MPAA + Audiences

Audiences, Institutions, Power. The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), the film rating board in the US represents all of these things. In high school I watched the documentary, This Film Is Not Yet Rated which explores the history of the association and its relationships to political and entertainment institutions. I would highly recommend everyone watch it.

This documentary explores the flaws of the research that the Jenkins reading from reading 9 describes:

“For Many years, one of the key concerns of academic audience research has been with the question of the media’s effects on their audiences, which have often been figured as passive entities, more or less susceptible to the effects of powerful technologies of communication. From the perspective, the question is simply which sections of the audience are affected, and how much, by which particular communications; and there is a long history of research which has tried to demonstrate the behavioral, cognitive, or ideological “effects” of media on their audiences. “ ¹

One of the discussions in the documentary that has stuck with me is the examples shown of films being rated higher for showing female pleasure as well as LGBT sex scenes being rated higher than hetero sex scenes or where the focus is on the males pleasure. As well as the fact that sexual content gets rated more harshly than violent content. This happens based on the thinking that this content will be ‘damaging’ towards the audience. You can check this out HERE.