Assorted Failures of the MPAA at Life

(The first in an occasional series.)

About an hour ago, I was scanning movie news sites for the morning updates, and I happened upon an article that, even by the highly suspect standards of the MPAA, was particularly enraging. Before you continue reading, take a look at the article here: http://joblo.com/banned-zack-miri-art.

Now, consider the poster in that article. Yeah, it's a double entendre. Yeah, they're hinting at oral. However, first off, I had to give it more than one look to even notice the hair at the bottom. Plus, as the writer in the article said, the MPAA essentially banned this poster to protect children who wouldn't know what the hell was going on here. And if they do, honestly, there are bigger problems going on. (Brief note: I wouldn't be shocked if they did. Thanks to today's popular culture, I had to explain to my poor mother what "Superman that ho" means after my sister came home singing it.)

This is really just the latest illustration of the MPAA's ongoing crusade to teach our nation's youth that violence is okay as long as it doesn't involve any sex or nudity. Case in point: the first "Saw V" poster released had a man wearing Jigsaw's face as a mask, with visible hooks in his skin. Even better, think back to last year, when the widely released "300" poster featured men being forced off a cliff, with blood spatter all over the place. Because, you know, that's so much worse than a play on the film's title, featuring two completely clothed people.

Then again, there might be something else at work here. This might be the point where my argument starts to stretch a little, but think about this. The MPAA became notorious in the documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" (if you haven't seen it, please do) when filmmaker Kirby Dick pointed out that men recieving oral sex onscreen has been deemed far more acceptable than a woman recieving it. Case in point: think of any teen sex comedy centered around guys, that got an R without much trouble. Then, look at "The Cooler" or "A History of Violence", which both featured Maria Bello getting head, and both of which struggled to get even an R rating. Now, I could do another post on how this, along with god-awful cliches relating to onscreen sex scenes in general, is basically dooming a nation of young men to be singular-minded, piss-poor lovers, but I'll try to restrain myself.

The point is, the MPAA's moral spectrum is completely out of whack. If this is really so disconcerting to them that they'd ban this from the U.S., but don't have issues with the incredibly fucking disturbing One Missed Call poster from earlier this year, something's not right.