The Motion Picture Association
By Jeff Roberts
Most people's knowledge of the Motion Picture Association of America
is a symbol at the end of a movie telling us to what degree the film
I just saw is appropriate for children. Some may also have a vague
notion of a white-haired gentleman named Jack Valenti who appears
on the news every once in a while representing the "motion picture
industry". For most people, the MPAA's web site can quite educational.
I know I learned a lot.
I learned that there are actually two featured organizations on this
site, the MPAA and the MPA, the latter lacking the "America"
and thereby showing the new international nature of the film industry.
Actually, as I read on the web site, the key difference between the
two is that the MPAA deals with the domestic production and distribution
of American films and other media, while the MPA exists to deal with
the international distribution of this same material. So despite my
initial confusion, I realized that these organizations are both truly
American.
As I understand it, these two organizations also comprise mainly
the same people. Those "people" are: Walt Disney Company,
Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., Paramount
Pictures Corporation, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., Universal
Studios, Inc., and Warner Bros. Basically, all the major motion picture
studios in America (that is, the world). And these companies now control
large segments of other media as well. Knowing this, it's not surprising
to find that the MPAA now describes itself as the "voice and
advocate of the American motion picture, home video and television
industries," not limiting itself to film. Since the MPAA also
appears to be active in the Napster debate, one could safely add "…
and music" to the end of that description.
Much of this web page reads like Jack Valenti's personal home page
(one of the sections is actually called "A Look at Jack Valenti").
There is an entire section explaining the rating system, written by
Jack Valenti himself, giving the whole background of how he had the
old Production Code thrown out in favor of this more progressive system.
He never misses an opportunity to mention that the ratings are intended
only to help parents determine what films are appropriate for their
families to see. Ratings are decided by a vote taken by a panel of
parents (Valenti doesn't mention how the MPAA chooses those parents).
Movie theaters voluntarily enforce ratings restrictions. Valenti does
mention that producers often make last-minute changes to films to
avoid an NC-17 rating, but doesn't mention why (my guess is that an
NC-17 rating tends to ruin the commercial potential of a feature).
In the end, he still insists that the ratings are meant just for the
benefit of parents, and not to exert any control over theaters or
producers, and, well, it's his web page so I guess he can explain
it however he wants.
Another part of the web site deals with copyright protection. There
are press releases (many from Jack Valenti himself) and other materials
explaining current issues in copyright law. While there is information
on Napster, the issue of the day, I was more interested to read about
DeCSS, the program which could pull the information from DVDs for
copying and redistribution. This was a scare for the movie industry
the same way Napster is for the music industry, and the government
was quick to illegalize DeCSS. One of the more interesting documents
on the site is a "DVD FAQ", which answers questions about
how DeCSS works and why it should be illegal. The responses to these
questions include the explanation that "DeCSS is akin to a tool
that breaks the lock on your house" and that copyright protection
is one of the fundamental parts of the US Constitution. I never looked
at it that way before.
I don't intend to be negatively critical of the site. After all,
the MPAA is simply a weak vestige of the monopoly which these major
studios used to have over the entire film industry. Sure, they still
exert a large degree of control over the industry, but not complete
control, and they need a way
to present their arguments to the public and lobby the government
to act in their favor. You could say this site is mainly propaganda,
but it's no different in that respect from a publication of any other
special interest group. This is especially true of internet publications,
almost all of which seem to have some kind of political slant to them.
Finally, on a more positive note, there actually are some cool things
on this site as well. There is the MPAA's own US Economic Review from
1999, which shows box office gross numbers and many other statistics
indicating how well the movie industry did in that year (there is
a disclaimer, however, that the MPAA cannot guarantee the accuracy
of the data). There's also the Movie Ratings Database, in which you
can search for any MPAA-rated film and get back the rating. So to
summarize, www.mpaa.org can be a very informative web site, as long
as the reader doesn't mind that the information is presented from
the major studios' (not to mention Jack Valenti's own) perspective.