vizzard notes in his book, See No Evil: “The Code was signed into existence because of the growing threat of censor boards—both on the state and municipal level.”) This is not to suggest that the industry’s concern about censorship is unjustified or exaggerated; the recent Supreme Court rulings on obscenity, which I will discuss later, are ample evidence that the concern is appropriate indeed. Nevertheless, ratings spokesmen have confused the issue, by insisting the system is a public service, whose sole purpose is to aid parents in deciding what films to allow their children to see.

Considering the MPAA’s eagerness to create a new, independent identity for the ratings system, it seems curious that several Code office veterans were allowed to make the transition to the Ratings Board. These included Eugene Dougherty, who became the Board’s first chairman, after serving for many years as secretary to Code office czar Joe Breen; Al Van Schmus, a twenty-year member of the Code office staff, who acted as interim ratings chairman following the resignation of Dr. Aaron Stern, the Board’s second chairman, in December 1973 ; Janice Montgomery, who had worked as a Code office clerk; and Richard Mathison, a journalist who had come to the Code office in 1965. (Mathison and Montgomery still sit on the Ratings Board; Dougherty resigned shortly after Stern’s appointment.)

Although it would be fatuous to argue that the Ratings Board is as repressive as the Code office was in its heyday, the basic tactics of the “raters” are similar to those of the censors in several respects.

The Code office played an active role in the entire filmmaking process, offering advice and suggestions even during the preproduction stages. The Ratings Board functions similarly in at least one important respect. It is now a matter of policy for the major studios to submit screenplays to the Board, before production, in order to secure tentative ratings. The Board members examine these scripts carefully and then propose alterations and deletions. Ironically, every script letter which leaves the Ratings Board office bears the same admonition included on all script correspondence issued by the Code office: “You understand, of course, that our final judgement will be based on the finished film.”

Movie critic Pauline Kael, in an introductory note to the shooting script of Citizen Kane (included in The Citizen Kane Book), touches on another connection between the Code office and the Ratings Board: “It was customary for scripts [in those days] to include bargaining material—that is, scenes or bits of business and lines of dialogue that the moviemakers didn’t expect to get Production Code approval for, but that they included for trading purposes—so they could get by with a few items they really wanted. Thus the final, 156-page shooting script . . . has a bordello scene that was eliminated. . . .

"Today these games are still played with the Rating Board, and now as then, the joke is that often the most flagrant material put in for swapping purposes sometimes gets by, while relatively innocuous material is considered objectionable.”

This kind of swapping or horse-trading is, in fact, standard operating procedure today (although it usually occurs after a finished film has been submitted). In a typical bartering session, the Board will try to eliminate as much as possible from a film before granting the desired rating, while the studio or filmmaker will attempt to retain as much as possible without sacrificing that rating.

The Ratings Board classifies films largely on the basis of a set of guidelines, most of them formulated by former Board chairman, Dr. Aaron Stern. (The substance of the guidelines will be discussed later.) While these guidelines are certainly not as numerous or prohibitive as the provisions of the Production Code— which banned everything from the depiction of “illegal drug traffic” to miscegenation to “excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, and suggestive postures and gestures”—they are enforced just as rigorously. In the light of contemporary social and sexual mores, some of the guidelines almost seem as arbitrary, and finally as ludicrous, as the old Code regulations.

Under the old censorship system, when a film failed to meet the standards of the Code, it was denied a Production Code seal; today, when a film is rated X that same seal is withheld.

The Code office censors considered it one of their main duties to “advise” filmmakers on how to steer clear of trouble with the Catholic Legion of Decency— a powerful church-controlled group that kept a vigilant eye on the film industry and whose “condemned” classification could destroy a movie’s box office potential. Legion of Decency approval was so important, and so difficult to attain, that filmmakers were sometimes forced to cut their films for the Legion even after a Production Code seal had been granted. Nevertheless, the Code office and the Legion of Decency worked hand in hand, and almost all films which got a Code seal ultimately escaped the onus of the condemned classification. Although the Legion is still operative, its influence has diminished greatly and its classifications are no longer taken very seriously.

Today, the Ratings Board uses the threat of obscenity prosecution against filmmakers in much the same way that the Code office officials used the threat of Legion of Decency condemnation. In a similarly “helpful” spirit, the Board will indicate to filmmakers what they should excise from their films in order to avoid court action (and, by extension, financial loss and almost certain box office ruin). The Board’s motivation in providing this kind of advice is the same as was that of the censors: to extract as many concessions as possible from filmmakers.

From August through October of 1ç71, I served as a student intern on the Ratings Board. The internship program, instituted by Mr. Valenti in 1969, was ostensibly set up to provide some representation on the Board for the young people who constitute the largest segment of the nation’s movie-going audience. Although presumably the program existed to encourage the presentation of dissenting opinions (and, at the same time, to bring the Board into closer contact with the young film audience), it was my experience as a member of the Board that dissent was not tolerated. The internship was to have lasted for one year, but I resigned after three months.

