There's nothing I hate more than hypocrisy, except maybe our culture's willingness to tolerate violence but condemn sex. So lucky for me, I came home from a screening of Blue Valentine last night and got the opportunity to rant about both.
As a sexologist, I couldn't wait to see Derek Cianfrance's Blue Valentine. For weeks I had heard that Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams engage in one of the hottest sex scenes in film -- so hot that the MPAA gave the movie an NC-17 rating. (In layman's terms: No one under the age of seventeen may be admitted -- even with an adult.) This rating has huge implications for ticket sales, marketing, and general recognition, so you would think that Blue Valentine had to be... well, pretty damn blue.
There is no question that I had a physical response to Blue Valentine, but it wasn't sexual arousal. I watched an excruciatingly painful demise of a marriage. I watched a tormented husband trying to connect with his wife physically and emotionally, failing miserably each time. I watched a tormented wife shut herself off from any sexual or emotional connection. So sure, I had a reaction. Blue Valentine made me uncomfortable. I was a voyeur in ways that didn't turn me on, but rather, made me anxious. Blue Valentine forces us to consider our own relationships and the roles we play in them. Cianfrance -- and the brilliant performances by Gosling and Williams -- force us to recognize our own flaws. They show us what it's like to fall passionately and blindly in love and fall as tragically out of it, all the while grasping for some lifeline back to what it once was.
You're probably wondering: What about the sex? I know. I was wondering the same thing. What scene could have been so salacious that it warranted an NC-17? There is sex, including a scene where Ryan Gosling is performing oral sex on Michelle Williams at the beginning of their relationship. Was it consensual? Yes. Was it a glimpse of an incredibly intimate and vulnerable moment for the couple? Yes. But while it's a scene (man performing on woman) that doesn't get portrayed on film very often, and though it's certainly sexual, it is by no means exploitative or gratuitous. And in the most provocative scene the couple doesn't even have sex, because Gosling doesn't want the woman he loves to just lay there "like a body." Don't get me wrong, it's an emotionally brutal scene. But does it warrant the NC-17? No way.
Now brace yourself: Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky's ballet thriller with Natalie Portman, has its own girl on girl oral sex scene and the MPAA rated it (wait for it...) R. Can you smell the hypocrisy?
The lowdown? The MPAA's decision has no merit. And if the hypocrisy doesn't convince you, here's something else.
Saw 3D: chock-full of decapitations, torture, and murder in the most grotesque ways was rated R. For Colored Girls..., an R-rated (for "some disturbing violence") film that I sat and actually paid money to watch, showed a brutal rape, a back alley abortion, and a drunken father murder his children by dropping them out of his apartment window. (That's more than "some" disturbing violence. I screamed and sobbed hysterically.) All of these brutalities (done primarily to women) are apparently fine for children to see with an "adult" in tow, but sex (or as it appears to be, oral sex) within the context of a burgeoning (or failing) relationship is not. This seems like pure misogyny from the MPAA. It's detestable.
And in the end, what's wrong with sex? We are all sexual beings, from birth on. We should want our children to know that sex is a wonderful and pleasurable part of a mature relationship. (That's how I was taught; it's also the same philosophy I use to teach others.)
So while The Weinstein Company petitions the MPAA this week to change their rating, please consider making your voice heard as well. Sign the petition here.
Follow Dr. Logan Levkoff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LoganLevkoff
When you have a female character getting the same attention from a female lover--Hard "R"!
When you have a Thugee High Priest ripping the living heart out of a victim? PG-13
What is wrong with this picture here?
--RKJ
Nothing.
Religion comes in second. Maybe not even a close second.
Instead they should come up with s system that tells people and parents WHAT THE FILM CONTAINS in easily understood terms and then LET THE MARKET DECIDE.
For instance the system might be a VLS one-to-ten rating scale for Violence, Sexuality and Language. A film like Snow White would get V-0, S-0, L-0 because it contains no violence, sex or coarse language. A film like Saw would get something like a V-10, S-2, L-8.
A better system would contain more categories. We could know if the film contains racism, homophobia, rape, torture, and so on. Whether the "sexuality" is mere nudity, even breaking it down to breasts, and/or buttocks, and/or genitalia, multiple instances or briefly, etc. Or if the sexuality were actual sexual acts, their number and explicitness, etc. Violence could be defined as "cartoon violence," i.e. lots of explosions and gunfire but no serious blood, death or dismemberment (Bruckheimer violence as it were), or "real violence" with blood, guts, pain and suffering, and so on (Scorsese violence for example).
Ultimately, the job of the film industry should be to provide people with accurate information upon which to make informed individual choices. Not the biased, bigoted, misogynist, puritan nanny state it is now.
However, while I agree that other information (i;e., about racism, homophobia, political conservatism, etc.) would be helpful to both parents (to vet movies for their children) and movie-goers, there is a point beyond which a rating becomes a review. I'm not sure where the line is, but I'd prefer to be able to get from a rating a sense of what broad category of potentially objectionable material (if any) a movie contains rather than a detailed list.
If kids are going to be exposed naturally there's nothing parents can do but parents should at minimum be allowed to have some expectation for the substance that will be shown of TV, whether by ratings or censure.
I am not talking about why "The Media" responds to things. I'm saying people in my experience are disturbed far more in real life by real violence than by real sex. This seems to be the opposite of the way we respond to this things presented to us in some form of media, movies, books, ect.
For example you might be annoyed or amused by hearing your neighbors having sex through the wall. You'd be a lot more upset, and feel the need to intervene if you heard the neighbors having a physical altercation.
Than again the film ratings board are also notoriously sexist. They have issues with showing women receiving sexual pleasure on camera, but have no problem showing women brutalized on film. My guess is that Natalie Portman's character didn't derive as much pleasure as Michelle William's character.
I recommend everyone rent the documentary, "This Fim Not Yet Rated" about the convoluted way in which the ratings board rate movies.
And if that might be one reason for how ratings are established for each film?
--RKJ