X appeal
“In the 14 years since the Motion Picture Association of America created the NC-17 rating, only a handful of releases have been branded with it. But three more have popped up in the last three months. Has NC-17 finally come of age?
“British producer Jeremy Thomas, for one, isn’t breaking out the bubbly. Responsible for two of the three — Bernardo Bertolucci’s ’The Dreamers,’ and ’Young Adam,’ starring Ewan McGregor and Tilda Swinton — he thinks the ratings is bad news. ’NC-17 gives the film a smutty image,’ he says. …
“Created in 1990 to replace the porn-tainted X, NC-17 came to be seen as box office poison, thanks to bombs like the campily erotic ’Showgirls.’ … But even a warm, fuzzy G couldn’t have saved Paul Verhoeven’s pole dance. ’The first NC-17s did not perform well, but not because of the rating,’ says National Association of Theatre Owners president John Fithian. ’They just weren’t appealing to audiences.’”
—Missy Schwartz, writing on “The Scarlet Letters,” in the April 9 issue of Entertainment Weekly
Profiling facts
“We all use generalizations all the time, whether we acknowledge them or not. So we will all be better off if we are honest about the generalizations we are using, and if we give close consideration to the propriety of the constituent elements of the analytical shortcuts we have created for ourselves. …
“The much-maligned profiler is the perfect illustration of this point. People, and some courts, have a very negative reaction to ’profiling’ — selecting people for additional scrutiny based on a checklist of pre-determined characteristics. After all, it is part of the American ethic that the government should generally keep its mitts off unless you have actually done something — merely looking like you might do something is not enough.
“But the reality is that in any law enforcement environment — whether we are talking taxes, immigration, or terrorism — some sampling technique is going to have to be used. …
“Once the factors used are made explicit, they can be examined: Do people up to no good disproportionately travel on one-way tickets? The answer is yes.
“Do they disproportionately buy those tickets with cash? Yes again.
“Are they disproportionately young men? For sure.”
—Matt Herrington, writing on “Can Stereotyping, and Profiling, Ever Be Good Things?” April 2 in FindLaw at www.findlaw.com
Not funny
“Just at the moment when American politics is becoming no laughing matter, the job of commenting on American politics has fallen to the comedians, to ’political satirists’ such as Al Franken and Bill Maher, who have aligned themselves with the Democrats, or Dennis Miller, who has aligned himself with the Republicans. … And now, Jon Stewart and his ’Daily Show’ are following the same trend. With the comedians’ solemnity about their politics, with their grave concern about the direction the country is headed in, comedy is fast becoming no laughing matter, either. The marriage of comedy and politics is even more unhealthy than the marriage of church and state. …
“Apparently, comedy has become too important to be left to the comedians, who are rushing to refashion themselves as politicians in the fullest sense of the word.”
—Lee Siegel, writing on “Laugh Deter,” April 12 in the New Republic Online at www.tnr.com
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