Shortly before I joined the Board, Dr. Stern, a New York psychiatrist, had assumed the chairmanship. (Stern was succeeded in July 1974 by a communications consultant, Richard Heffner.) His appointment, which climaxed a particularly tumultuous period in the Board’s brief history, apparently was intended to appease critics of all persuasions: his avowed concern with the levels of violence permitted in the GP category and his academic credentials seemed certain to impress liberals, while his early pledge to restore credibility to the ratings system by making it less susceptible to studio pressures seemed sure to hearten conservatives. Instead, Dr. Stern ushered in a period of heightened controversy.

As an intern, I quickly became aware that the Board was actually engaged in censorship. I also learned that despite the Board’s democratic veneer, the members consistently acceded to the chairman’s wishes, carrying out his orders as would the most conventional of employees. Finally, I came to understand that the strength of the ratings system—or, more accurately, its durability—largely rested in the Board’s determination to conduct its business in almost total secrecy and to avoid public scrutiny altogether. Moviegoers have yet to be granted access to the most fundamental information concerning the composition of the Board and the premises and tenets by which it operates.

During the three months that I served on the Board, some 107 films were rated; of these, 48 were in some way cut according to the specifications of Dr. Stern and the Board, so that lighter, more commercially viable ratings could be achieved.

The official Ratings Board position is that a filmmaker can play whatever he likes in his film, provided he is willing to accept an appropriate rating, or, to quote Dr. Stern, as long as he “pays the price” for what he has put on the screen. While this approach may sound reasonable in theory, it fails to take into account several practical realities: (1) Economic factors in the film industry make it impossible for studios to accept the more restrictive ratings in many instances; (2) The Board actually encourages the editing of films; and (3) Unless a director has a “final cut” clause written into his contract—a privileged arrangement which only a handful of luminaries enjoy—it is likely that the final negotiations will be conducted without his participation and he will be forced to abide by whatever decision his studio or distributor makes.

The studios, in fact, will sometimes use the Board to coerce reluctant filmmakers into making cuts that the studios deem desirable. Alhough aware that this kind of manipulation occurs, the Board is extremely sensitive about the editing issue, to the point of refusing to acknowledge that they have anything whatever to do with the cutting of films.

While I served on the Board, six major studio films were rated X; of these, only one, The Decameron, sustained its original rating. Columbia Pictures ultimately secured an R rating on The Last Picture Show without making any cuts in the original version of the film. (This change came about following eleventh-hour, behind-the-scenes negotiations between the studio and Dr. Stern; the Board members, after being pressured into unanimity on the X rating, were not even consuited about the switch.) The remaining films— The Last Movie, Macbeth, Dirty Harry, and Straw Dogs—were all cut, according to the dictates of the Board, before R ratings were granted.

While it is true that the studios involved had the option of accepting the X rating, all were reluctant to take the financial risk carried by that classification. (United Artists’ willingness to accept the X on The Decameron is easily explained because the film was independently financed and picked up for distribution purposes only; with relatively little money riding on the film, the studio could better afford to take a chance on the rating.) Studio executives and filmmakers alike argue that it is difficult for the public to make the proper distinction between “quality" X films—e.g., Midnight Cowboy, A Clockwork Orange, The Devils— and pure exploitation films, most of which are self-rated Xs. (The X is the only rating which can be self-applied.) Several newspapers around the country aggravate the problem by refusing to accept advertising for any X-rated film, or, as in the case of the Los Angeles Times, grouping together ads for X-rated films, legitimate and otherwise. In the Times, ads for such critically acclaimed, mainstream X films as Heavy Traffic and Le Sex Shop were made to coexist with lurid ads for the raunchiest of exploitation films. In promoting its highly praised, X-rated Last Tango in Paris, United Artists took out segregated, full-page ads, partly to avoid the problem of guilt by association. Too, certain drive-in chains, and some theaters—notably in the Midwest and in the South—will not play X-rated films at all. It is not surprising, then, that a film stands to lose as much as 50 percent of its potential revenue if it is rated X instead of R. Studio anxiety about finances is such that increasingly films are contracted to be released with certain ratings—which means, of course, that filmmakers trapped in such arrangements will be obliged to do whatever the Board tells them in order to gain the promised classifications.

As previously noted, the Board’s role in the editing of films begins at the script level. Unless the script is particularly important or controversial, it will be read and evaluated by one Board member only. Rather than merely assign a speculative rating, the Board member will almost invariably list in minute detail the “troublesome” aspects of the script (complete with page numbers and line references) and will indicate what would have to be removed in order for the finished film to earn a lighter rating than the one assigned to the script. Sometimes, a script will be doctored and resubmitted several times until the studio secures the Board member’s assurance that the final draft has been sufficiently altered to qualify for a lighter rating. This happened with the script for the Woody Allen film, Play It Again, Sam, which originally drew an R rating, primarily on the basis of some ribald dialogue. At least one whole scene was rewritten—and purified—before the script was deemed suitable for the GP category.

