During Sex in Cinema Week, Consequence is looking at movies, the Hays Code, and what society labels taboo. See our introductory breakdown here, visit our analysis of Hollywood’s Pre-Code era and the ensuing Hays Code, and check out our list of the 50 best sex scenes in film history.
With the dissolution of the restrictive Hays Code in 1968, filmmakers could take bigger risks than ever before. But there were still limits, thanks to a new organization, the Motion Picture Association of America (now shortened to MPA). When the MPAA, as it was known then, became the warden of censorship in US cinema, the rating system’s uneven assessments would often come at a severe cost.
The civil rights movements of the 1960s and the ensuing cultural reset spilled over into film, where depictions of sex, violence, drugs, andconversations around race became more widely accepted. The movie industry, bolstered by the success of both European cinema and the burgeoning film period deemed “New Hollywood,” grew in commercial and artistic scope. New audiences found their lives reflected on the silver screen for the first time.
Still, pushback towards what content was “suitable” was inevitable. As the Hays Code had done previously, the MPA and their rating system have served as a religious, conservative influence on Hollywood.
The notable 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated summarized decades of hypocrisy and secrecy from the MPA’s ratings board. The double standards demonstrated a significant bias against queer folks and people of color, especially in regards to sex. They gave harsher ratings to films that featured female orgasms or homosexual intercourse, as well as those that were independently produced. The ratings board was comprised of people who were not cinematically trained, had no expertise in child development or had children over 18, and have had their identities shielded by the MPA; their appeals board has contained two members of the clergy.
The current era of the MPA system assigns a rating to films from five categories: G (General Audiences), PG (Parental Guidance Suggested), PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned), R (Restricted), and NC-17 (Adults Only). The PG-13 rating was added in 1984, and the NC-17 rating was once an X, though the MPA changed it in 1990 to differentiate those movies from pornographic films. By now, most movie goers are well aware of the setup, and you can probably name the first R-rated movie. But the rating system has had sever consequences, both financially and artistically. Harsher ratings meant less people would see the film, and up until the streaming era, an NC-17 was a deathblow.
Even since This Film Is Not Yet Rated‘s scrutiny of the MPA over 15 years ago, our attitudes towards what ought to be censored have changed. In a post-#MeToo entertainment landscape, conversations around sexual politics are more visible than ever before. While there will always be groups of the population that object to simply having those conversations (remember when people were mad that Pixar’s Lightyear featured a gay couple?), we are, allegedly, living in a more sexually progressive age.
The idea that something is not “suitable” for audiences changes over time — but has the rating system changed alongside it? And what impact has it had on film history? Many ratings feel like a stretch; read below for 13 films that proved the system is actually broken.
The NC-17 “Kiss of Death”
Even after the MPA revised the “X” rating to “NC-17” in an effort to differentiate traditional films from the adult industry, the rating was still a difficult hurdle for filmmakers to jump over. It’s one thing to limit anyone under 17 from seeing a film — not all movies are required to be teen-friendly. But for adults, an NC-17 rating can be a major reason to not see a film in the first place. If the MPA’s judgment of a film is so derisive that it warrants an extreme rating, that tells audiences a lot about the intensity of its content before that film is released. And yet, over the years, there have been several NC-17 rated films that were not as graphic or as intense as the rating suggested.
Y tu mamá también (2001)
Alfonso Cuarón’s Mexican coming-of-age drama was not afraid to embrace sex in the slightest. But rather than being smutty for the sake of it, Cuarón and his leads Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal imbue the film with an honest and nuanced exploration of young male sexuality. The tension between the two and Maribel Verdú eventually boils over into a passionate sex scene, which is undoubtedly earned given the film’s tender narrative — and yet, it was subject to censorship controversies both in Mexico and in the United States.
Regarding the MPA’s NC-17 rating, critic Roger Ebert wondered why there wasn’t any backlash to the decision: “Why do serious film people not rise up in rage and tear down the rating system that infantilizes their work?” Compared to some of the R-rated films that depict extreme violence, like Saving Private Ryan (we’ll get to that later), Y tu mamá también does not depict “extreme sexuality” — it presents coitus as a conduit to exploring lost youth within a conservative society.
Blue Valentine (2010)
After This Film Is Not Yet Rated exposed the MPA for its biases against female sexuality, they didn’t exactly change their strategy. Derek Cianfrance’s romantic drama Blue Valentine was allegedly given an NC-17 rating because it depicted a scene with cunnilingus. If a movie is given an NC-17 rating, it becomes nearly impossible for it to be given a wide release into theaters, which can significantly harm a film’s overall financial success and bury it in obscurity.
Ryan Gosling, one of the Blue Valentine‘s stars, was well aware of the impact of this rating, and clapped back at the MPA for the decision: “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.” The film’s distributor, The Weinstein Company, successfully appealed the decision, and it was re-rated to an “R” without any additional cuts. But it’s worth wondering that if Blue Valentine was produced without a distributor as big as the Weinsteins, that appeal may have fallen on deaf ears, and the work’s overall visibility would have been diminished.
