Censorship

The MPAA is not one of my favorite things. They are a biased and wholly ridiculous organization that has far too much influence on artistic creativity. They routinely cut out parts of movies that are ‘overly sexual’, while at the same time allowing violence to go basically unchecked. They act like they are the moral high ground of our society, our protectors of democracy, and yet they hide behind closed doors and a strict privacy policy. If there is anything more hypocritical, I have yet to find it. However, if the MPAA was the only problem, it could be fixed. The problem we have here is censorship.

I don’t think many things should be censored. I am a believer in teaching about sex at an early age in order to promote safe sex and responsible sexuality. Unfortunately, with this level of censorship, there isn’t much material to show children the right and wrong things to do. Instead of seeing a loving couple making love, they find violent porn on the internet (I’m not bashing porn; just saying that seeing the extremes of sexual behavior doesn’t really help with the middle ground), and learn the wrong things from it.

Its not just sexual constipation on the part of America, either. The same applies to violence, but in a kind of inverse manner. We show gratuitous violence with no explination of the consequences or of the deep impact it leaves on the lives of everyone affected. I mean, have you seen Hostel? That was one of the most violent movies I’ve seen, and yet it slipped through with an R rating. Are you kidding me? Boys Don’t Cry has lesbian scenes and gets a NC-17, but Hostel has people getting gutted and burned alive and its comparatively okay? I find that to be incredibly stupid.

Once again, I don’t think violence should be censored. But you have to show the consequences for the actions. If you murder someone, unless you are a sociopath, you will have problems with it for as long as you live. Killing someone takes a piece of you along with it, and that continues until the only humanity you have left is dropping off flowers at your latest victims grave.

As I said above, I don’t think anything should be censored. Let them show what they want. I know people will say that the MPAA ratings are just a suggestion, but to me thats like the raters on Wall Street saying their ratings of bonds and such were just suggestions. Bullshit! We look to you for advice on things we don’t have time to independently check! You shouldn’t take that opportunity to screw over people with your ratings. Allow parents to make those decisions. Allow people to see what ever movie they want at whatever age. Teaching morality and sexuality is something that should be done in the home, not in some dark, stuffy office filled with prudes and idiots.

At least, thats what I think.