The Ratings Systems

Remembering that I am a film major and an Anglophile it should come as no surprise that I love anything to do with a combination of the two. Accordingly I am fascinated by the rating systems in place in both countries and how they are often divergent. (If you have been reading my blog from the beginning you may note that I am now finally broaching this subject, as I mentioned it in my very first post!) I began looking into the topic because the British seem to be becoming more and more progressive, as the Americans are going the other direction in terms of censoring films. I have been working on some essays regarding these differences, doing research to try and find some explanations. I plan to bring you some of my findings in the future, but for now I thought it might be useful to lay out the rules of the ratings, with a little more detail than you might get off their website. 

The American film ratings system, as we know it today, has been around since 1968. The Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA) gives the ratings and they began as follows: G for general audiences, M for mature audiences, R for restricted audiences and X for adult audiences only. Two years after the system was implemented, PG was added and PG-13 came out in 1984 when it was determined that PG movies had become too violent and inappropriate for younger viewers. X rated films were acceptable to audiences, one going as far as to win the Best Picture Academy Award in 1969 (Midnight Cowboy) but over time the porn industry adopted the symbol and the sophistication factor of the X rated film disappeared. 1990 brought the final change that most directly clashes with the British system and that perhaps has had the greatest affect on adult films. It even makes it hard to use the term “adult film” because now that commonly only refers to pornography. In 1990 the X rating was officially changed to NC-17 but the damage had already been done. Few distributors or exhibitors wanted to show films that were NC-17 and while it is not illegal for a film to be released unrated it is uncommon because of economic pressures. 

My Soul Mate!

I have found my soulmate. Or at least what my professor might consider my ‘social bookmarking soul mate’ to be exact. I have no idea about their identity other than that their delicious account name is beepbeepcar, which I like a great deal. We seem to have enough interests in common as I had a wonderful time going through sites he or she tagged. There are tons of sites under labels like London, UK, music, drinking, books, travel, recipes, events, food- even foodblog is a separate tag. Most of the sites they have saved have not been labeled or described with anything more than the tags. However the tags are used well to organize saved items. Even if that means having 6 tags because all apply. For a website that is home to dance and theatre events in London the tags are London, arts, dance, whatson (I like that tag), events and theatre. Makes good sense to me. He or she has over 900 tags and seems to tag quite often. They mark sites at least every few days it would seem and sometimes will mark 5+ at a time.

Though I have found a number of new sites, and in particular blogs, that I am glad to have discovered I will point out just two that would likely be of interest to you, my own blog readers (assuming you are out there).