Rise of the X

With the death of John Schlesinger, director of Midnight Cowboy and one of the last major studio films nominated for a Best Picture Oscar comes the introspection as to what has happened to sex in movies. New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell also traces the rise of the x-rating, or its equivalent the NC-17:

Is there a fear of dealing with grown-up sexuality in movies? Absolutely. Movies are intentionally sexy without being sexual, because puerile teasing is a kind of salesmanship. The sad corollary is the preponderance of violence in American films. A foreigner judging the United States by its films would think Americans spend more time running from exploding fireballs than having sex.

The X rating wasn't initially viewed as the scarlet letter but as a reaction to self-imposed studio censorship so intrusive and baffling that movies existed in the Bizarro Universe, a place remarkably similar to our own but with freakish differences, including having married couples sleep in twin beds.

After 1968, the year the ratings were created, the freedoms they offered were celebrated by filmmakers. Still, it was the subject matter of "Midnight Cowboy" — a male prostitute and his manager — that got the X rating; the film received an R when it was rereleased in the 1970's.

The rise of the X rating as the equivalent of a biohazard logo came about for two reasons. One was that the combination of violence and sex in "A Clockwork Orange" so incensed some newspapers, then the primary form of promotion for movies, that they stopped carrying advertising for X-rated films. (Some newspapers do not accept advertising for NC-17 films.)

The other reason was that the Motion Picture Association did not copyright the X-rating. Companies seeking a rating submit their films to the association and pay a fee, and the ratings board bestows its G, PG or R in return, all of which have been copyrighted. The X was not, which created a laughable concept in sleazy promotion for pornographic movies: a proliferation of X's stamped across the poster. The unspoken thought was that these movies were so hot that one X was not enough for their lust, sex and bad acting.

The last major studio film with an X rating was Showgirls, and man, was that some showcase for Joe Esthezhas, Paul Verhoeven not withstanding.

In our backyard, we are producing lesser movies, both in quantity and quality. A film like say, Live Show will get all the brouhaha because of the sex-content. But we only have two or three kinds of movies now: the odd romantic comedy starring Regine Velasquez, bang-bang action movies with Robin Padilla/Jacky Woo in it, and our garden variety sex films. The sex films are of two kinds: the major studio semi-glossy types with any of the Hot Babes in it, or maybe Joyce Jimenez; then there's the run of the mill with any of your number of unknowns. Have you noticed how these low-budget sex movies focus on girl collectives, ie, Mga Babae sa VIP Room and Sa Piling ng mga Belyas. Belyas has Mark Anthony Fernandez in it. I mean, that must be a total low. An ex-Guwaping and star of the awesome filmography of Pare Ko, Hesus Rebolusyonaryo and Mangarap Ka is doing a low-budget sex movie. Yeah, we're dead meat.