The Big Bad Bullies of the MPAA
Last year an interesting documentary by Lee Hirsch called Bully hit the film festival circuit.
The movie is now looking to for general release in major cinemas.
The film took a hard stand against the current epidemic of bullying facing youth today. It featured real adolescents and its purpose is to reach out to that age group.
But there’s a big problem… most of these adolescents won’t be able to see the movie.
The MPAA has assessed the documentary with an R rating keeping it out of reach of its intended audience.
The reason for the R? Cussing–mostly used by the kids featured in the film.
The MPAA has a long history of maintaining their status quo as the dominant assessors of a movie’s content, rating films at their own discretion.
The Weinstein Company (backers of the movie) also has a history of fighting against MPAA ratings and has even threatened to leave the system as a whole after this latest defeat.
But should the Weinsteins withdraw from the rating system, it would leave the “unrated” Bully with a challenge.
Theaters aren’t too keen on showing unrated movies because it gives an impression the film’s content is worse than your standard “R” movie.
Do you think dropping a few too many F-bombs in a film is really essential? Or do you think it’s a lame reason to give films such a harsh rating? What do you think of the MPAA’s monopoly on movie ratings?
Comments (14)
Log In to read and post comments.