> > Yeah, but the mistake was in replacing X at all. >A new rating at the top end of the scale comes into
> >being exactly when the old one is booted out?
> >Obviously people were going to figure it was simply
> >a replacement, a new name for the same stuff.
>
> I've never understood this argument. No porn movie in history has ever officially been rated X. The porn industry simply co-opted the X rating (and later decided one X wasn't even enough, and went to XXX) for themselves and has used it ever since. The porn industry didn't stop using the X rating when the MPAA retired it. They didn't start using the NC-17 rating just because it was "the new X" either. So the only people who mistake movies officially rated NC-17 by the MPAA for hardcore "X-rated" porn put out by the porn industry are complete retards.

This was sort of by the MPAA's original design, however. The X rating was purposely not trademarked, as the other ratings were, because the intention was that the makers of porn films would simply self-apply it. There's no way the makers of porn films are going to submit their films for ratings consideration, but this way those films would get an "official" MPAA rating anyway.

Early on, though, the details weren't ironed out very well, because the MPAA ratings board used the X rating on non-porn films that were submitted to them for consideration, most notoriously Midnight Cowboy and A Clockwork Orange. When the porn industry took the X bait with such fervor that it created a stigma on the X rating, Midnight Cowboy and A Clockwork Orange were both rerated R without any changes. And we've been stuck ever since in this rut of squashing adults-only non-porn films into the R rating, which was never designed to accommodate them.

>What they should have done is kept the X and
> >ranked it above the new NC-17. This mirrors the
> >way the rest of the modern world's rating systems
> >work.
>
> By your logic, people would then just start confusing your new rating for the never-officially-anyway "XXX" rating the porn industry invented.

I'm not sure I get your logic about XXX at all. You're creating a rating *beneath* the X, not one above it; the message is, "Ok, these films aren't as bad as that awful, dirty, no-good X."

Likewise, today, I think that the same tactic can be used. Create a new rating *beneath* the tainted NC-17, rather than above it, and that allows nervous theater owners and media outlets to continue to boycott what they think is porn.

> And what other rating system does this mirror?

The movie rating systems of other first-world countries, which basically all have working, viable "adults only, non-porn" ratings. Granted, the problem we have with the MPAA's ratings are as much cultural as with the rating system itself; still, we're the only major country that doesn't have a workable outlet for those films that fall between "porn" and "it's ok if you see it with a parent or guardian."