Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Motion Picture Association of America in Today's Culture

On Tuesday March 23rd, I presented a case study about the rating system of films in the US (and worldwide). The ratings system was implemented by the Motion Picture Association of America, which is an organization that has legal right to rate films and also, an organization that is fighting against piracy and protecting copyrights.

At the beginning, the MPAA’s function was to stem criticism of American films nationwide and later on, worldwide. The MPAA was doing this because it was created by the major important film studios of Hollywood, which were the ones with the most influence of all. With this, these film studios knew that by promoting their films worldwide, people were going to demand more films to watch. Later on as the years passed by, the MPAA saw the need to restrict certain type of (explicit) material in films that young people couldn’t watch or that many people found inappropriate and in 1968, the MPAA created the ratings system. The ratings system was created to let people know of what they might encounter in a movie (by the type of rating)

Today, many people like the types of ratings the MPAA gives to many films, such as like parents, but the MPAA rates from 100% only 30-40% movies; Parents are satisfied with their ratings, but are not dependable with the MPAA’s rating system because ratings are not consistent from movie to movie. Also, many kids are now watching many TV shows or movies that contain certain material that are inappropriate for them. For this reason, as the years go by the ratings system is also changing, they are rating movies with some explicit content that kids are now used to watching on TV or movies.

In the future, I think the MPAA ratings system will allow many movies to contain more and more explicit content and which the MPAA will rate these movies at a lower ratings, such as PG 13 or even PG. Kids are experiencing many adult content on movies and films, such as NC-17 or rated R’s without their parents’ permission.

For more information about the MPAA and its ratings system, you can see how the system works at: http://www.mpaa.org/index.asp

Also, these are helpful links about the MPAA:

http://www.hometheaterinfo.com/mpaa.htm

http://www.filmratings.com

Vanessa Denys

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