Actually, I'd bet that the advent of easily available internet porn is at least as responsible for any "cleaning up" of Hollywood as anything else. If you want nudity and sex, why settle for paying $8.50 to see a few seconds of Halle Barry's tits (as lovely as they are) when you can see gorgeous babes screwing their brains out for less than that and in the privacy of your own home?
It's also about PG-13 movies making more money than R films, generally, and studios lobbying to have material passed, except in obvious circumstances. (Tarantino, for example, isn't going to get any PG rating anytime soon.) Hell, the PG-13 rating came about in the first place because Paramount didn't want "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to have an R-rating. Spielberg and Lucas were big enough names to force the MPAA to change its whole system, but the same sort of thing happens with almost every film outside of Disney/Pixar.
That article is pure nonsense. There is no intentional trend away from smut in Hollywood. Paul Verhoeven may think there is, because his career is floundering and his success, at its peak, was rooted in smut. But the truth is, as Loney pointed out, R-rated movies can't make as much money. And the only thing Hollywood cares about is money; it is an industry - sorry, The Industry. The "tween" and family markets are huge right now, with the successes of SPY KIDS and SPIDER-MAN and all those Pixar movies and the like. They are just going where the money is. And lastly, the standards have become looser. What qualified for an R rating 10 or 15 years ago could easily be PG-13 today. The Brits like to think that America is oh-so puritanical about sex and they're so much more sophisticated. Let them think whatever makes them feel good, since 9 out of 10 films they watch come from Hollywood anyway.
It's true. Mission to Mars was PG, yet had a guy explode on screen and another guy instant-freeze-dry in space. But add a nipple, and watch the R rating come slamming down! For Christ's sake, Bedazzled was PG-13 for sex-related humor and drug references. Clerks was originally rated NC-17!!! Frank discussions about sex - with a little lewd language - draws NC-17 while the Die Hard films (bodies everywhere) starts at R? WTF? I mean, neither bother me, but the general US population are way too uptight about sex.
Interesting point about what is "dirty" and what is "clean". We (as a society) have no problem showing our impressionable kids human beings getting blown to shreds, splattered all over or hacked to bits. But we shriek in terror and foam at the collective mouth if they see a woman's breasts let alone any sexual activity. Thank heavens most of them eventually find's their dad's porno stash anyway or we'd really have a messed up society.
One interesting feature of the article is Verhoven's notion that Ashcroft is cramping his style. Evidently, John Ashcroft is like Hillary to the hollywood left, the bogeyman they love to hate. Just wait until he nominates a new supreme court justice.
I thought of another thing. A lot of the decision-makers in Hollywood today are in their 30s - 40s, and have recently started families. Thus the recent trend has been toward family-friendly filmmaking. They want to make movies their kids can watch. But it has nothing to do with Ashcroft, as implied in the article, nor with the much-discussed American uptightness about sex. If anything, that puritanical streak is slowly fading. They can show ass on network TV now, which was unheard of 10 or 11 years ago. The bottom line is that these things follow cycles. Right now, FINDING NEMO and HARRY POTTER are taking in buckets and buckets of money. When the kids shelling out money reach their teens, maybe we'll get another slasher film cycle or another round of gross-out humor, etc. Personally, I'm looking forward to the resurrection of the 80's T&A comedy. It's an under-appreciated genre.
Actually, I just get a lump in my throat, foam just a bit at the mouth, and sometimes mess the front of my pants a bit...
The violence serves a vital societal function - to prepare the children for the carnage of war. Of course, teens won't be so gung-ho for war if they are getting the loving they want, so sexuality has to be oppressed. I went to a number of toy stores looking for plastic swords for a scene I am doing for my acting class. No one sells them. And the guns they sell look really fake. I guess video games and movies have really taken over the job of militarizing the children.
They can show ass on The Discovery Channel's "Walking With Cavemen," you mean. Poor MTV, however, can't even show a thong. I think one thing we're all overlooking is the fact that the viewing tastes of the American public are becoming more sophistocated, and mindless pandering to our primal instincts has simply gone out of... Naw, I'm just kiddin'.
> Yeah, man, that must be it. Sure, why not? I'm not saying it is a conscious, conspiratorial decision made by a cabal that runs the world. It is just a truth that taps into the basic psychology of humans. It has been that way throughout history and in countless cultures. It isn't an accident.