Ironically, although the Board is instructed to write tough script letters, the members are still free to disregard those letters, when arriving at a final decision on the rating of the finished film. However, the Board still uses the letters as ammunition against the studios. In the case of Sometimes a Great Notion, Universal was warned at the script level that in order for the film to be considered for the GP category, the climactic scene, in which the “fuck you” finger gesture figures prominently, would have to be removed or somehow modified. When the film arrived with this scene intact, the Board member who had written the script letter became indignant; the rest of the Board was divided on the question of whether the scene could play in a GP film, but it was decided that since the studio had been warned, and had chosen to ignore the warning, that the Board ought to press for the alteration. (The scene was finally shortened by a few seconds, and the film got the lighter rating.)

During the screenings, each member of the Board is required to take copious notes on any and all items which might place the films beyond the G category. Individual lists, sometimes running to several pages, may include anything from an isolated use of the word hell to a description of a nude lovemaking scene or some brutal act of violence. A master list is compiled from the separate lists and, if the studio is unhappy with the rating assigned, this new list becomes the focal point of negotiations.

Usually, the studio or filmmaker is told that specific words, shots, or even scenes must be excised before the desired rating can be achieved. On occasion, a film is judged to have a “quantitative” (or cumulative) problem—usually too much nudity or too much profanity—for a given category. In this case, the filmmaker is allowed to use his own discretion in deciding exactly what to eliminate. However, the Board will admonish him that he is taking a “calculated risk” which means that they reserve the right to retain the original rating even after cuts have been made. Almost invariably, the desired rating is attained, although the Board may continue to demand additional cuts before it is finally satisfied. Low-budget, independently-made films seem to be hit harder when it comes to this kind of editing, mainly because the independent filmmaker has less clout than the film- maker working in conjunction with a powerful studio. In addition, the Board tends to be very respectful of the big-budget film whose box-office fate will bear significantly on the financial health of a given studio. (Witness The Exorcist’s R rating, widely criticized as being too lenient.)

Once the cuts have been made, the Board may elect to rescreen the entire film to determine if the general impact has been changed appreciably; it is more common, however, for the Board to reevaluate only those parts of the film which were earmarked for editing. Small segments of film will be shown, completely out of context, sometimes as many as a half a dozen times, before final approval is given.

For the first month or so of my internship, the editing was conducted in a fairly arbitrary fashion—that is to say, there were no set standards or criteria governing the Board’s decisions. During this period, it was difficult to predict just what elements in a film the Board might choose to fasten on and rate against. In the case of Medicine Ball Caravan, for example, Dr. Stern demanded that a shot of a young mother nursing her infant and smoking a joint at the same time be deleted to earn the film an R. Dr. Stern also decreed that the scene in The Last Picture Show depicting the sexual initiation of the mentally retarded boy by the town whore was strictly X material and would have to be edited before an R rating could be conferred. (He had originally insisted that the film had a cumulative problem and that no one scene was of X quality by itself.) Referring to the same film, another Board member insisted that the sound of the bed creaking in the love scene between the young protagonist, Sonny, and the coach’s wife was beyond the limits of the R category and ought to be somehow modified. As previously noted, the studio somehow prevailed and the film was released in its original form with an R rating.

Nevertheless, as haphazard as this process was, and as foolish as many of the individual judgments were, at least some real attempt was made to assess the general suitability of films for young audiences. However, after a short time, a new modus operandi began to evolve. Responding to what he claimed was a mandate from Jack Valenti and the company presidents who comprise the MPAA, Dr. Stern started to formulate a number of very precise guidelines for the individual categories. When I left the Board in November 1971, the following rules were being strictly enforced: (1) The portrayal of sexual intercourse was prohibited in any form outside the X category; (2) Nudity—including minimal breast and buttocks exposure—was forbidden outside the R and X categories; and (3) The use of the word fuck—or any of its derivatives—was barred from the G and GP categories. Also, although some modes of profanity (e.g., bastard or shit) were permitted in the GP, if such words surfaced repeatedly in a GP film, the filmmaker or studio would be asked to reduce their frequency. If these standards had been in effect six months earlier, films such as The Go Between, The Touch, and Ryan s Daughter would have immediately drawn X ratings. In accordance with the guidelines, a tame, youth-oriented film about the plight of the American Indian called Journey Through Rosebud was rated X because of a brief (ten seconds or so) scene of nude lovemaking, shot through a gauze-like filter; Buck and the Preacher, a comedy-adventure film, was initially rated R on the basis of a single bare buttocks shot in a non-sex-related context; Elia Kazan’s The Visitors, a sober study of the common human impulse to commit acts of violence, was originally rated X because of a brief rape-seduction scene, done in long shot, with no nudity involved; and A Safe Place, an obscure, fantasy-like film, was rated R because of a scene involving tongue-kissing (a more informal prohibition for the GP category) and one off-screen, barely audible use of the word fuck. Interestingly, once the offending love scene was removed from Journey Through Rosebud, the film dropped two whole categories.

