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From: blp Category: FilmsTV Date: 02 March 2007 Time: 05:13 AM Review: A BBC4 Storyville doc, so there's a chance it'll be on again. Catch it if you can. American documentarist Kirby Dick sets out to investigate the activities of the US film classification authority, the body that passes parental guidance ratings on American films, from G through PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 (formerly X). Membership of the board is kept secret and Dick's approach is hands-on: he hires a private investigator to out them, intercutting her investigative procedures with interviews with a series of American indie directors and other interested parties. There's also a lot of wittily employed animation. The lesson is: never miss a Storyville, no matter how innocuous it sounds. This was an object lesson in just how good TV can be, a holistic, fiercely intelligent, angry yet funny endorsement of individualism under assault from moralists as thick-headed as they are high minded. They want you to be just like them. Early on, the Newsweek film critic says about the board, 'I'm going to use the F word - fascist' and you quickly realise this is not hyperbole. The NC-17 rating is routinely handed out to intelligent films depicting homosexual sex, female orgasms, wide-shot fucking &c., but less somehow, to crappy ones depicting extreme violence and misogyny. To illustrate the point, there's a shot from the R-rated Scary Movie in which the Scream villain sticks a knife in a woman's chest and accidentally removes her breast implant. Ho ho! Assholes in the ascendent. The point is that with an adults only rating, the film won't play in vast swathes of middle America, nor be carried by the major film rental outlets, so the classification effectively functions as censorship. In some cases, particularly depictions of teenage homosexuality, it also debars the film's target audience. There's also a disturbing sideline on how the US military, with the board's collusion, prevents numerous anti-militarist messages getting to the screen. Cue shot of Tom Cruise saluting from the cockpit in Top Gun, therewith nausea, staved off only by the fact that this felt like such a wholesome and satisfying meal.