I just slogged through about half an hour’s worth of text on Wikipedia to try to find a reference I swear I remember reading about on IMDB in its earliest days (1997?)  Both discussed the MPAA ratings system, but the IMDB feature/article — crucially — discussed the MPAA’s own wording that NC-17 rating:

can be based on violence, sex, aberrational behavior, drug abuse or any other element that most parents would consider too strong and therefore off-limits for viewing by their children.  [emphasis added]

The IMDB piece listed examples of “aberrational behavior” which included — and I am sure I am not making this up — homosexual sex and cannibalism.  Other stuff, too, but these criteria are way out the window, aren’t they?  Movies are getting Best-Picture Oscars with the former, and, cannibalism?  You’re going to want to quit this post if you’re squeamish, and stay away for the rest of the post, OK? –

So I’m giving your eyes a chance to decelerate –

Which continues here –

Thanks.  It’s an R cut of the tedious Hannibal — right? — that showed one character eating the brain of a simultaneously living, speaking human being onscreen.  Yiee.  We’ve discussed movie ratings on this site before — here is Bob Mike arguing more eloquently and persuasively than I, par example — and those links exist to follow if one desires.  But a couple of points stand out, which include:

1. A lot of people consider Requiem for a Dream to be a more NC-17-deserving film than I do (is it “that scene” for everyone?)
2. I’ve stated, then taken it back, then taken my takeback back, that the Kill Bill franchise really should have had a harsher rating than Erin Brokovich in any even-partially-enlightened society (I haven’t phrased it that directly before), and
3. I’ve forgotten my third point

But while Requiem was a captivating, horrifying, brilliant viewing for me, why oh why oh why didn’t Saving Private Ryan get an NC-17?  I would understand an actual war footage being shown on TV-PG History Channel or something.  But this was different.  This was a director staging scenes of a soldier walking around holding his severed arm and people literally getting their heads blown off.  Because it was Spielberg (honest question)?  But as squeamish as the latter made me, Ôdishon, which I watched on DVD, had me progressively squirreling back further into my chair, as (the squeamish are gone already, right?) the film depicts a captive, crippled prisoner being forced to eat vomit, acupuncture needles being stuck into eyeballs, and a limb being extremely graphically severed with a pipe saw.  For that I was thinking “Holyfuckingshit what are they allowing in R-rated movies these days?!” all the way until I got up, shivered, and put the DVD back in its case, at which point I realized it was “unrated”.  So, yeah.  Going back to read my post, because I think I had a point.  Be right back.

Oh, right, Rachel Miner.  While, yes, it creeps me out to catch myself dreaming about someone who used to be married to Macaulay Culkin, it’s fascinating that she is essentially repertory cast (right word?) in the After Dark Horrorfest, of which I’m immensely fanboy.  They had her at the booth at ComiCon, apparently, which would have been reason enough for me to go to the festival, pay the admission fee, and deal with the crowds, but then I’d have to admit that I did all that to meet Rachel Miner.  She has a fantastic quote cited at IMDB:

Basically, I get paid to be crazy.  I get paid to believe I’m someone else, live in a completely false reality, and believe it’s real.  And that’s a little scary.  I do it to the best of my ability.  But it’s kind of like swimming out to sea.  You have to leave enough energy to swim back, and sometimes you get scared you swam too far.

Which is, I think, both immensely creepy and totally indicative of the devotion she brings to her roles, which (along with the left eyebrow) I queue to see.  Or, Netflix-queue.  Whatever.

Cannibalism.  Fear Itself (previously), a series that featured shorts directed by  different horror auteurs, I saw in shuffled order.  They were shown on network TV and several of them had the horror plot or reveal to be “cannibalism”.  In one — Skin and Bones? — well, rent it, if you’re into shock-value cannibalism.  On broadcast TV.  The Rachel Miner episode, which was a different episode, had a foursome of criminals (?) seek shelter in the commune of a pseudo-Amish group of cannibals.  At least, I’m pretty sure that’s where it was going, but I turned it off for being too tedious (not shocking).  “Abberational” indeed.  Let me get my thirty-year-old’s panties in a wad — parent of a five-year-old, remember — and get freaked out, not about what’s being put into R-rated movies these days, but about what they’re allowing on network TV these days.  Not that that’s strictly relevant — I don’t have a TV (Really — I know every middlebrow says that, but I really don’t.  I had two but didn’t want them any longer and sold them.)

MPAA.  Aberration.  TV, standards, and all that.  I think this all vaguely knits together, but I’m not quite convinced.  So, yum cannibalism yum.  Yum homosexuality yum.  Oh, and Rachel Miner.

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:00:32 +0000
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