Rating relaunches long-standing argument

Thursday, April 5, 2012

The public fracas around the now-surrendered R rating for a documentary called "Bully" has resurrected the argument about what some people deem the deepest flaw in the U.S. motion picture rating system. It's a fact that many movies are (and have been and will be) rated R because of the repeated use of a few choice words, ones that are unprintable here. The argument is that the restricted classification is being misapplied in some cases; that even when the use of so-called 'four-letter' words goes beyond an unspoken quota, the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings body needs to give due consideration of context or filmmaker intent.

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