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83 Not a single mainstream film was released with an X throughout the 1980s. The conscious abandonment of this product line by the MPAA and NATO solidified the R rating—the Incontestable R—as a seal of responsible entertainment for the Hollywood film industry. The X, in turn, fortified itself as a marker of obscenity, artistic worthlessness, and anything other than responsible entertainment for the moviegoing public. With the X rating’s stigma left over from the 1970s, most NATO exhibitors refused to play X-rated films, many newspapers prohibited ads for them, and pay cable networks like HBO refused to air them. Hard-core filmmakers still appropriated the X as well, permanently cementing the category’s association with pornography. Any filmmakers wanting to explore adult content were forced to cut their films down to an R category if they wanted access to the majority of motion picture houses. Many groups, however, did not celebrate Hollywood’s abandonment of the adults-only rating. In 1990 calls for a new category to be inserted between the R and the X were reignited to differentiate serious films from pornographic ones. Petitions for such a rating—commonly identified as AO (Adults Only) or A (Adult)—were nothing new; they had been circulating in the industry since the dawn of CARA. Numerous players with some economic or artistic stake in the rating system had called for the A category. Filmmakers desired creative freedom. Distributors wanted to exploit its marketing potential. Exhibitors needed protection from protest groups. Reformers aimed to control movie content. And critics demanded artistic works for consenting adults. Different motives may have justified their dissatisfaction From X to NC-17 The ratings board makes no judgment of quality. It’s what you see on the screen, period. They cannot make distinctions between artistic versus non-artistic films. Once they start doing that, the entire rating system will collapse. —Jack Valenti, Variety, June 20, 1990 c h a p t e r 3 5 with the current classification arrangement at one time or another, but one thing they always agreed on: the rating system was broken. Criticism of the X did not radiate from reform groups, the source of protests against Hollywood films such as Year of the Dragon (1985) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) during the “culture wars” of the 1980s.1 Instead, disapproval emerged from independent producers and distributors, who led the charge of the long-standing accusation that CARA’s policies prevented serious adult films from being made. They blamed CARA for the limited advertising and exhibition opportunities for X-rated films in the marketplace, citing the system’s failure to distinguish between art and exploitation in assigning ratings. Soon thereafter, the National Society of Film Critics, motion picture directors, and other groups demanded an “A” rating to differentiate between intense adult product and pornography, similar to the British system of self-regulation on which CARA was originally based.2 These concerns and demands reflected and fueled the perennial debate over the legitimacy of the entire rating system by the nation’s film critics . Echoing objections made by the media in regard to the ineffectual PCA in the 1960s, Jack Mathews of the Los Angeles Times called the rating system “antiquated and narrow-minded,” and Charles Champlin of the same newspaper believed the X had “outlived whatever usefulness it ever had.”3 Amidst this rating debate, Valenti restated in the New York Times the same rhetoric he had used for more than twenty-one years in defending his rating administration from the nation’s critics: (1) CARA, unlike the PCA, does not rate films based on qualitative factors. You can’t have two ratings,“one for‘serious ’ slasher movies and one for ‘pornographic’ slasher movies,” because people could sue you for placing their film in the “leper” category. “Sometimes ,” he said, “the distinctions . . . between ‘erotic’ and ‘porn’ are not that easy to judge.” (2) The system is merely voluntary. CARA cannot be held responsible for the limited distribution of X-rated films.“Whatever [the filmmaker or distributor] does on an economic basis is up to him. . . . The strength of the current system is voluntarism. It’s survived several lawsuits because it is not government-sanctioned and because no one has to submit to it.” (3) Complaints of censorship always help sell a film. Attacking CARA is a wonderful marketing tool for a distributor who receives an X, Valenti said.“A good publicity...

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