I’m sure many of you will have heard just about all your friends who love horror (if you have any) complain about the evil PG-13 rating ruining true horror. I myself have written an article touching on the subject of PG-13 and its effect on horror. Inevitably, it is true that ratings are indicative of what you may or may not find in a horror film. However, what has really inspired me to write this article are the many times I’ve heard the MPAA be blamed as the evil corporate entity that is single-handedly out to ruin horror. I personally know that there are many different reasons for, and problems with, the idea of rating a film into one of 5 broad categories. You can’t always get it to look perfectly consistent, try as you might. But that is a later subject. The fact that the MPAA is being blamed at all is what bothers me. I hopefully will be able to explain just why that is in the short little blurb that follows. First, a quick look at why horror fans everywhere are saying how bad it ruins horror.

The first obvious sign is that we have so much emphasis in horror films on the actual ‘rating’ and it makes some sense. Most horror, in just about every form, is supposed to be somewhat treading the lines of taboo, sometimes bordering the tasteless. Even when you get your fair share of mainstream horror, typical simple ghost-stories, they need to try and ’scare’ people in some way, otherwise they cease  to be horror and turn into the merely mundane. So there has to be a certain pressure for horror to be something that people should nearly be unwilling to watch. It’s certainly not a good sell if it shows itself to be weak and feeble. That is the death-bell that no horror film should be willing to ring. And yet we have seen a number of recent horror films which have not only been PG-13, but even PG. Even worse, according to so many horror affictionados, is that people are being forced to cut their film from a certain rating in order to get another one. Horror it seems is hugely affected by what a rating implies and what a rating might mean for a film.

And of course this is the part that confuses me the most. The people are terribly annoyed at people making PG horror, and at directors cutting their films down to PG13, or even cutting it so that they can get an R rating rather than an NC-17, saying, as I posted a picture of at the start of this article, that its blasphemy. To many horror fans, the MPAA is all that is bad about making movies, forcing people to cut out great gore and tits in order to satisfy people. There is nothing more unfortunate than this particular statement, and let me point out to just why that is. Because, as the poster says, “The system can’t work unless you understand the System”

So this is where the story thickens. Everyone keeps putting blame on the MPAA. Many of my fellow HMFers, and many of the people involved with independent horror, certainly put a lot of blame on this corporate bastion of art-destruction. So what is the MPAA? Or indeed, in my case, what is the BBFC. The acronyms are easy to learn. Motion Picture Association of America (it exists elsewhere too) and the British Board of Film Classification, as they are called in longhand. Both of these film classification boards are responsible for those lovely classifications we all seem to hate (except me, I use the we in an ironic iconoclastic way) such as PG, PG-13, R, or in the UK, the 15 and 18 classifications. Each country no doubt has their own, and some countries may well be a bit more strict than others. I will deal with the ones that I know about. The MPAA and the BBFC are both very much open about what they do. Taken directly from the MPAA’s site, you can see just what is going on when you rate a film.

“No one is forced to submit a film to the Board for rating, but the vast majority of producers/distributors opt to do so. Any producer/distributor who wants no part of any rating system is free to go to the market without any rating, or with any description or symbol they choose, as long as it is not confusingly similar to the G, PG, PG-13, R, and, NC-17. The rating symbols are federally registered certification marks of the MPAA and may not be self-applied.”

So right away, I wonder just what it is that horror fans are complaining about when a horror movie director tries to release a PG-13 horror film, or to recut his film so that it receives an R rating. Is he not, perhaps, doing this for his own gain. It doesn’t benefit the MPAA except insofar as it might give them an extra injection of cash to re-evaluate films. But I am pretty confident that they don’t need to keep re-applying their ratings again and again. The fact of the matter is that the MPAA, the BBFC, and any other similar organization is not trying to be an overbearing agency that is forcibly applying its criterion in order to make us suffer. Far from it, I think they are a simple beacon of morality that tries to allow people to make the best decisions they can for themselves, their businesses, and their families. Why so many independent horror directors seem to think the MPAA is out to ruin the little guy, I’ll never know. Nobody forced them to try and live up to their standards. But there you go.

So what exactly is the problem? Some would say that its unfair that directors have to recut their films in order to get a wide release, rather than a limited theatrical one. Is that because the theaters are so intensely uptight about what gets shown on their screens, and what doesn’t. I suppose yet another little blurb will clarify that.

“Motion picture theater owners, who co-founded the rating system in 1968, were the first group in the entertainment industry to voluntarily enforce its guidelines. NATO estimates that the majority of the theater owners in the nation observe the rating system. In the mid 1980s as home video grew in popularity, video retailers joined theater owners in embracing the voluntary guidelines of the rating system. Parents who relied on the rating system found that the information provided by the rating classifications were equally helpful in home video. To facilitate its use, ratings are displayed on both the entire home entertainment package and the videocassettes and DVDs themselves.

The Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA), which is the major trade association for video retailers in the United States, has adopted a policy which strongly endorses the observance of the voluntary movie rating system by video retailers.”

There’s that creepy little word again. Voluntarism. To voluntarily submit your film, and to voluntarily honor the ratings system. Horror films seem to hate this aspect. It seems that because someone chooses to be accountable and reliable to a standard, they are betraying us horror fans. We want blood, guts, gore, tits and ass, destruction of unspeakable things, and onscreen rape. Well, some of those aspects more than others, the last one possibly not so much at all. So we are teased by the image of different rating types dancing across our screen. I mean, we have all seen the ratings teasing us. We’ve all seen them, we all know what they mean. Getting a PG-13 is an admission that your film is not the best for younger kids. An R is supposed to be for somewhat more advanced audiences. You can see the breakdown on their webpage, or read the fine print on the left. Any way you look at it, there  is some criterion for the different sections, and the actual creation of those sections is pretty plausible and pretty accurate. Some might dispute a film here or there, but more often than not we know why a film is classed the way it is. So is it really so wrong to have some voluntary easy-to-define criteria that help guide consumers and vendors as to what they are buying and selling?

Now some of my fellow horror-fans will say that the restrictions whilst voluntary are enforced as though by law, by douchebags who hate horror. Is that really so? Is it really the case that horror movies are being given the short straw by cinemas and video-stores everywhere in order to promote teeny-bopper flicks, rom-coms, and lazy drama stories that all revolve around seemingly meaningless and relatively arbitrary plots? I think not. Far from it, I’m of the sound mind that the truth of the matter is that people like having reliability when it comes to cinema, and the rating system provides that. It also means that if a cinema chooses (yes, its a choice) to stick to the rating system that they want to appear to be in tune with what the public expect of a film. Will some horror films have to make cuts to get the R rating and the wide release so many cinemas want, probably. But the reason is not the one that horror fans so quickly jump to, that horror is being screwed over. The reason is that most cinemas know they won’t earn as much money on an NC-17 as they will with an R. They have decided to enforce the NC-17 as what it is, because doing so ensures their credibility. Thus an NC-17 rating would de facto have to exclude members of the cinema-going public, which they don’t want to do. Meanwhile, if they scrap the rating system entirely and elect to go it without the ratings, then they might lose valuable middle-ground patronage from the parents, younger public, and some average cinema-goers, a risk they can’t afford. So in order to have common business sense and do what is right for them and us, they like adhering to the ratings system, and they like to release R instead of NC-17.

What I don’t get is where horror-lovers get to see this as a slap in the face of horror. For those who love pornography, is it a slap in the face when day-time television refuses to show hard-core pornography? We’ve come to accept boundaries set by individual retailers in our daily lives in many ways, why should the cinema be different. This is ultimately a defense of the moral virtue of the rating system and the social values for which it stands, but it is also a wake-up call for horror fans everywhere, because it is symptomatic of something much deeper.

The real reason that horror films get cut to an R, is because of the person who is doing the cutting. NOT the cinema. Directors, producers, and anyone involved in the creation of a horror film, when they submit it to the ratings board, are given criterion which can make their film an acceptable R rating. It’s up to that director and producer to then go and make the needed changes. If you want to get pissed off at someone selling out, then get pissed off at the directors for letting cash compromise their artistic vision. Or, perhaps more maturely, realize that they are trying to ensure that their art is seen by the public and not shafted. Any way you look at it, the MPAA and the BBFC and all the affiliate ratings boards have very little to do with the process, aside from actually creating a rating. So I say it’s time to stop bitching about the MPAA ruining horror, and trying to figure out why it is that NC-17 horror is considered financial suicide, why it is that Directors are cashing out rather than staying strong, and trying above all to understand that the world doesn’t revolve around us horror fans, sometimes we will have to take a back-seat to common middle-ground viewers who don’t want only unrated films at their local cinema.

I will never understand why independent film-makers are forever telling us about the injustice of the ratings system, or why my fellow horror fans love to bemoan how the MPAA is ruining horror. Hopefully in this defense they’ll have found a few shreds of truth, and at the very least criticisms from here on in will be appropriately directed. I also hope that people understand that I am trying to explain and understand the system, so that we can move into more productive debates, such as the way in which horror films and the horror community can continue to grow, rather than look uneducated and juvenile as we act like the obstreparous cinemaphile trying to get their way through. I hope that this will serve as a wake-up call. At the very least, I hope that the debate about what effect the ratings have on horror will be centered around the films that are being rated, rather than the perfectly fair and legitimate ratings which we so often berate.

In the end, if we want horror to thrive, we need to get past stupid arguments about things that aren’t hindering horror, and move on and find the things that truely can be improved on to make horror as a genre better. I shall continue to defend the MPAA every step of the way, even when it means some director cuts out some much-loved tits and ass, and blood and gore, to get a wide release. I hope you will too, secure in the fact that at least we know why it happened.