Real Monsters Tackling The Beast Of Censorship - 1680 Words

REAL MONSTERS: Tackling the Beast of Censorship As a seven year old I stumbled across a trailer for a new horror movie. I can’t remember the title, and I can’t remember the story, but to this day when it’s late at night and the house is silent I can sometimes hear the click click click of the creature’s long nails on my window. The things you see as a child can stay with you, as the monster did with me, so it’s no surprise that there is a such controversy over the topic of censorship in the media. Ultimately this issue can be boiled down to it being the parent’s responsibility to censor the graphic media their children have access to and not the responsibility of the content creators or a different force such as the MPAA, after all, a†¦show more content†¦Essentially the MPAA is a force separate from the government that was put in place to regulate what sort of material can be shown in films, without relinquishing this responsibility to a governmental force. The MPAA, however, has become something of a problem in its own right. The actual film rating system of the MPAA did not come around until 1968 as a resource from which moviegoers, and primarily parents, could make informed decision on what films were suitable for their children to watch. According to the official website of the MPAA these ratings are the result of a â€Å"board of parents who consider factors such as violence, sex, language and drug use and then assign a rating they believe the majority of American parents would give a movie† (MPAA). As a result of this system, film ratings revolve mainly around children, who many feel are too impressionable to be exposed to such graphic content. When submitted to the Motion Picture Association Ratings Board films can expect to be fall under one of four potential ratings. General Audiences, or G rated films, are films that are deemed suitable for all audience members, regardless of age. Many G rated films are, in an unsurprising turn, animated films or those aimed primarily at a young audience. The next step up from this rating is a PG (Parental Guidance) rating. Films that fall into this rating are generally suited for all