The Motion Picture Association of America—or MPAA—has been the subject of scorn and ridicule over the years for its ratings classifications and with good reason.They have madesome truly boneheaded decisions over the years in the name of protecting innocent young eyes and minds, while also creating horrible double standards along the way. Sex, nudity, and profanity are routinely cause for stricter ratings than violence, causing filmmakers to dodge their stupid rules by gaming the system. By desaturating the color of blood or sometimes just eliminating it altogether, more and more violent content has slipped past the censors while sex, nudity, and language almost never get the same kind of pass.
In our new series, Stupid Moments in MPAA Ratings History, we're going to be taking a look at sex scenes and nude scenes that have been thetarget of the MPAA in the past, comparing and contrasting them to see if there's any sort of rhyme or reason to their decision making process. So let's dive right in and look at a couple of times the MPAA fell asleep at the wheel...
Demolition Man (1993)
The Sylvester Stallone/Wesley Snipes sci-fi action classic Demolition Man has one of the funnier MPAA ratings descriptions:Rated R for non-stop action violence, and for strong language. First, let's address the ridiculousness of the term "non-stop action violence." I seem to recall at least a dozen scenes in that film that had no "action violence" in them whatsoever. The scene where they laugh at Stallone's ignorance to the future's "seashell" system for cleaning one's ass after using the bathroom is but one example of this.
However, the thing that this MPAA ratings reason flagrantly ignores is the fact that there is a topless scene from Brandy Ledford in this movie. Yes, it's brief—only 7 seconds long—but there are bare breasts and very nearly some bush on screen in the film and the MPAA didn't even mention it...
Mother's Boys (1994)
This mid-90s Jamie Lee Curtis vehicle features one of my absolute favorite, spoiler-ific MPAA descriptions of all-time:Rated R for language and for a mother’s sociopathic behavior. No matter how you define "a mother's sociopathic behavior," it's probably substantially worse in your mind than anything actually conjured up in this film. While she does go nude twice in front of her children, which neatly fits under the umbrella of "sociopathic behavior" I suppose, there's another nude scene in the flick where her ex-husband Peter Gallagher catches a quick look at her left breast when her robe flies open. You'd think that with three nude scenes, they may have wanted to at least mention nudity in their ratings reasons...
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)
The fabled first attempt at rebooting this long-running franchise is best remembered for its attempt to cash in on the sudden fame of two of its stars who appeared in the film before they were famous. This debacle was shelved almost immediately after it was completed in 1994, but two years later, both Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey were headlining A-list films and the distributor attempted to capitalize on the film, sending it straight to home video. The film is a complete and total fiasco, but it still managed to get before the MPAA board and garner an R-rating for demented mayhem and torture, and for strong language.
Once again, they're clearly using a phrase—in this case, "demented mayhem"—as a catch-all for the various goings-on within the film, while also just blatantly leaving out the fact that there's nudity in the flick. Yes, it's brief and actress Tonie Perensky utilized a body double (Jeanie Sullivan), but it just feels like their desire to specifically call out any sort of content at all leaves the absence of nudity among them strange...
Bitter Moon (1994)
Okay, so this one isn't so much inaccurate or omitting anything as it is just flat-out hilarious. Roman Polanski's 1994 thriller finds two couples meeting on a cruise and engaging in some extra-marital affairs. The film was slapped with an R-rating for the strong depiction of a perverse sexual relationship, which almost sounds more enticing than had they gone into more explicit detail on what those "strong depictions" actually are. I suppose it would've been overkill on their part to say "Rated R for a scene where Emmanuelle Seigner spits milk out of her mouth and down her breasts for her paralyzed husband to drink." However, with their commitment to accuracy, it's a little surprising they didn't go down that route...
