Last weekend I watched Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and I now find myself rather confused about movie ratings. I wouldn't think a movie with a woman sitting naked in a bathtub as well as a man kissing multiple topless women would be rated PG.
I went to the MPAA website to try to figure this out, but of course they were very unhelpful. They wouldn't even tell me why they consider the naked male body to be graphic enough to merit an "NC-17" rating. I had thought about this a little bit before, just noticing that full frontal female nudity is almost common compared to full frontal male nudity. In fact, the only movie I could think of with full frontal male nudity was A Room with a View. Then I noticed the other day that it is not rated. Okay, well, the MPAA website didn't say that it rated all movies with male full frontal nudity as NC-17 (no, it wasn't even that helpful), but I'm pretty sure.
Going to a lot of an art museums as a child, I noticed that while the naked male body was very popular with the ancient artists, while the naked female body is usually only partially seen. This latter observation makes me wonder why our society (in the form of the MPAA) has decided that male nudity is worse than female nudity. This seems to go against many cultural ideas, some of which Josiah was discussing the other day on his blog.
Oh, and for anyone who cares, I didn't enjoy Barry Lyndon much. The main actor had an appallingly bad Irish accent and there were very scary children in the film. I could go into more detail, but I've been over this too many times as it is. There was, however, a nice view of Dunrobin Castle. Dunrobin is in Sutherland in Scotland and not too far from where I used to live. It's like a family icon.
Posted by linnea at February 4, 2004 4:56 PMI wasn't a huge fan of Barry Lyndon, either...
Posted by: Jeannette at February 4, 2004 5:06 PMIt might help to know that the PG-13 rating didn't exist when Barry Lyndon was released. Since in came into being in the mid-80s, it has been the default rating for films with topless womanfolk. Full frontal nudity of any sort automatically receives an R, and from there it's the MPAA's judgement call whether the context of the nudity requires an NC-17. And their judgement is of course almost always wrong.
Posted by: mesh at February 5, 2004 12:19 AMI don't think the MPAA is inconsistent on this point.
"full frontal female nudity" at least in number of, ah, *things* doesn't show anymore than full frontal male nudity due to the fact that things are more exposed on guys. Full frontal female nudity doesn actually show the equivalent *things* as full frontal male nudity. So it's basically like the MPAA just decided breasts & uh butt were fine to have on film.
Posted by: JosiahQ at February 5, 2004 8:32 AMC'mon you big chickens, respond!
Posted by: JosiahQ at February 6, 2004 10:55 AMYeah, I understand what you're saying and you're probably right. I'd like to blame something here on the objectification of women in our society, but I can't really. I just find the difference between these standards and the ancient Greek and Roman standards to be interesting.
Posted by: linnea at February 7, 2004 4:55 PMI was reading this and thinking about saying what Mesh and Josiah said, but then saw they said what they said, and thought to self, "Self, they said it better then you and used *things* in such a unique and modist way!" Self was pleased and not having to write Linny-Bob a note, but ended up writing about her joy anyway. Oh, and I didn't like Barry Lyndon either, no matter how much of a cinimatic wonder it was.
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