The Dream of an Uncensored Tutor
Review of This Film is not Yet Rated
By Neil MacLean

Dear class,
I wanted to post something in the courseware, partially so everyone will know that we are suffering together, but also because I wanted everyone to have an example and a reminder of what I am asking us to do for our first writing assignment. Truth be told, I’ve made a mistake, perhaps a big mistake. I went to a movie thinking it would be just a little fun, a sort of distraction with interest. Afterwards I thought, yeah, maybe I’ll do my writing assignment as a review of the movie, This Film is not Yet Rated. Then I started to write what I felt about the movie and looked up a few things on the web. Before I could blink I was deep into a research project that could take me years to finish.

Fortunately, I had a teacher named Peter Elbow who wrote a book that many found useful on colleges around the country in the 70s and 80s as a guide for writing assignments. It was called, Writing Without Teachers . Its essential message was that many of us are ashamed and humiliated about our voices and especially our writing voices. It's so bad that very often we can’t even get started, we procrastinate to avoid the Censor, we end up at the last minute unable to turn out anything at all. Peter taught that it's important to just get started and keep moving. Write the first thing on your mind if that is what it takes to get going. Write because your mind is a beautiful thing and the paper is a willing recipient. Write because you might be able to distract the Censor and slip something very profound through the temple gates he is guarding. Write because it’s like dreaming, you can’t really help it and you don’t fully understand what it means but your life takes on more meaning when you cross over into that other realm, the realm of the author.

Now I’m going to tease you with my best thought about what the movie was about. I read four reviews that missed it. I don’t even think the movie’s maker really grasped what he had achieved. The movie was a soliloquy, an aside to the movie going public. It possessed the demented clarity of the adventurist, would-be prince, the filmmaker who would be famous but for the Censor which was his subject. The objective censors in our era take the form of a trade association’s secret ratings board. Secret about their criteria, secret about who they are, how they are selected, why they decide, for example, that your movie is not fit for anyone under eighteen. A decision which could cost you millions of dollars. I know of no organization as central to our culture and as veiled as the Motion Picture Assoication of America's (MPAA) ratings panel. But then Kirby Dick, our intrepid film maker, submits his film to them for rating.

The film flunks. Pundits shuffle. They say he used footage the board had already censored to demonstrate what the ratings board censors. The board had to apply the same judgment to his film as they did the examples of their decisions he sampled. They miss Kirby’s context, his framework, his probe, the meta-logue or conversation he raised about the board's system of rating. In that meta-conversation the examples of their censorship engage no prurient interest. No legally defensible reason for prohibition. The film flunks not because it exposes sexual content, but because it exposes the rater's decision making. The story they most want to censor. Kirby Dick has put a frame around their false conscience. He has cut them down to human size. Authority based on secrecy fails once it has been exposed.

During my survey of reviews of the film I came to realize that I am in a unique position to fully expose them. My background in subterfuge and political resistance culture gives me a special insight into their method. My studies of 1700 year old heresies adds layers of insight and delight as I see the potential to curse them forever.

Kirby Dirk’s film includes his appeal of the ratings board's decision. The MPAA, one of the most influential forces lobbying for movie's copyright protection made illicit copies of Dick’s film to show to its employees even though he explicitly asked them not to. He forced them to break their own code of conduct and the law they have helped to impose on the country. He won!

The MPAA appeals board upheld the ratings board's decision. Dick's movie was unfit for children. Dick responded by distribuing his film outside their system. This Film is Not Yet Rated is a classification slipping past the Censors. The film hasn’t been officially released. Its a conceptual piece in independent movie houses everywhere, giving new meaning to their reason for existence. In an act of civil disobedience Dick refused to be rated.

But all this dear classmates, is merely background and context. The real discovery Dick shares is that the appeals board is comprised wholly of Hollywood industry executives and two permanent seats representing two even more prestigious organizations in our culture. Organizations with a pedigree of censorship and torture more vested than even the CIA and whose secrecy likewise inherits the very apogee of status. The appeals board includes permanent seats for the Vatican and the Episcopalians representing the National Council of Churches. Both maintain that Christ’s body survived in their respective organizations and that he died for our sins. The body of Hollywood films is a corporate crucifix worn by our culture.