The prohibitions on the various categories still appear to be in effect as of this writing, although the intercourse taboo has apparently been relaxed somewhat as evidenced by the ratings of such films as Dont Look Now (R) and Our Time (GP).

The guidelines were enforced singlemindedly while I was on the Board, with absolutely no regard for such elements as context or treatment. But the imposition of the guidelines did not signal an end to the earlier, more capricious editing practices, as the Board members continued to seize on arbitrary items not covered by the regulations. Thus, the guidelines emerged as an additional frame of reference as opposed to a substitute. Filmmakers who initially welcomed the guidelines, thinking that they finally had an objective, unimpeachable set of standards to refer to, quickly discovered that they now had to maneuver through an even more intricate maze of rules and regulations.

Inevitably, the inflexibility of the guidelines occasionally permitted a very mature film—a film which by all rights should have been restricted—to earn an unrestricted rating, because it failed to violate any specific guidelines or because it was edited in such a way as to circumvent the guidelines. The film Going Home, for example, was rated GP despite a scene in which a young child watches his drunken father savagely murder his helpless mother, and a later sequence in which a youth (the child grown up) rapes his stepmother-to-be. A grisly British horror film called Fright, replete with graphic physical violence and terror-indueing devices, was initially rated R and then rerated GP after modest cuts had been made.

About the same time that the guidelines came about, a new twilight-zone category, the “GP Tag” was put into effect. Designed to accommodate films which the Board considered appropriate for teenage audiences and over (the legend read “contains material which may be unsuitable for pre-teenagers”), the category was to give younger audiences access to films with more mature themes. Actually, the GP had originally been conceived as a teenage category, but the legend (general audiences—parental guidance suggested) was thought to have misled many parents into believing that the category was not substantially different from the straight G. However, while open to sophisticated themes and ideas, the new “GP Tag” remained closed to visual and verbal “explicits.” The impossibility of intelligently distinguishing between theme and treatment for rating purposes is perhaps best illustrated by Dr. Stern’s evaluation of The Hospital. The film contains several conversations on and references to impotence, orgasm, and masturbation, all of which he was willing to allow in the “GP Tag”; however, a flash shot of a woman’s partially bared buttocks, and a brief shot showing a faint grimace on the woman’s face during a love scene—interpreted as a response to penetration—were ruled unacceptable (and were subsequently cut). What this decision said, in effect, was that it was perfectly acceptable for a teenager to hear a mature conversation on sexual matters, but somehow unacceptable for him or her to see a woman’s naked buttocks for a couple of seconds.

(The handling of The Hospital by the Board also serves to point up the inherent absurdity of the guidelines themselves: the phrases “getting screwed/” “getting laid,” and “getting zapped,” were all allowed to play, but the word fuck had to be deleted before the film could get its “GP Tag”.)

In January 1972, the GP and the “GP Tag” were incorporated into one category, the PG, which carries the same legend that the “GP Tag” did.

The irony of the Ratings Board censorship program is that it ultimately accomplishes so little. On a major studio film, the final cuts frequently involve only a minute or two (or even less) of film time; in many cases, scenes will merely be shortened rather than deleted. While this kind of trimming can easily throw off the rhythm or emphasis of a scene and so distort its meaning, the overall impact of the film cannot really be changed. It is hard to imagine how the elimination of a few blows and a shot of some spurting blood in Dirty Harry could make this film a more acceptable R—or how the removal of a few shots of bare breasts in Diamonds Are Forever could miraculously turn that film into a PG. The potential harm from this kind of intervention by the Board is great, but there is really no way that the movie-going public can possibly benefit from it.

The Board influences film content in more subtle ways as well. For example, Dr. Stern would often advise a studio executive—in a very informal manner— as to what rating he (Stern) thought would be most viable commercially for a certain film. Midway through the Board’s first screening of Roman Polanski’s Macbeth, Dr. Stern conferred with the studio representative in charge of the film, and told him that he would be “crazy” if he didn’t cut the film for a “GP Tag” rating. After seeing the second half of the film, however, Dr. Stern changed his mind. On occasion, he would offer the opposite advice—he would suggest to a studio representative that the film in question had enough commercial potential to survive with a tougher rating, and that it would be doing the film a disservice to cut it. However, even this seemingly well-intentioned kind of advice is inappropriate at best. The chairman of the Ratings Board—or any member of the Board—has no business engaging in such a dialogue with studio personnel.

The Board’s enthusiasm for editing is partly a reflection of a basic insensitivity to film as a legitimate art form. The members are very much tied to the old concept of film as mass entertainment. Film is basically regarded as a marketable commodity which can justify its existence only by making money for the industry which spawned it. I don’t mean to suggest here that the members of the Ratings Board should be film historians or scholars; nonetheless, some familiarity with the medium—extending beyond an understanding of the economics of the film industry—would certainly be useful.

