The Shame of the NC-17 crime

A month ago, I saw Steve McQueen's much-lauded film Shame, in which the supremely talented Michael Fassbender plays Brandon, a character unable to function even for a couple of hours without relieving his sexual urges. Be it Internet porn, a random encounter or a threesome, Brandon has been there, done that, and done it a million times over. His sister Sissy, played by the incredible Carey Mulligan, is another troubled soul, clingy and feverish on her best day. There is a strong implication throughout the melancholy proceedings that the two had gone through a cycle of abuse over the course of their childhood, causing Brandon's detachment and Sissy's neediness. The film abounds with bodies writhing around in various acts of short-lived sexual gratification and imagery of emotional damage in the context of the principal characters' agony. It is an unflinching, provocative, honest study of addiction, as seen through an individual's daily psychological and physical hell.

The work leaves the viewer drained and eager to discuss what just transpired.

In the first Saw movie, two men sit around, debating whether or not to cut each other's legs off in an attempt to escape a maniac's lair. In a backstory, a woman is told to dig through the stomach of a murdered man lying at her feet; if she does not comply, a bear trap device enveloping her face is going to snap her skull open. In Saw IV, two men attempt to free themselves from another device, which might prove difficult, given that one man's eyelids and the other man's lips are sewn shut. In the first Hostel movie, a woman has one of her eyes gouged out, among other terror sequences. In Captivity, a woman is drugged, kidnapped and tortured for weeks. In The Human Centipede, another lunatic -- how many of them are out there? -- plans to sew three people together by their gastric systems to construct the title entity.

These works leave the viewer drained and eager to forget what just transpired.

Shame was deservedly one of the most critically acclaimed films of the past year, netting its star Fassbender the Best Actor Coppa Volpi at the Venice Film Festival, a Golden Globe nomination and a BAFTA nomination, among other recognitions. McQueen and co-writer Abi Morgan also garnered their share of acknowledgements for directing and the screenplay, including a BAFTA nomination, a BIFA nomination and CinemAvvenire and FIPRESCI wins at the Venice Film Festival.

Saw, Captivity and Hostel were... not.

In the United States, Shame ended up getting the NC-17 rating, which meant that absolutely no one under the age of 17 would be admitted to see it. The rating greatly limited the number of cinemas where it could be shown and eliminated the possibility of television spots, therefore limiting its audience and earning potential. In Canada, it received the 18A rating from the MPA-C, the equivalent of the R rating in the States. It meant that, in most of the provinces and territories, everyone under 18 years of age needed to be accompanied by an adult if they chose to see the film.

As Shame neared its December release, I started wondering about what stance exactly the more conservative MPAA took toward extreme violence as opposed to extreme sex. My curiosity piqued, I decided to look up the ratings for all of the above horror titles. Surely no one under the age of 17 was capable of seeing them, forget about the accompanying adult.

Everyone who thinks that all of these movies were rated NC-17, raise your hand.

No. Sorry.

Everyone who thinks that a few of them were, raise your hand.

No.

Not one of them was.

Yes, you read that correctly. Each one of them had received the R rating. It essentially means that a teenager can go and see women tormented for fun and men amputating one another's limbs, but under no circumstances are they to see a full frontal, something that they see in the mirror every day anyway.

Is torture a better sight than sex for teens, for adults, for anyone to see? Are we really that desensitized? Why is it acceptable to have an entry from the Saw franchise debut to the top of the box office, when artistically innovative and socially relevant films such as Shame are frequently unable to obtain funding to get them off the ground?

It is worth noting that, although Saw was released with the R rating, its original rating was NC-17. After the film was re-edited, the rating was changed, which brings to mind the question of artistic integrity and its status. Not wanting to negotiate his art, McQueen had refused to re-edit Shame in any way, and why should he? Why would the same standard apply to filmmakers trying to cut out buckets of blood to get a more audience-friendly rating and a filmmaker not wanting to take apart his raw portrayal of a real issue? Is there a system of measurement somewhere that creates a proportion between a certain amount of death scenes and a certain amount of sex scenes? Whenever the so-called powers that be tell me that cutting people open is more acceptable than someone walking around in the nude or two people making love, I feel like showing mercy and undoing whatever brainwashing process they had been subjected to. It simply does not make sense. 
 
Do not get me wrong. I am certainly not stating that Shame should have been rated G or PG, since its themes obviously render it a film for mature audiences. In all seriousness, though, there exist two tiny things called compromise and objectivity. What I am stating is that Shame's harsh rating in North America was blindly defined by its frank depiction of sexual addiction -- not alcoholism, not drug dependency, but sexual addiction. I am saying that, had Shame been about a guy that spends his time getting involved in fist matches and knife fights, it would have been rated R, thereby expanding its audience and authorizing networks to advertise it. I am saying that people run from nudity for miles, only being capable of judging the obvious without questioning the context or employing their curiosity, while searching eagerly for weapons and slaughter, employing their base instincts at full speed. I am saying that sex sells at a steep price. 
 
In case you are wondering, I have only ever seen the first Saw out of all the horror films I mentioned, but I have read some of the reviews for the sake of the other reviewers' efforts. I am generally a genre fan and will not pass up a chance to see a new entry, particularly one gaining popularity by word of mouth. I have to say, I regretted this decision long before the Saw credits started rolling. I would never in my right mind watch any of the other aforementioned "works" and I have not even watched the trailers, due to the fact that I do not consider them to be films at all. Rather, I consider all of them to be exercises in sadism, borne out of an anti-culture of reality TV excess and misguided funding. I do not condone censorship of any sort, but I am not able to see the point in watching other people get tormented under the pretense of morality tales or, worse yet, just because the "filmmaker" was given free reign with a nice helping of cash. I do, however, see a great point in watching a drama that dares to examine an aspect of human behavior in a philosophically relentless and often unpleasant manner, for various reasons. For starters, it might help me understand more about how such an affliction influences and eventually becomes someone's reality. It might introduce me to an experience that I know nothing about, but with which my own experiences share certain threads spread across the cosmos of life. Finally, I might learn a bit more about myself through someone else's contemplations, which is always a good thing. I do not see how such a visionary learning opportunity can be so dangerous as to warrant the NC-17 slap in the face.

The film industry's authority figures must be capable of distinguishing between topics that, no matter how difficult to witness on the surface, incite debate and those increments of violence without any discernible meaning or long-term standing in the cinematic cannon. It is not acceptable to balk in outrage at the human body while indirectly promoting various forms of brutality against it. This attitude is thoughtless and hypocritical. You cannot have it both ways. You have to choose a side. On another note, it is bad enough that players without substance and narratives without value are taking up higher echelons in entertainment nowadays. We do not have to encourage them by placing restrictions on actual works of art.

As viewers, it is up to us to choose what we watch and what gets filmed, so I am proposing that we take a stand. I am proposing that the society's stance on sex and violence, cinematic or otherwise, start shifting in favor of the 21st century. I am proposing that we start regarding what unites us differently from what divides and destroys us. I am proposing that we say yes to intelligent, challenging programming without limits. The progress will be slow, but we will get there, I promise. After all, life is too short to allow yet another Saw to swoop in and slice your intellect in half.