0 penilaian0% menganggap dokumen ini bermanfaat (0 suara)
7K tayangan2 halaman
A personal statement from MPAA President Jack Valenti accompanied the press release announcing the ratings. Mr. Valenti spoke passionately about his intent to protect the First Amendment and the creative process. He also addressed his expectations for the implementation of the system as well as his confidence in its effectiveness.
Judul Asli
Valenti Statement on Voluntary Film Rating Program (1968)
A personal statement from MPAA President Jack Valenti accompanied the press release announcing the ratings. Mr. Valenti spoke passionately about his intent to protect the First Amendment and the creative process. He also addressed his expectations for the implementation of the system as well as his confidence in its effectiveness.
A personal statement from MPAA President Jack Valenti accompanied the press release announcing the ratings. Mr. Valenti spoke passionately about his intent to protect the First Amendment and the creative process. He also addressed his expectations for the implementation of the system as well as his confidence in its effectiveness.
Personal Statement of Jack Valenti, President
Motion Picture Association of America
October 7, 1968
In connection with announcement of new national
voluntary film rating system
This new voluntary film rating plan is the outgrowth of many
months of hard work. I have personally held meetings, dozens of
them, with MPAA distributor-producers, independent distributor—
producers, exhibitors, the creative guilds, journalists, leaders
of civic and religious organizations.
From these meetings has come the new film rating plan, whose
primary objective is a concern for children.
It's our basic philosophy that:
1. Censorship and classification-by-law are wrong.
We will oppose these intrusions into a communications art-form
shielded and protected by the First Amendment. We believe the
scteen should be as free for film-makers as it is for those who
write books, produce television material, publish newspapers and
magazines, compose music and create paintings and sculpture.
At the same time I have urged film creators to remember that
freedom without discipline is license, and that's wrong, too. I
have, in the many meetings I have had with creative people in film,
suggested that the freedom which is rightly theirs ought to be. a
responsible freedom and each individual film-maker must judge his
work in that sensible light. I'm cheered by the response to my
suggestions.
2. We must never make motion pictures for just one audience.
There are many audiences and if we seek out the lowest common
audience denominator, we will find ourselves making movies that
would be, as one Supreme Court justice put it, inane.
We cannot allow children to set the boundaries for motion
picture creativity, any more than we would allow children to or
ganize our moral apparatus or our national priorities. But we can
be concerned about children, In motion pictures that concern is
made visible by setting apart those pictures we believe parents
may not want their children to see.
Opinions about art in any form will vary. What one person
finds exciting, another “ill call absurd, and what one person
might judge to be interesting, another will find repellent.
Quality is not unanimously defined. fach person has his owndefinition of excellence. If we all thought alike, a stale cur-
tain would drop, shutting out all creative progress.
The creative film-maker ought to be free to make movies for
a_variety of tastes and audiences, with a sensitive concern for
children. That's what this voluntary film rating plan does --
assures freedom of the screen, and at the same time gives full
information to parents so that children are restricted from cer-
tain movies whose theme, content and treatment might be beyond
their understanding. -
Will this voluntary system work?
I believe it will. ‘The fact that for the first time ali
essential elements of the industry are in agreement is good
xeason to think it will work.
Much will depend on how well the new plan is communicated
to the movie-going public. This in turn will depend on how many
daily and weekly newspapers carry the rating legend on their
entertainment page each day (so that audiences will know what
the symbols mean) -~ and how effectively public opinion in each
community urges individual theaters to participate in the plan
and enforce the ratings.
Of course, there won't be perfection. But then nothing,
voluntary or legally sanctioned, is ever perfect. I would hope
for 80-85% of theaters in this country to participate in this
plan, which would account for about 95% of all boxoffice admissions.
There is apt to be some confusion over the next several months
because 211 pictures will not bear ratings. Pictures released
after November 1 will carry these ratings. Since it is administra~
tively impossible to go back and rate all pictures now in release,
there will be a minority of rated pictures for a time. But this
gap will gradually close and within six to nine months, the rating
system will near full effectiveness.
A final word: There is no valid evidence at this time that
proves movies have anything to do with anti-social behavior. That
is why the MPAA has vigorously supported the President's two Con-
missions -- on Violence, and on Obscenity. Perhaps from these
in-depth studies will come some substantive evidence that is more
than opinion or personal view.
But in the meanwhile, the lack of viable proof ought not keep
us from trying to take what we hope is a sensible step which in—
dicates our concern for children. That is what we are doing now.
1 INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW RESEARCH INITIATIVE LEGITIMATE TARGETS OF ATTACKS UNDER INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW by Marco Sassòli Background Paper Prepared For The Informal High