I’m no fan of the MPAA, but to be honest, usually when they refuse to approve some marketing team’s movie poster… well they’re right. Honestly, I think they’re a little too lenient. I’m looking at you Saw. I really don’t need to look at severed body parts every time I walk into a movie theater.
It’s one thing of someone willingly chooses to buy a ticket and see those images, it’s quite another when they are basically forced to look at them, because some studio marketer has decided to plaster them all over the wall directly in front of you. What I’m trying to establish here is that having someone out there to oversee which movie posters actually end up in theaters is a good thing. At least it’s usually a good thing.
In this case I’m not so sure, simply because there seems to be some strange inconsistency. Variety’s Anne Thompson is reporting that the MPAA has rejected the poster for a documentary called Taxi to the Dark Side. The movie is another film about the torture in US prisons. Yeah I know, we’re all sick of this subject. Not the point. Hold on a minute.
So the movie is about torture and their proposed poster, which I can’t find a decent image of (but the one with this story is the one Variety had), features, from behind, two US soldiers escorting a hooded figure away from the camera. That’s it. You can probably make that out from the tiny image with this story.
The MPAA says… no way. They can’t use it. The MPAA says, “We treat all films the same. Ads will be seen by all audiences, including children. If the advertising is not suitable for all audiences it will not be approved by the advertising administration.” ThinkFilm says the MPAA told them the problem was the hood, which of course is the point of the whole thing. Huh? Sooo kids can’t see a guy wearing a hood? I guess I don’t see what’s so intrinsically scarring about that. I’ve seen similar images hundreds of times, everywhere, all the time. It’s only disturbing because of the context of the film, a context which any kid looking at the poster wouldn’t understand and really should have nothing to do with whether or not the MPAA approves the poster.
The MPAA’s detractors have long attacked them for being biased. There have been rumors of religious organizations being involved in their ratings deliberations as well as accusations of political bias. Who knows how much of that is really true. But what reason is there to reject this poster other than politically motivated ones? I don’t get it. On the other hand, the MPAA has no problem approving Saw posters containing severed limbs. What kind of a weird double standard is this? There’s no way they’re nixing this one to protect the children. Something stinks here.
Meanwhile this is probably the best thing that could have happened to ThinkFilm’s Taxi to the Dark Side. At least the movie’s getting mentioned. It comes out in January, but I’d never heard of it, and probably never would have talked about it. Like most of their releases it was on the verge of fading into the background. Now at least, we all know it exists. I give it five minutes before we all forget.