Dr. Stern would sometimes try to justify the Board’s role in editing films by suggesting that film is a collaborative medium, and that the finished work, unlike a painting or a sculpture, bears the imprint of diverse hands. He would also argue frequently that the filmmaker could not and should not expect absolute creative control, because of the tremendous expense involved in making a film. While it is certainly true that a number of professionally trained, creative people are involved in the making of a film, and that, because of financial necessity, a filmmaker frequently must be responsible to the studio which finances him, this in no way justifies the intrusion of an outside group with neither a creative nor a financial stake in the project. The Hollywood lore about films damaged or destroyed by insensitive moguls is voluminous; that filmmakers must do battle not only with the company executives but with the Ratings Board as well is sad indeed.

Still, Hollywood filmmakers as a group have not resisted the encroachments on their freedoms forcefully enough. The reasons for their reluctance to tackle the Ratings Board are fairly obvious. With the possible exception of some of the young filmmakers who are new to the game, most directors and screenwriters are well schooled in the art of compromise. To these veteran filmmakers, the demands of the Ratings Board may seem only the last in a series of obstacles, the final arena for compromise. Too, by the time their films reach the Board, the filmmakers may be weary of fighting—at this point, they are very much interested in getting matters expedited so their films can be released. Finally, most filmmakers are aware that they will eventually have to return to the Board and face the same group of people with their next film. The Board doesn’t exactly give blatantly preferential treatment to “friendly” filmmakers or vice versa, but the members do have long memories. Some misguided filmmakers, apparently hoping to ingratiate themselves with the Board, have actually written the chairman, thanking him for improving their films by forcing cuts on them. While I was on the Board, Dr. Stern would use these letters to try to bring recalcitrant filmmakers in line, to convince them that the Board had their best interests at heart.

Once a studio has decided to acquiesce to the Board, there is not a great deal that a filmmaker can do. Individual ratings decisions can be protested before a special Appeals Board—but winning an appeal is no easy task. (The filmmaker cannot even mount an appeal without the go-ahead from the studio or distributor.) Originally, a rating could be overturned by a simple majority of the Appeals Board members; that provision was changed, however, and now a two-thirds vote is required. Made up of representatives from the MPAA, NATO, and IFIDA, the Appeals Board is even more prone than the Ratings Board to protect big-budget films at the expense of smaller, independent productions. The Appeals Board has retained the R rating on such tame fare as Harry and Tonto, The White Dawn, and Thieves Like Us(all relatively inexpensive films) while overturning the R on the graphically violent Papillon(budgeted at a cool $13 million).

Clearly, then, the most effective avenue of protest is public statement. Unfortunately, if a filmmaker feels that his own film has not been seriously damaged by the Board’s reediting, he is unlikely to take a public stand against censorship; and if his film has been hurt by the cuts, he may fear that admitting as much publicly will jeopardize the film’s chances at the box office. Nevertheless, some prominent members of the film community have spoken out against the Board’s policies. Since Dr. Stern’s departure, in fact, the number of public complaints lodged by disaffected directors seems to have increased. In the April 1974 issue of Action, the magazine of the Directors Guild of America, director LaMont Johnson voices his complaints: “Four frames of film in which a barely perceptible view of a 12-year-old boy’s penis appeared in an underwater sequence gave my ... movie Visit to a Chiefs Son an R rating until the objectionable subliminal flash was blown up to eliminate it. That my film, from its conception to its final cut an unabashed family, kids-and-animals in Africa picture, should have the same rating as The Exorcist is an obscenity symptomatic of our national disease of censorship. . . .” Robert Radnitz, producer of family-oriented films such as The Little Ark, Sounder, and Where the Lilies Bloom, has also been outspoken about the Board: “I always said the rating system would come back to haunt us,” he is quoted in an article in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. “It was designed as a ploy to ward off federal legislation, but we have in fact since got closer to it. It comes down heavily on sex but lets a lot of violence go by. . . .” Radnitz goes on to say that he almost got an R on The Little Ark because the girl in the film undresses and her male co-star says the word Jesus. Even Clint Eastwood, a political conservative and a sometime supporter of the Board, has publicly protested the R rating on his film Breezy. Also quoted in the Herald Examiner, Eastwood says, “They [the raters] say they don’t want to become censors, yet in effect they are.”

The actual business of rating movies is conducted in a singularly undemocratic manner, with the chairman wielding tremendous power over a largely subservient Board. The members are basically functionaries, who execute the policies and the specific decisions handed down by the chairman. Former Ratings Board intern Stephen Farber, in his book The Movie Ratings Game, comments on the relationship which existed between the Board members and the chairman during the Dougherty administration:

The Administrator has a great deal of sway, and usually the group will go along with whatever rating he wants to assign a film—and whatever cuts he feels should be demanded. In some cases the board would decide on a rating and then discover that Eugene Dougherty was negotiating for cuts and promising a less restrictive rating without consulting the group. The other board members did not take offense when the democratic process was bypassed, for they believed the Administrator should have authority to act on his own.

