John Erck - This Film Is Not Yet Rated Reflections...
The movie This Film Is Not Yet Rated was an extremely entertaining movie. The movie was informative yet also clever and brought to light the subjective nature of the film rating process. As stated by Daniel P. Franklin in his paper, Politics and Film: The Political Culture of Film in the United States, "Make no mistake about it, American films are censored now and always have been. When we talk about the advisability of film censorship, it is not a discussion of whether or not but how and how much. Films are censored in one of three ways: by the market, by the industry, or by the government." The film clearly echoed this.
A particularly interesting topic that the film touched on was that of homosexuality. It brought to light the fact that the majority of films that featured any sort of homosexual encounter, regardless of how intense the act was carried out, received an NC17 rating, whereas films featuring heterosexual scenes that were far more intense received a rating of R or less. The topic of homosexuality is very political in nature and of course does not only relate to the film industry. The topic has recently had the limelight shown upon it with legislation being updated in some states to allow same-sex marriage. The film This Film Is Not Yet Rated brought it to light that discrimination is also abundant in the film rating process.