Unusual MPAA ratings

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The last 6 Star Wars Episodes. Horror should be 18+
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I had a conversation over the NC-17 rating with some friends and they said they never even heard of the NC-17 rating. I guess I can't be surprised that they never heard of it, since hardly any movies are NC-17 now. And this got me thinking, why is it that the NC-17 rating is considered box office poison if a lot of today's young generation hasn't even heard of the rating, and therefore will not associate it with porn? Or would they still?



mattiasflgrtll6's Avatar
The truth is in here
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga:
Rated PG-13 for crude sexual material including full nude sculptures, some comic violent images, and language"

"Full nude sculptures"?!
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I had a conversation over the NC-17 rating with some friends and they said they never even heard of the NC-17 rating. I guess I can't be surprised that they never heard of it, since hardly any movies are NC-17 now. And this got me thinking, why is it that the NC-17 rating is considered box office poison if a lot of today's young generation hasn't even heard of the rating, and therefore will not associate it with porn? Or would they still?
I know this post is, like, a year old.

But the reason that NC-17 is considered box office poison is because under 17 are not admitted. Period. With an R rating, an adult can take children into the film, and some theaters are not super strict about checking that everyone buying tickets for an R movie is actually over 18. I'm sure plenty of teenagers got to see the R-rated Logan or Deadpool. Theaters are more strict about checking IDs on NC-17 films. It's not so much about people associating it with porn (because telling teens that there is a ton of sex in a movie makes many of them want to watch it more, not less), it's about theaters not being able to access that teen market combined with some old-fashioned associations with the rating.

That said, I can't say that the NC-17 films I've seen (Crash, Lust Caution, The Cook the Thief His Wife and Her Lover, Tie Me Up Tie Me Down, La Grande Bouffe, Bad Education, Santa Sangre are much worse than many R rated movies I've seen. And that's where you see that violence/sex breakdown. In The Cut features some really gruesome, grisly violence, and yet if you look at what was cut from the film to get an R rating, it's shots from sex scenes. Don't get me wrong, I don't think some 12 year old needs to see a graphic depiction of sex, but why are we okay with that same 12 year old seeing graphic images of a woman who has been violently killed?

There was a documentary made about 15 years ago about how MPAA ratings work, called This Film is Not Yet Rated. One of the things that they highlight is that with few exceptions (such as the number of F-words), there aren't distinct guidelines. It also talks about how ratings tend to punish sex more than violence, and how (prior to this film being released) directors couldn't point to other films in an appeal. There are some really interesting interviews with different directors about the whole process.