The Movie Rating Game

Washington DC: Public Affairs Press. Fine in Near Fine dj. (c.1972). First Edition. Hardcover. [a nice clean book with no discernible wear; the jacket is quite nice but for a teeny-tiny chip at the base of the front panel, and an equally tiny black smudge mark just to the right of the word "Movie" in the title]. A notable work in the history of movie censorship, this "candid and hard-hitting book tears apart the cloak of secrecy behind which the Code and Rating Administration of the Motion Picture Association has operated since 1968," when it replaced the old Production Code Administration system that had been in place since the 1930s. The author explains in his Preface how he had been admitted as a kind of "representative youth" member of the ratings board in 1970 -- he then being 26, and the other members being mostly in their fifties -- with the hope that he "could serve a purpose as a spokesman for a liberal point of view." It didn't work out that way, though: "Almost immediately I found myself in conflict with the other board members, and the tensions never relaxed"; he departed the board only halfway through what was intended to be a one-year term. In addition to providing an inside look at the mechanism of the ratings system, the book also includes "a concise history of censorship within the motion picture industry, examines the legal arguments which are often advanced to defend the rating system, and offers some concrete recommenations for an enlightened movie classification system that would be purely advisory instead of coercive. The appendices include documents about the rating system, studio contract stipulations, typical objections of the rating board, and censorship restrictions that prevailed until a few years ago." .