The Ringer has published an odd report by Keith Phipps that traces the doomed path of the NC-
17 rating in a time when streaming TV has eclipsed the importance of films. Its headline is an
engaging two-sentence summary: “Thirty Years Ago, Hollywood Won the Battle Against the X
Rating. But It Lost the War.”

Phipps devotes nearly 2,600 words to this topic.

You just know that simple-minded religious people play a major role in this drama. His one reference to cultural conservatives (“a religious right eager to protest whatever they [sic] felt to be an affront to their values”) is as predictable as a media release from Americans United. He adds this:

“They didn’t lack targets and, in fairness, those targets felt closer at hand thanks to neighborhood video stores with curtained ‘adults only’ sections and scandalous music videos just a click away on cable.”

That’s as far as the fairness extends, though. This isn’t hard-news journalism, of course. Still, it would have been helpful — interesting, even — to see serious discussion from both sides of this issue. Diversity is often interesting.

Phipps makes no effort to demonstrate such eagerness or easily affronted values, but simply notes
these factors as though they were universally established realities.

But here comes an informative turn, as Phipps presents a few examples of films that were
harmed by the dreaded adjective controversial:

Though ultimately more talked about than seen, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1985 film Hail Mary — featuring a modern day retelling of the nativity story — earned protests and the condemnation of Pope John Paul II. But that was a mere prelude to what greeted Martin
Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. …

In his 2004 book Down and Dirty Pictures, Peter Biskind draws a direct line between the
unintended scandal around Angel Heart and Miramax’s planned run-in with the MPAA with the 1989 film Scandal. Harvey Weinstein pushed British producers Steve Woolley and Nik Powell to deliver an X-rated film, then made the most of the ensuing controversy. (In February 2020, Weinstein was convicted on charges for first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape.) …

[Peter] Greenaway is a maker of dense, formally complex films often filled with graphic sex and violence, and he was an unlikely director to break through to the mainstream. An allegory for the destructive politics of the Thatcher Era arranged in compositions inspired by a Flemish painting, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover demands of viewers both patience and a strong stomach, opening with a man being forcibly covered in dog excrement. …”

Some patterns emerge here, yes?

Films that redefine the Virgin Mary or Christ, films that shock the bourgeois (is this ever coincidental?), films favored by Harvey Weinstein: what is so controversial about these films attracting fiery responses?

The problem rests with the cause Phipps describes, which seeks to make water run uphill. If the
difference between an R and an NC-17 is usually a matter of cuts recommended by the Motion
Picture Association of America and its shadowy board of reviewers, parents will be forgiven for
inferring that any film rejected for an R is more intense in its depiction of material that is not suitable
for children.

As Phipps reports, various critics have lobbied for an A rating to replace an X or NC-17. But the MPAA could make the rating an A-plus and that would not change the perception of thinking parents, ordained movie lovers and other villains.

The report makes no mention of TV Parental Guidelines, which — like film ratings — are an industry’s attempt at protecting itself from exterior critics. Those ratings also attract criticism as being inadequate or inaccurate.

In an era when most web-savvy children can find whatever they seek online, from “I Spit on Your Grave” to “Game of Thrones,” only a foolish parent would rely on ratings to decide what should appear in a home.

Justice Potter Stewart took a lot of ribbing for writing “I know it when I see it” about hard-core pornography (it’s rarely noted that he said the French film in that case, “Les Amants,” did not qualify as hard-core porn). The same can be said for recognizing art. Far more Americans are capable of making these kinds of judgments than Weinstein assumed.

No degree of alchemy can transform “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” from a provocation into a masterpiece.