How I Spent My Monday Evening

[spatch]

I made this.

Comments

[spatch]

I agree, but I think that's all in the timing. Late 60s-early 70s was the time when the X rating really meant what it was created for; an adult-only audience. The whole Midnight Cowboy thing, etc. However, by the time we get to Deep Throat in 1973, the X rating had already become box office taboo, now synonymous with "porno."

The sad part is that the X rating got the bad rep and it wasn't even USED for most porno. Unable to use the rating because the MPAA refused to give ratings to the genre, the unofficial "XXX" not-rating came about and was slugged onto skin flicks by earnest porno producers hoping that people would thing that if X is bad, boy, THREE Xes must be TRIPLE BAD!

Then finally one day the MPAA decides "Let's erase the taboo of X and create a new adults-only rating and call it NC-17" and what happens? NC-17 becomes box office taboo without even so much as a porno producer using an NC-51 rating or something. Greeeeeeeat.

[spatch]

Or maybe the producers refused to pay the MPAA for the privilege of having their films rated. I think that may have been the case, too.

Probably a combination of both.

[modpixie.livejournal.com]

if i recall correctly, the X rating was in the public domain so that those producers who made X-rated movies could (a) bypass paying the MPAA to rate their films, and (b) so that producers could self-rate something they knew was not suitable for minors. unfortunately, by not trademarking the X rating, they ran into the problems you describe in your first comment in this thread.

this is what i call using my degree.

"Okay Clarissa, you explain it all!"

[spatch]

Ah ha.

But how to explain the NC-17 failure?