The Board members remained similarly impotent during the Stern administration. During a trip to New York and Europe, for example, Dr. Stern personally rated two films— Fiddler on the Roof and Mary Queen of Scots —which the Board was never allowed to see. (Curiously, advertisements for Fiddler, which were placed before even Dr. Stern had a chance to see the film, carried the G rating.) In Europe, he also saw Diamonds Are Forever and provided the studio with a specific run-down of what would have to be eliminated for the film to receive the desired “GP Tag” rating. (The Board was later given the opportunity to see and rate the titles of the film.) In addition, Dr. Stern attended a special screening of Sergio Leone’s Duck You Sucker in Italy, and explained to the director what would have to be deleted for that film to qualify for a “GP Tag” rating. Finally, he saw The Hospital on his own, and informed the studio that the film could be rated “GP Tag” if substantial cuts were made. Although the Board was allowed to see this film intact after Dr. Stern returned to Los Angeles, it was understood that the rating had already been determined and that the members were to consider the necessary deletions only, although a couple of the Board members strongly felt that the film deserved an R rating and that too much would have to be cut in order to bring it in line for the “GP Tag.”

Frequently, Dr. Stern would not be present during the initial screening of a film; if the Board members felt that the film presented special problems or was particularly controversial, Dr. Stern would then see the film on his own time and report back to the Board. The film Black Jesus, an allegorical account of an African nationalist leader who is martyred by his white colonial adversaries, was rated R by all the Board members save one, who voted X. However, the members were slightly uneasy about the intensity of the violence in a couple of scenes, and as a result, Dr. Stern was asked to see the film. His “report” to the Board came in the way of a simple declarative sentence: “Black Jesus is an ’X’ “. The film had been made in Italy and sold to an American distributor who proved to be quite willing to cut anything to secure an unrestricted rating. The film was finally released as a “GP Tag”, a rating which seemed as inappropriate as the X had been.

In the film One on Top of the Other, an Italian-made suspense yarn, there are two shots of a decomposed skull, which appear at different points in the film. Dr. Stern insisted that the second shot be deleted before the film’s original X rating could be reversed, arguing that this shot, unlike the first, was gratuitous in that it didn’t serve to further the development of the film’s plot. (This line of reasoning—i.e., that which is extraneous to the barebones plot of a film is “gratuitous” and therefore expendable—was frequently used by Dr. Stern and a couple of the Board members to justify cuts. They were unresponsive to the argument that elements of a film which don’t bear directly on the plot may be essential to the larger purposes of the film and are not by definition gratuitous.)

A scene in Winter in Mallorca shows a child peeking through a keyhole and seeing her mother and her mother’s lover lying in bed. Dr. Stern insisted that children who have seen their parents engaged in the primal act can incur severe psychological damage. The fact that the child in the film did not witness any such act did not impress Dr. Stern; the child’s curiosity, or desire to witness the act, was sufficiently disturbing, as far as he was concerned, to require the removal of the shot to make the film acceptable for the “GP Tag” category.

Another time, Dr. Stern was asked to pass judgment on the bloody, climactic scene in a low budget horror film called Sweetkill; in explaining to the filmmakers why the scene would have to be trimmed for the film to get an R rating, he referred to the “subliminal, psycho-erotic force” of what was portrayed on screen. To underscore his point, he described the following experiment: the message “you are thirsty” was flashed on a movie theater screen at a speed too fast for the audience to perceive it consciously; the theater management then tabulated the number of soft drinks sold during intermission, and reported that the figure was significantly higher than under ordinary circumstances. Dr. Stern went on to suggest that Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman was the one responsible for developing a cinematic technique designed to reach audiences on a subconscious level.

Dr. Stern has repeatedly insisted, however, that he never considered the “unconscious psychological effects” of a film; in fact, he would even go so far as to say that his psychiatric background was incidental, and in no way related to the work he was doing as a rater. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said, “Would you like some half-assed psychologist sitting back and telling you what’s good or bad? That’s thought control! . . . The rating system in no way ever tries to make judgments on what’s good or bad for children. That’s censorship, and, by definition, that’s the beginning of a loss of freedom.”

The ballots which Board members are required to fill out following each screening are largely a formality. On those occasions when he would sit in on a screening with the Board, Dr. Stern would frequently ask for a voice vote at the conclusion of the film. This practice prevented the members from reflecting on their decisions, and, more importantly, encouraged conformity. While he maintained that the members were free to change their votes on the formal ballots, he was adamant about securing a preliminary “commitment" as he called it. Immediately following the screening of The Decameron, Dr. Stern asked, “Is there any- one who doesn’t vote X?" There were no dissenters.

While at times the Board members seemed to resent the chairman’s methods, they appeared basically to sympathize with his aims, and to agree that the Board had to present a united front to the industry and the public. Contrary to my initial expectations, the members turned out to be an educated, fairly urbane group who, for the most part, were not personally offended by the more explicit and provocative films to which they were exposed. Yet often they felt obligated to disregard their own instincts and responses, and to guide themselves instead by the imagined responses of more conservative persons. (If the Board is really supposed to rate for the “average citizen,” why then are there no “average citizens” on the Board?)

