By Jarrett Terrill
Among the thousands of online petitions categorically aimed at reducing “bullying” in schools, a highly successful movie producer, Harvey Weinstein, is advocating one. The petition on the Care2 Network (thepetitionsite.com) asks the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) reverse its decision to “restrict” (or give an “R” rating) to a documentary about the severity of bullying in America’s school system.
Lee Hirsch, the Creative Director of the documentary “Bully,” has placed an impassioned note on the website for the movie which reveals that the project is important to him because he was bullied as a child. An “R” rating would, in effect, keep his dream of the project being shown by teachers to their students, since public schools traditionally do not allow “R” rated movies to be shown in class.
Weinstein made his entrance into the project by saying that he would drop his membership with the MPAA if they did not reverse the rating of Hirsch’s film.
According to reports by the BBC, Weinstein and Alex Libby, one of the students featured in “Bully,” had appealed against the rating, asking for a PG-13 – which warns parents that some material may be unsuitable for children under the age of 13.
However, they lost the appeal to reverse the decision by only one vote. Calling the decision by the appeals board, “a bridge too far”, he said The Weinstein Company “is considering a leave of absence from the MPAA for the foreseeable future”.
Although Weinstein’s threat to drop his membership to the MPAA can be seen as killing a “sacred cow” in the film industry, the ratings board within the MPAA (a panel of 10 “raters”) has remained impervious to threats in the past. Decisions made by the anonymous board members are given the highest authority and even the most famous movie directors find themselves changing the content of their films to please the board and get the rating they want.
In 2005, another documentary, “This Film is Not Yet Rated,” revealed the true identities of the ratings board members after hiring a private investigator to seek out the coveted information. The presentation of the results indicates that all 10 “raters” are conservative Catholics who regularly attend church or have ties to Catholic churches. The process of appointment to the ratings board is one of nepotism since an MPAA rater is expected to select their replacement on the board when they part ways. Furthermore, that documentary states that the MPAA raters often do not have young children of their own as the MPAA claimed at one time. While the social and religious identification of MPAA Ratings Board “raters” may have factored into their decision to restrict the documentary, the Appeals Board that Weinstein and Libby took their complaint to is a secondary panel. That panel also consists of religious conservatives like Harry Forbes (from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), but also adds film industry insiders like Steve Gilula (CEO of 20th Century Fox). Unfortunately, Weinstein’s production company, Miramax, is not known to have any members on the MPAA Appeals Board where one more vote would have made all the difference in the world to him, to Libby, and to Hirsch.
