This Film Is Not Yet Rated
I think anyone who really loves film as an art form an a form of discovery that has so much more to be explored would find most acts of censorship as unfortunate. In the United States we have no official, government regulated legal censorship. But we do have a industry self regulated entity that essentially censors movies with the illusion that it doesn't. It's the ratings board that was created by the MPAA. The members of this board are anonymous. There are no official rules on how they even place one film into one rating or another. The people who are on the board don't even have any official training in child psychology or anything related to it. They are just supposed to be average parents of young children (it's later revealed most aren't). You may argue that even official government censorship would be better than this since at least then you have transparency and the ability to reform. Many people who speak in this documentary make such an argument.
This film takes a great look at the MPAA ratings board. How was it created. What processes does a filmmaker go through. How do they pander to big studios while leaving actual artists out of luck when it comes to making real art readily available to the public.
There is a lot of unmasking here of not only the practices, but of the actual identities of the people who are passing moral judgment on the films that you see in almost any movie theatre. And in a wonderful bit of meta-film the movie you are watching itself goes through the MPAA process. I can't imagine what the board members who thought of themselves as anonymous thought having to watch the movie to give it a rating and seeing their names and faces up on the screen for everyone to see. Of course they themselves had the power to regulate whether the film would be seen by a mass audience or not, but at least now the information is out there to anyone who really wants to seek it.
The way these people are used and bullied by the MPAA and studios is astounding. Although they let themselves be put in these positions. It's such a place of control and fear that the MPAA and movie studios take. They are not protecting our children as they claim, but protecting the studios from protest and bad press. But in the meanwhile they have conditioned the American people to which types of things are actually offensive or not. And it has created a society where the natural reaction of many people is to feel like violence is wonderful and sex is offensive.
I highly recommend this film. Show it to as many people as you can!
Rating: 9/10