Although Dr. Stern certainly put his own very personal stamp on the ratings, his role and influence ought not to be regarded as entirely singular or distinctive. Eugene Dougherty, his predecessor, maintained a lower profile, but was as much an autocrat as Stern, and ran the Board in a similar fashion. Dougherty had obviously learned the rules of the game during his long service in the Production Code office; Stern, although he was never associated with the Code office, played his part like an old trouper. Unless the basic premises which govern the ratings system are rethought, there is no reason to believe that the current chairman, or any future chairman, will conduct himself in a vastly different manner, or have a vastly different impact on the ratings process.

In June 1973, the United States Supreme Court handed down a landmark obscenity decision, which seemed certain to have a profound effect on the motion picture industry, and, by extension, on the ratings system. The Court toughened federal obscenity guidelines and, in the same breath, gave individual communities broad powers to legislate against and prosecute obscenity offenders.

Three guidelines were provided by the Court for the preparation of antiobscenity legislation: (1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the challenged work appeals to prurient interest; (2) The work must depict or describe in a patently offensive way sexual conduct explicitly defined by the law; and (3) Taken as a whole, the work must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. (Previously, the Court had held that a work must be proven utterly without redeeming social value in order to be judged obscene.)

One month later, the new obscenity definition was put to the test. A jury in Albany, Georgia, found Carnal Knowledge—a highly respected R-rated film—to be obscene, and held that the manager of the Albany theater which had been showing the film was guilty of distributing obscene materials. In a decision that sent shock waves through the movie industry, the Georgia supreme court upheld the lower court action, ruling that a local jury has the right to decide what is obscene in a particular community in Georgia.

Hollywood lost little time reacting to the Supreme Court decision and to the Carnal Knowledge ban. Controversial films scheduled for production before the court decision were abandoned altogether; many other films dealing with relatively innocuous subject matter were modified considerably to head off possible censorship action. As several observers noted, the new obscenity guidelines, while ostensibly aimed at hard-core pornography, seemed more likely to injure “mainstream” Hollywood films in the long run—mainly because porno films, made on tight budgets, can usually earn back their production costs with a few bookings in a few major cities, while Hollywood films, most of them budgeted at several million dollars, must play all over the country to stand a chance of making a profit.

In a television interview in Los Angeles, Robert Wise, president of the Director’s Guild of America (which took a public stand against the Supreme Court action), spelled out some of the problems created by the obscenity flap:

Filmmakers are concerned because several of them have had projects that were to go and were “R” pictures—not “X” pictures even—that were put on the shelf the minute that decision came out because the producers were afraid to go out and put money into something that might not get shown widely enough. . . .

A friend of mine made a picture at MGM. It’s a story dealing with rape. When he made the film ... he was instructed to have an ׳’R" film. They wanted an “R” film. He made the “R” film. Now they are taking the picture over and doing anything that they can to it to cut it to a “PG”.

Director John Frankenheimer was quoted as saying that he personally knew of eight films which were not made as a result of the Court action. Stephen Färber and Estelle Changas, in an article in the New York Times, cited two specific examples: Last Exit to Brooklyn, a novel about an unlikely love affair between a middleaged trucker and a young transvestite by Hubert Selby Jr. which was to be filmed by Arthur Hiller, with major studio financing, and Cruising, a novel about a homosexual killer by Gerald Walker, which had been purchased by French Connection producer Philip D’Antoni.

The Court decision had other less dramatic, but nevertheless dismaying, effects. Studio executives, for example, accelerated their demands on directors to provide so-called “cover” footage for scenes involving profanity, nudity, or other provocative material. In the past, such alternate footage had been shot only so that the films could ultimately be sold to television; suddenly, the studios seemed prepared to use the substitute clips when the films were released theatrically—if circumstances so dictated.

On June 24, 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ruled that Carnal Knowledge was not obscene after all. Although the decision was immediately hailed by Jack Valenti and others in the film industry, it was far from a clear-cut victory for Hollywood. While declaring that the film did not depict sexual conduct in a “patently offensive way,” the justices upheld the right of local juries to base their obscenity determinations on the moral standards of their respective communities. And the Court’s specific defense of Carnal Knowledge did not appear to bode well for such films as Last Tango in Paris or Don’t Look Now. The justices declared that Carnal Knowledge was not obscene partly because “the camera does not focus on the bodies of the actors” during the scenes in which “sexual conduct, including ׳ultimate sexual acts׳ are understood to be taking place.”

Rather than clarifying their original decision, the justices succeeded only in confusing matters further. As was noted in an opinion filed by the Court minority (which supported the Carnal Knowledge decree but took issue with the confirmation of the powers of local communities to judge obscene material), the Court may now be pulled into the “mire of case-by-case determinations.” But the Court will not have time to hear every such case which arises; thus, important obscenity cases could well be decided by appellate courts across the country. The prospect of facing such courts on a semiregular basis cannot be attractive to the studio chiefs. The only way for them to avoid it, of course, is to continue their self-censorship program in earnest. Which they probably can be expected to do.

