T w e n t y S i d e d

As stated in a previous article, I’ve been enjoying The Punisher on and off. It’s not super deep, but it’s a really fun show. “Angry PTSD soldier decides that the justice system doesn’t work and takes the law into his own hands” is a formula I tend to enjoy and The Punisher is one of the OGs for it. Even given all that, there is somehing that keeps pushing me away from the product entirely.

How often in your life do you find yourself saying “Frick!” in anger? When you realize something bad just happened do you yell, out loud, “Crap!” or is it more explicit? I’m not one prone to deep immersion, but I do need to have my suspension of disbelief held together to enjoy media in the long term. I can’t keep watching a series if I can’t take it seriously. And one of the fastest ways to veer my immersion off the rails is to overtly write your way around the word “fuck.”

When you set yourself on a target for an MPA (formerly MPAA) or equivalent ratings board you limit yourself. If you want to hit a “PG” rating you need to keep your movie incredibly family friendly. For an “R” rating you typically just have to avoid on-screen penetration and acts that could be described as fetish content. There are more nuisances to it that I’m not privy to, but that’s what I believe is the general understanding. Getting a “G” rating and a “PG-13” rating seems to be far more about negotiating the system and essentially politicking your way down to a lower rating to hopefully boost sales. Maybe I’m being a bit tinfoil hat here, but having been a fan of horror most of my life and learning what I can about the MPA, that’s the conclusion I’ve drawn. I wouldn’t go as far as to say bribery is involved but there is certainly some level of corruption.

Lowering your rating used to mean opening up to a wider audience. Allowing for more than just the typical movie buff, but also teenagers pretending to watch a movie as an excuse to make out, tired parents that don’t look too closely at the description, or bored high schoolers looking for something to do. That meant more ticket and concession sales. A lot more money flooding in overall. So it made sense to target that middle-ground rating instead of accepting an “R” rating. However, that comes with a lot of people’s favorite form of government and private company intervention: censorship.

The MPA doesn’t give strict guidelines on what you can and cannot do in a “PG-13.” They give suggestions but allow the designation to be a floating target in which you have to aim in the right direction and pray. Look through “Uncut” versions of PG-13 movies and you will see so much deleted material that is almost confusing. Two or three frames of a larger spray/pool of blood. One extra utterance of “ass.” Not all of these changes are due to censorship, but many are. If these choices are, in fact, made at the discretion of the director and editor due to artistic vision, then I totally approve. But the reality is that the minds behind the products that keep us entertained have had to do gymnastics to keep their producers happy in order to get their products made.

Now, The Punisher is actually rated “TV-MA” which is basically the TV version of an “R” rating. That said, television, and now streaming, have a more intertwined relationship with FCC which means tighter guidelines. A “TV-MA” is more akin to “PG-13” because of those differences. So, to me, it’s even more egregious that they play hopscotch with content to get that “TV-MA” or “TV-14” and avoid being stuck with an “Unrated” label. Just go unrated. It’s a show about murdering people. It’s murder. Frank Castle murders people. His character is still a hero in many ways, but there is no legal gray area here. They are putting out a show glorifying a broken man committing several acts of murder every episode.

It just confuses and frustrates me when the show creators push themselves into such an awkward mess. The Punisher’s typical week involves making widows and orphans of dozens of people. I can watch Frank snap somebody’s neck but they wouldn’t dare show a boob. I can watch someone crying over their dying partner as he chokes on his own blood, but nobody ever seems to lose more than a pint or so when they’re shot. And in terms of cussing, have you ever actually met a Marine? They can put truckers to shame. Again, I’m not saying those are necessary inclusions, but that dance on the razor’s edge of what is and isn’t okay is obvious as it is obnoxious. The hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance hurts.

The Punisher is far from the worst offender in this regard. I could make an entire article just listing action movies and horror movies that were killed by a misguided attempt at mass appeal and a “PG-13” label. It may end up being more profitable, but even that’s not a guarantee.

It does work for some stuff. For instance, The Dark Knight is rated “PG-13” but the tone established by that movie is such that you don’t expect or need to see gore or hear swearing. It’s a super hero kicking ass, but more grounded. In Interstellar, which also has a “PG-13” rating, the majority of dialogue is between scientists and engineers. It would make sense that they aren’t yelling, “Look at this crazy fucking microorganism I just discovered! Fucking crazy right?” It just wouldn’t fit tonally. Even if Samuel L Jackson’s in it. But the majority of what people think of as the greatest movies of all time are “R” rated. The Deerhunter, The Godfather, The Matrix, Pulp Fiction, and Seven wouldn’t be possible at any other rating. At least not as the masterpieces they are.

So next time you hear someone repeating “damn,” or “motherlover,” or “frick,” over and over instead of letting out one little “fuck,” as a treat, know that my ass starts itching.

Ethan Rodgers