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A Brief History Of Women's Sexuality In Hollywood
The Motion Picture Association of America’s film ratings system, which came into effect in 1968, rising out of the ashes of the increasingly obsolete Hays Code, wields a peculiar power over American moviegoers and, indeed, over American film culture as a whole. Despite its complete authority in dictating what content is considered “inappropriate” for moviegoers, the MPAA is not, in fact, a government organization, and its members are not made known to the public. Its criteria for each rating are also not publicized, and are often nebulous. Sofia Coppala’s adaptation of The Virgin Suicides, for instance, was rated R for “strong thematic elements involving teens,” whatever the hell that means, while Twister was rated PG-13 “for intense depiction of very bad weather.” (Many more can be found at Thought Catalog.)
The intense secrecy surrounding the organization is made especially problematic by its tendency to deem sex more “inappropriate” than violence. In his documentary on the MPAA, filmmaker Kirby Dick emphasized the extent to which sex – particularly queer sexuality and any form of female sexual pleasure – has been stigmatized by the ratings association. In the film, Kimberly Pierce, director of Boys Don’t Cry, points out that the MPAA had no problems with a scene in which a transgender character is brutally beaten, but did object to a long shot of Chloë Sevigny’s face during an orgasm. Similarly, others have raised criticisms of the organization for being more lenient with violent rape scenes than with scenes depicting female sexuality in a positive light – a debate that was catalyzed in late 2010 by the ratings the MPAA gave to Black Swan and Blue Valentine.
Both Black Swan and Blue Valentine featured not especially explicit depictions of cunnilingus – and yet Black Swan received an R rating for “strong sexual content, disturbing violent images, language and some drug use,” while Blue Valentine received the dreaded NC-17 for “a scene of explicit sexual content,” presumably the scene featuring cunnilingus (though Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling’s characters do have sex in another emotionally harrowing but not especially explicit scene).
The differences between the two scenes in question are striking: Mila Kunis’ character performs oral sex on Natalie Portman’s character in a kind of erotic yet nightmarish fever dream from which Portman eventually awakes, ultimately nothing more than a hallucination. Her fantasies are the byproduct of a mind that is very clearly on the verge of collapse. By contrast, the cunnilingus in Blue Valentine is a loving and positive act, performed not long before the two characters get married. And yet it was this relatively bland depiction of consensual sex that was characterized as utterly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 17. As Gosling said himself, about the controversy sparked by Blue Valentine’s ratings classification (which was later, through the machinations of Harvey Weinstein, downgraded to an R)
The intense secrecy surrounding the organization is made especially problematic by its tendency to deem sex more “inappropriate” than violence. In his documentary on the MPAA, filmmaker Kirby Dick emphasized the extent to which sex – particularly queer sexuality and any form of female sexual pleasure – has been stigmatized by the ratings association. In the film, Kimberly Pierce, director of Boys Don’t Cry, points out that the MPAA had no problems with a scene in which a transgender character is brutally beaten, but did object to a long shot of Chloë Sevigny’s face during an orgasm. Similarly, others have raised criticisms of the organization for being more lenient with violent rape scenes than with scenes depicting female sexuality in a positive light – a debate that was catalyzed in late 2010 by the ratings the MPAA gave to Black Swan and Blue Valentine.
Both Black Swan and Blue Valentine featured not especially explicit depictions of cunnilingus – and yet Black Swan received an R rating for “strong sexual content, disturbing violent images, language and some drug use,” while Blue Valentine received the dreaded NC-17 for “a scene of explicit sexual content,” presumably the scene featuring cunnilingus (though Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling’s characters do have sex in another emotionally harrowing but not especially explicit scene).
The differences between the two scenes in question are striking: Mila Kunis’ character performs oral sex on Natalie Portman’s character in a kind of erotic yet nightmarish fever dream from which Portman eventually awakes, ultimately nothing more than a hallucination. Her fantasies are the byproduct of a mind that is very clearly on the verge of collapse. By contrast, the cunnilingus in Blue Valentine is a loving and positive act, performed not long before the two characters get married. And yet it was this relatively bland depiction of consensual sex that was characterized as utterly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 17. As Gosling said himself, about the controversy sparked by Blue Valentine’s ratings classification (which was later, through the machinations of Harvey Weinstein, downgraded to an R)
http://www.policymic.com/articles/56455/a-brief-history-of-women-s-sexuality-in-hollywood