Puritanism+Patriarchy=Perverse
By Amanda reports on This Film Is Not Yet Rated (which I haven’t yet seen):
A couple of the directors, notably Kevin Smith and John Waters, draw a direct parallel between the censorship of gleeful female horniness and the way that misogynistic content just gets a pass, even if it’s quite sexually graphic. Well, they say that directly, and directors Mary Harron and Kimberly Peirce and actress Maria Bello hint at it—it’s basically easier, according to these folks, to get an R instead of a an NC-17 if you show a naked woman getting sliced up than if you show her orgasming.
What’s remarkable is how little the underlying dynamic has changed in the decades since the creation of the MPAA. I think I may have posted this before, but from Dwight Macdonald’s review of Physcho:
I’m against censorship on principle, but this killing in the shower makes me wonder. And not because of the nudity. I favor more nudity in films; also more eroticism and sensuality. It is the sadism that bothers me. Our censors have the opposite view. They see nothing wrong in showing with intimate, suggestive detail a helpless woman being stabbed to death, but had Mr. Hitchcock ventured to show one of Janet Leigh’s nipples, that would have been a serious offense against morals and decency.
Ah, progress.