Introduction
Whether or not censorship can ever be justified morally, ethically, or legally is a question that has been debated endlessly and quite possibly will never be answered to the complete satisfaction of everyone concerned. In the practical sense, however, it can be stated flatly that wherever censorship has actually existed, some ridiculous situations have been created as a direct result.
The system of rating movies in different categories developed by the Motion Picture Association of America is supposed to be a way of avoiding censorship, not a means of censorship in its own right. The idea is that a movie producer can put anything into a film that he wants to, but the film's, rating will warn the potential viewer that there is something in it he may not want to see-or, more particularly, something in it he may not want his children to see. The system as it now exists separates movies into four categories. G (General admission) and GP (General admission: Parental guidance suggested) are unrestricted, allowing anyone with the price of a ticket to see the show. R (no one under seventeen admitted unless accompanied by an adult) and X (no one under seventeen admitted under any circumstances) are the restricted classifications designed to protect our children from anything that might be harmful to them.
Exactly what is harmful, of course, depends on the point of view. For instance, one psychologist on the board of the MPAA has repeatedly said that sex concerns her far less when viewed by children than by teenagers who know more about sex but are not yet in full command of their own sexual responses. Presumably this is not the official view of the board itself, but it is an interesting point and gives a good idea of how difficult the job of categorizing every film produced must be.
Writing about films in the December, 1971, issue of Esquire, critic Jacob Brackman discusses this difficulty more fully. "If an R can cost a film a fifth or a quarter of its potential gross," Brackman says, "an X can literally cut its revenues in half. Many newspapers refuse advertising, no matter how sedate, for X-rated films. (Much of the public believes X simply means Porno Trash.) Many theatres refuse to book them; in many cities and towns they are never shown at all.
"This is not to say that X pictures can't make money-a handful, such as Midnight Cowboy, have made it big. But X is a grievous handicap, one under which increasing numbers of serious films will likely have to labor. For ratings will now become tougher than at any time since they went into effect three years ago. This is a short-run prediction-the stringency or leniency with which they get applied fluctuates oddly, almost from month to month. If Midnight Cowboy, for instance, had been released a bit later, it would most probably have garnered an R, and still heftier receipts. But if it came out today, with decisions tightening way up again, another X would likely be its fate.
"Similarly, Summer of '42 might well have received a GP (and another $5,000,000 or so in revenue) had it come up a month or two earlier. The film makers were understandably resentful. Ryan's Daughter featured an adultery with more passion and more skin, yet its rating had recently been changed from R to GP. Moreover, Ryan's daughter had left her husband's bed to deceive him, whereas the married lady who copped the moony adolescent's cherry that Summer of '42 was in fact no married woman at all, but a widow-she'd just received word of her husband's death overseas. Some rater therefore might have argued that, strictly speaking, no adultery occurred; borderline cases are often resolved on the basis of just such silly distinctions."
The greatest irony of all, however, occurs in the cases of those films that are never even submitted to the board for review-the underground movies sometimes called "blue" or "stag" and sometimes labeled with even stronger adjectives. Obviously, if these were rated at all the rating would be X. As it stands, they are unrated and unadvertised. But, while no one can say for sure exactly how much money they make, they are obviously profitable. The establishments showing them would never, of course, admit children to their performances, but their very existence conceivably creates dangers to our children of another sort entirely.
Peggy's Special Customers by Wayne Sherman is, in fact, the story of a very young girl forced to become an actress in underground movies. Peggy begins by posing for nude photographs, but the "posing" soon becomes much more than that. She is a totally innocent, even naive, child at first, but her life and experiences in this peculiar part of the entertainment business change her drastically, and the reader will see a shockingly real, vividly dramatic picture of the effects of greed and immorality on a person who started life warm, generous and naturally curious. The moral, we feel, will be obvious, and is worth considerable thought by every reader.
The Publishers