Blonde (2022)
Before the streaming era, the vast majority of American cinemas would refrain from screening NC-17 films. But in the days of Netflix and HBO, the cinema has become deemphasized in favor of living room televisions, and the old revenue method of physical ticket sales has been replaced by whether or not you click a button on your remote. Andrew Dominik, director of the controversial, fictionalized Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde, seemed to use this to his advantage. Blonde became the first NC-17 film to go straight to Netflix, and the harsh rating was, perhaps, deserved: the film, among many other salacious moments, features some very graphic scenes of sex and rape.
But the controversy around the film’s rating, its depiction of sex, and its fictional dramatization of a non-fictional character all helped boost Blonde‘s streaming numbers. The reviews for Blonde were mostly negative, and while that can often have damning effects on a movie’s longevity and success, all Netflix needs is for people to be talking about it enough to click “Watch.” Perhaps because of the film’s final destination being a streaming service, Dominik felt that being gratuitously explicit was now possible — and though it was controversial, Blonde, Netflix, and the streaming era have technically opened the door for other creators to explore the edges of the MPA’s restrictive rule. Streaming has brought a lot of tenuous issues in the entertainment industry, but undermining the MPA rating system is one of the more interesting developments.
Queer Films, Nudity, and the Female Gaze
One of the most hypocritical aspects to the MPA’s jurisdiction comes in its treatment of queer intercourse, male nudity, and female sexuality as a whole. While some films purposely lean into what many consider as obscenities to subvert the audience’s understanding of queer themes, other films are judged harshly by the MPA for a rather frank, realistic depiction of sexuality. Furthermore, the MPA doesn’t seem to have an issue with films that cater to the male gaze — but the female gaze is largely neglected or suppressed by a tougher rating. In the last several years, however, the tide has begun to turn, and films that would have had an extraordinarily difficult time avoiding an NC-17 rating in the past are given R’s and lauded for their realistic, novel depictions.
Pink Flamingos (1972)
Billed as “An exercise in poor taste,” John Waters’ Pink Flamingos is as raunchy as it gets. For all of the film’s various obscenities, which includes just about every MPA taboo possible (explicit sex, nudity, queer and trans sex, gore, cannibalism, incest, everything under the sun), the film was certainly always going to get an X rating ahead of its limited, arthouse cinema release in 1972. But Pink Flamingos is significant in that it embraced the kind of “filth” that the MPA — and, for the most part, audiences — were too afraid to touch.
Still, despite and because of the X rating, Pink Flamingos brought John Waters international attention and became a midnight movie mainstay, especially within queer urban settings. By leaning into his freedoms as a filmmaker and embracing perversion, Waters played on the homophobic idea that queer folks were subhuman, deranged, even demonic. The film demonstrated that despite the MPA’s relatively new reign, shock value in cinema can be used as a political tool, as humor, and as a celebration.
But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)
Jamie Babbit’s debut feature But I’m a Cheerleader evokes — you guessed it — John Waters, but without most of the raunchy fare that characterized films like Pink Flamingos. Instead, But I’m a Cheerleader is an accessible, genuinely joyous film about embracing one’s sexuality and rejecting heteronormativity. It is a love story about two young women who fall for each other at a conversion camp, while also being a conduit to exploring the performance of gender and the ways in which conformity stifles individuality.
Upon viewing the film in 2023 — and considering that teens are the film’s subject — it’s easy to make the argument that But I’m a Cheerleader could have (and should have) been rated PG-13. But believe it or not, the MPA’s first rating was an NC-17. Aside from the occasional profanity and sexual references (which is actually how teenagers talk), it seems that the MPA was threatened by the acknowledgment of queer sexuality, and queer female sexuality specifically. To put it differently, a male student drawing a penis on a chalkboard in class wouldn’t illicit as harsh of a rating as a female student drawing a vagina — the sapphic nature of But I’m a Cheerleader was clearly too much for the MPA, and it’s a prime example of the organization’s inherent biases at the time.
Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
Back in 1999, it was pretty obvious that the MPA didn’t know what to do with content about queer and trans people. In addition to the harsh initial rating for But I’m a Cheerleader, they also initially rated Kimberly Pierce’s Boys Don’t Cry — a story about the real-life rape and murder of Nebraska trans man Brandon Teena — NC-17. But the rating came not for Pierce’s brutal, violent depiction of Teena’s rape, but for a prior scene where leads Hilary Swank and Chloë Sevigny have sex. According to Pierce, who spoke about the MPA rating in This Film Is Not Yet Rated, she was told by the MPA that an orgasm sequence was “too long,” to which she asked if anyone had ever been hurt by an orgasm that was too long. While the film certainly isn’t PG-13 appropriate, it is an example of the MPA’s clenched fist when it comes to female sexuality and queer stories, and how their priorities with violence didn’t match their priorities around sex.
