2) The King’s Speech (2010)
When does a harmless British period drama receive the dreaded R rating? When that movie features a King shouting ‘fuck’ in a non-sexual manner to cure his stuttering. Only one ‘f**k’ is usually allowed in a PG-13, so the MPAA were forced to prevent teenagers from watching the eventual Oscar winner. However, after the award was given, the distributors resubmitted The King’s Speech, muting the swear words so that a PG-13 version could be played in cinemas.
While it’s good that the film eventually received the rating it deserved all along, it shows exactly how ridiculous and arbitrary the MPAA’ s rules are in the first place. Why bother rating each individual movie on its own merits when you can just put a f**k counter in place?
1) Bully (2012)
In the imaginatively titled documentary Bully, victims speak up about the trauma they’ve endured at the hands of others while at school. Sounds like an important message, one that students everywhere should see, right? The MPAA disagreed, of course, giving Bully a R rating for the use of violent language, while clearly missing the point of including these words in the first place.
Director Lee Hirsch and students from the film itself implored the MPAA to change their rating, even creating a popular online petition that collected thousands of signatures, but the MPAA remained reluctant.
In protest, The Weinstein Company announced that they had decided to release Bully unrated, which would restrict its distribution. Eventually, they managed to reach an agreement with the MPAA, who rated the film PG-13 after the bad language was toned down.
While it’s obviously great that Bully was able to reach a wider audience, helping to promote anti-bullying in schools and cinemas alike, it’s infuriating that the MPAA were unable to look past their restrictive guidelines to rate a film based on its cultural impact rather than the use of some naughty words.
Published: Mar 4, 2015 10:35 am