An NC-17 Nation

The most frightening revelation in Kirby Dick's recent Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) documentary, "This Film is Not Yet Rated," is the reality that violence is more acceptable in American culture than sex.

There's a lot more in this worthy documentary of course: the fact that the identity of the rating board members is undisclosed; the odd appeals process which involves anonymous panel members including a Catholic priest and an Episcopalian minister; the vagaries of the rating process itself and the complete lack of accountability; the cold fact that, although most Americans find the MPAA movie rating system useful, the ratings are ultimately, simply, the judgment of a handful of "ordinary parents" who's children are in fact often adults themselves.

But the idea that violent acts are more acceptable on screen than lovemaking carries with it dangerous and serious implications. Many of which we see manifested in the cultural, political, and, yes, military identity of America today. The 1960's adage, "Make love not war," seems even more appropriate in light of the growing culture of dysfunctional censorship we find ourselves in today.

A culture of censorship which prefers decapitation, rape and abuse of women (the damsel in distress), glorification of the military, and gratuitous gunplay over the inherent and essential biological and spiritual connection of physical, sexual intimacy is a sick culture indeed.

What are the implications? A populace that glorifies violence is only the start. The real danger here, the dark side few seem able to discern, is that the very thing the MPAA board members (and those who repress sex in its many forms) seek to suppress will ultimately transform into something much more malignant. This is a tragedy when you consider the offender is, simply, pleasure. Human connection. Intimacy. Love.

In fact, by relegating sex to the corner—by refusing to present a true cinematic portrait of it and its profundities—we turn sexual intimacy into something dirty, something secret, something unworthy of glorification. We turn it into rape. We turn it into pedophilia. We turn it into bad.

We raise and promote a culture where Puritanism perverts itself into self-repression, and that self-repression leads to the very acts and behaviors the secret members of the MPAA loathe. We are, it seems to me, turning ourselves into an NC-17 nation in the truest and worst sense. A nation where brutality is couched in patriotism or the thrill of the chase. A nation where sexuality is forced into a dark, secret, perverted, and ugly form—all in the name of decency.

Like so many elements of American culture today, this is a chink in our armor; this might just be our own undoing.