Feminist Fashionista

rabbleprochoice:

I saw This Film is Not Yet Rated and this is true.

When a woman is shown on film enjoying sex, it’s more likely to get an NC-17 rating (which is basically the death knell for a movie’s success because a majority of cinemas won’t show NC-17 films and it’s harder to advertise them). Rape gets by so easily. There’s a GREAT quote by Kevin Smith:

If I were to create a rating system, I wouldn’t even put murder right at the top of the chief offenses. I would put rape right at the top, and assault against women. Because it’s so insanely overused and insulting how much it’s overused in movies as a plot device, a woman in peril. That, to me, is offensive, yet that shit skates. “

And he’s right about that. The movie Monster with Charlize Theron was one of the most disturbing films I’ve ever seen (TW: Rape). She’s raped several times in the film, once with a foreign object during an extremely graphic, violent scene and I saw that movie with my MOM in the theatre. It was so violent that my mom asked if I wanted to leave because I was so horrified. 

That movie is rated R and it should have been rated NC-17 but it wasn’t because the majority of the “sex scenes” in the film are rape scenes or scenes where she is doing sex work and clearly not enjoying it.

And Ryan Gosling had a great quote about the NC-17 rating Blue Valentine got before the rating was challenged that hits the nail right on the head:

“There’s plenty of oral sex scenes in a lot of movies, where it’s a man receiving it from a woman — and they’re R-rated. Ours is reversed and somehow it’s perceived as pornographic. Black Swan has an oral scene between two women and that’s an R rating, but ours is between a husband and his wife and that’s NC-17?”

“You start to think, ‘How is it possible that these movies that torture women in a sexual context can have an R rating but a husband and wife making love is inappropriate.

Love,

Rabble

Rebloggable was requested.

Also, if you get a chance to watch This Film is not yet Rated, do it. It’s an eye opening film and the members they reveal who make up the MPAA is fucking absurd based on the guidelines the MPAA claims to apply to its members.

It’s not just the MPAA. For example this year the Academy refused to even nominate Shame for any Oscars despite it being nominated for Golden Globes, Critic’s Choice, Sun Dance etc. mostly because of the sexual nature. The most frustrating part? Shame isn’t about “OMG SEXY TIMES!! YAY” The film is actually about how addiction feeds on people trying to feel a gaping, painful hole in their spirit with something else. It’s y’know, like, a topic everybody can relate to. Sex addiction is as legitimately terrifying and life-destroying as other forms of addiction and it killed me that The Academy refused to accept that.