This Film is not Yet Rated_ Review
In a time where movies are released every weekend, every day and nearly every hour of the day, increased censorship existed in what Franklin states exists in three forms (the market, industry or the government). I the Kirby Dick film This film is Not Yet Rated we see the documentary about the MPAA and their way of rating. This film is not an ordinary documentary, but one that I had thought was a Michael Moore type film. Kirby shows in the Franklins perspective of the censorship in the industry that the MPAA is somewhat of a corrupt organization of Spies. The people that work in the MPAA office are more than just people, they are unknown to the whole Hollywood industry as well as to the general public. Industries censor their films in order to comply with the MPAA to get a lower rating all the time. If they don’t comply with them on certain issues they are almost always given a film rating of NC-17 for some of the ideas they center around and this is not as good as what an R rating will do for them. I had no idea until watching this film that parts would be excluded because of the censorship that this MPAA enforces. I guess that it makes sense but I also feel that films in today’s society can still be released without a rating and still do very well. Also I feel that the enforcement of this rating system seems very miniscule and Franklin goes to tell the story that the FTC has done a great job of regulating films in the movie theatres but when it comes to rentals a high level of non-compliance existed. Therefore there is hardly a line sometimes for censorship that exists but it still is a problem that society faces today.
My favorite part of this week’s film was the fact that it was not rated. This film was originally submitted to the MPAA and it was given a rating of NC-17 and the film tells of this. Than it goes to show that when they contacted the MPAA they simply said reduce this part and this part in order to comply. That clearly went against the ideas of the film so it was released as not rated and did very well in the box office. It was even given a standing ovation at the Sundance film festival. All in all this film highlighted ideas that I did not even know about will still continue to question films as to if they were censored in order to comply to this rating system.