Although as I have pointed out, the ratings system was conceived as a protection against the kind of extra-industry censorship that the Court decisions have encouraged, the position of the Ratings Board has, ironically, been strengthened by the rulings. Studios which were once merely reluctant to accept X ratings are adamantly refusing to consider that classification under any circumstances. And, as indicated by Robert Wise, the studios are becoming increasingly wary of the R rating as well. What this means is that the Board can exercise even greater control over film content, now that the studios are desperate to get lighter ratings.

One bright spot in his otherwise bleak picture is that state legislatures, at least as of this writing, have not jumped on the censorship bandwagon. In May 1974, The Hollywood Reporter announced that only thirteen states had come up with new or revised obscenity laws as a result of the original Court ruling. And in California, the already existing obscenity law was declared unconstitutional in June 1974, a decision which immediately terminated all obscenity prosecutions in the state, including a scheduled retrial involving the film Deep Throat. (Prohibition of the exhibition of obscene materials to minors was not affected by the ruling.)

Meanwhile, the MPAA, under Valenti׳s direction, has been promoting its own, so-called “model legislation,” designed to draw a clear distinction, for law enforcement purposes, between hard-core films and quality adult films. The concept has not been widely embraced by filmmakers, who argue that the distinction is largely a matter of personal taste and cannot be precisely articulated. Says Robert Wise: “In our view [i.e., the Director’s Guild] the decision is a wrong decision. It’s unconstitutional . . . and it’s an infringement on our civil rights. There should be no qualification between a pornographic film and a nonpornographic film.”

In light of the regressive Supreme Court rulings and the resultant panic in studio executive suites, it may be difficult to effect liberalizations in the ratings system in the near future. On the other hand, the censorship crisis has clearly given the creative community in Hollywood a sense of shared purpose, of common cause. Filmmakers may be starting to realize that if they join together and if they are determined enough, their voices will be heard. The Court decisions have served to focus attention anew on the Ratings Board; now that it is abundantly clear that the ratings system has failed to shield Hollywood from “real” censorship, perhaps filmmakers will press harder for changes.

What form should such changes take? First and foremost, the coercive elements embedded in the ratings structure must be abandoned to make way for a completely advisory structure, one in which the ultimate decision on what should and should not be seen by young people would be left in the hands of parents. This revision would be in line with Mr. Valenti’s original concept of the ratings system as a device to help parents make their own decisions on what to allow their children to see. A lessening of the onus on the adult categories would almost definitely accompany such a change; presumably, the studios would be less reluetant to accept tougher ratings as long as those ratings didn’t automatically keep large numbers of movie-goers out of the theaters. The industry should also consider the total elimination of the X category, which has surely proven to be the weakest, most troublesome link in the ratings structure.

Revamping the ratings system along the lines I have suggested need not entail an abdication of responsibility on the part of the Board. On the contrary, an advisory program could provide more information on film content to concerned parents. The Board could issue a regular bulletin with plot summaries, and brief descriptions of the more “adult” aspects of new films. Such bulletins might be published in daily newspapers, or posted at theater box offices, or both.

Finally, the internal workings of the Board should be changed. Even though the Board is a part of the MPAA, it must achieve some measure of autonomy. Individual ballots and votes must be respected; and the censorship of screenplays and finished films must be stopped completely.

Defenders of the ratings system have consistently argued that film censorship in other countries is far worse than it is in the United States. They go on to insist that the ratings system, as presently constituted, is a necessary evil, and that we should be thankful that it does as comparatively little damage as it does.

While it is true that films are censored with greater abandon in many foreign countries, certain factors should be kept in mind: (1) Censorship bodies in most other countries are clearly identified as such and are not permitted to hypocritically masquerade as classification systems designed to help the filmmaker; (2) The sensitivity to explicit sexual material on the screen is far greater here than it is in most European countries; and (3) Since Hollywood is regarded as the film capital of the world (run-away production notwithstanding), it stands to reason that our approach to film censorship should be more enlightened in this country.

It is also important to remember that the damage done by the Ratings Board cannot be measured in excised film clips or script deletions alone. The Board has helped to create an atmosphere of tension in Hollywood (exacerbated, of course, by the Court rulings) and has functioned as an intimidating force, frightening studios and filmmakers into taking fewer risks and opting for more conventional film fare. In this sense, the damage must be viewed as considerable indeed.

While every artist, regardless of the medium in which he works, must make some concessions to those who can afford to promote his art and bring it to the public’s attention, it is safe to say that filmmakers have had to pay more than their share of dues to the business community. And while it is undeniable that great cinematic works of art have been produced in this country despite studio pressures and meddling, filmmakers have nevertheless been severely inhibited by the demands of the men who hold the pursestrings.

The ratings system, like the Production Code program before it, has imposed yet another set of debilitating restraints on artistic freedom in the film industry. Unless the power of the Board is checked, the ratings system—fueled by the fears of the studio moguls and the whims of the citizen censors—will continue to take a heavy toll on creative expression on the American screen.