For the Week of August 7, 2006

"Mission creep" is an expression which has gained currency in popular discourse. The phrase refers to the tendency of a project or mission to expand beyond its original goals, often changing direction in the process so that the project's original meaning is abandoned. Originally a military term, "mission creep" has recently been applied to many different fields and has engendered several offshoots, such as "commercial creep," meaning the tendency of commercial real estate to expand into previously residential areas. Another usage describing an ominous trend in American popular culture is that of "ratings creep."

On November 1, 1968, the Production Code was abandoned. The Production Code, adopted in 1934, was a series of rules instituted by movie studios for self-regulation and which governed Hollywood film productions and ensured unobjectionable screen content. After its abandonment the Code was replaced by the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings system. Supposedly, the result of this change would be to allow greater creativity by Hollywood's writers and producers. In fact, the result was that Hollywood no longer considered it necessary to produce family-friendly entertainment.

Under the Code, Hollywood produced many of its greatest films. Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, Around the World in 80 Days, West Side Story, The Sound of Music and literally hundreds of other films hailed as classics were made under the auspices of the supposedly reactionary and restrictive Code. But Hollywood did not produce merely light-hearted entertainment in these years. It cannot be argued, as it so often is, that the Code stifled the making of pictures with adult themes. Dramas depicting such mature subject matter as alcoholism (The Lost Weekend), anti-Semitism (Gentleman's Agreement), racism (In the Heat of the Night), political conflict (On the Waterfront) and arguments for or against war (Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia) were also made under the Code.

The abandonment of the Production Code did not give Hollywood a new freedom to tell intelligent stories. It meant merely the abandonment of good taste and allowed such stories to be told in a vulgar fashion. As witness: the year before the Code was abandoned, the Oscar-winning Best Picture was the complex racial and civil rights drama In the Heat of the Night; the year after, the Best Picture was the X-rated sexual exploitation movie Midnight Cowboy.

And so it has continued, with Hollywood devoting itself to the glorification of murderous gangsters (The Godfather), cannibalilstic serial killers (The Silence of the Lambs) and psychotic Vietnam veterans (The Deer Hunter), and wallowing in the depiction of average Americans as hopelessly selfish and depraved (American Beauty). Today, Hollywood's hatred of the Code era is rooted less in a desire to tell more sophisticated stories than in the arrogant contempt which Hollywood's self-proclaimed "creative community" clearly feels for the sensibilities of the American public.

The Production Code respected and celebrated those sensibilities, and as a result Hollywood produced some of its most artistic, tasteful and popular films. Today, wallowing in crudity, depravity and profanity, Hollywood mocks the attitudes, beliefs and convictions of average Americans out of an arrogant presumption of superiority. Those in Hollywood are materially wealthier than most Americans, but in terms of spirit and humility they are impoverished, as the films they make attest.

The MPAA ratings contributed to the contamination and coarsening of American culture by removing any requirement that the producers of popular entertainment act responsibly, but such ratings were at least defensible on the grounds that parents and theater owners could prevent children and teens from seeing inappropriate films (although the conceit that a theater owner primarily concerned with making money would ever prevent a paying customer from seeing any film seems dubious at best). But today, even that meager defense is impossible, due to the emergence of a phenomenon which has been termed "ratings creep."

A study at the Harvard School of Public Health which assessed the relationship between movie ratings and content and trends for films released between January 1, 1992 and December 31, 2003 found a significant increase of violence, sex and profanity in films over the 11-year period, suggesting that the MPAA became increasingly more lenient in assigning its age-based movie ratings. Their results suggest that the overall increase arose largely from increases in violent content in films rated PG and PG-13, increases in sexual content in films rated PG, PG-13, and R, and increases in profanity in films rated PG-13 and R. (Medscape General Medicine, July 13, 2004)

"The findings demonstrate that ratings creep has occurred over the last decade and that today's movies contain significantly more violence, sex, and profanity on average than movies of the same rating a decade ago." -- Kimberly Thompson, Director of the Kids Risk Project at the Harvard School of Public Health (Medscape General Medicine, July 13, 2004)

As America's entertainment industry becomes ever more insistent that parents take responsibility for their children's viewing habits – even as Hollywood is deluging mass entertainment with ever more graphic sex and violence – some of the peoples' elected representatives in Congress are raising questions about the ratings process upon which Hollywood places so much emphasis.

"Yesterday's R movie is today's PG-13, and yesterday's PG-13 is today's PG." – U.S. Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri (Washington Times, June 29, 2006)

Mr. Blunt, the third-ranking Republican in the House, convened a bipartisan meeting with other Representatives and MPAA officials on June 27^th to discuss the Harvard study's findings. While no action has yet been taken on an official level, the possibility exists of Congressional hearings on the effectiveness of Hollywood's vaunted ratings system. (Washington Times, June 29, 2006)

The precedents for such Congressional hearings are clear. In the 1950's, Congress held hearings on the comic book industry. The industry at that time was dominated by horror stories featuring graphic depictions of dismemberment and cannibalism. As a result of the hearings, the industry instituted the Comics Code Authority, which – like the Production Code – led to a creative revival in the comics industry of such dynamism that the period is now known to fans as "The Silver Age of Comics." Similar Congressional hearings, though with differing results, have also been held on rock music lyrics and violent videogames.

Obviously, no one wants the government to set film standards or impose ratings; but Congressional hearings would serve to highlight the desperate need for reform in a ratings process which is so flawed as to be nearly useless.  The Harvard study stated that there may be a "disconnect between parent preferences and those of the ratings boards," suggesting that many parents want more descriptive information about movie content so as to make better and more informed decisions – requests with which Hollywood and the MPAA have steadfastly refused to comply.

At a time when the broadcast and cable television industry have spent three hundred million dollars on an advertising campaign berating parents for not taking enough responsibility for their children's viewing habits, the entertainment industry would be wise to do everything within their power to help those same parents in evaluating entertainment products. A more descriptive movie rating system, one not subject to the control or financial influence of Hollywood's media moguls, would be a valuable tool, and would allow parents to have the best information possible to guide their children through an increasingly violent, sexually exploitative and profane culture.

"Parents and physicians should be aware that movies with the same rating can differ significantly in the amount and types of potentially objectionable content. Age-based ratings alone do not provide good information about the depiction of violence, sex, profanity and other content, and the criteria for rating movies became less stringent over the last decade." -- Kimberly Thompson, Director of the Kids Risk Project at the Harvard School of Public Health (Medscape General Medicine, July 13, 2004)

Culture Watch - Entertainment Industry News

The Parents Television Council - www.parentstv.org