Kaufman 1!

Delilah Kaufman
Prof. Eric Schaefer
VM-402-06 Sex on Screen
May 9th 2015
Down Below: A History of Female-Oriented Sex In Film and Its RivalThe MPAA
One of the conventions of modern mainstream cinema is its ability to be as truthful as
possible: with the permission to be more explicit, recent Hollywood films have covered the
starkness of several elements of society. Topics such as racism (Selma, Fruitvale Station, Do the
Right Thing) or feminism (Obvious Child, The Hours, Thelma & Louise) have blossomed over
the years to cover all aspects of their respective issues. Even the representation of sexuality as a
centerpiece to film has found itself getting critical acclaim: Ben Lewins The Sessions, which is
about disabled poet Mark OBriens quest to lose his virginity, garnered attention and even a
nomination at the 85th Academy Awards.
But while sex is being talked aboutand of course, being shown (films like Boogie
Nights, Shame and even Fifty Shades of Grey have notable depictions of people getting it on)
the focus has typically been on the conventions of heteronormative sex. To show a man and a
woman having intercourse is no longer taboo; it isnt uncommon for an R-rated film to feature
full frontal nudity of its female characters. And yet in the same way that youre likely to see a
womans breasts but never really a mans penis, a similar trend can be observed in the way either
genders sexualities are depicted: a man receiving a blowjob onscreen has history back to the
60s (think Andy Warhols Blowjob), but a woman receiving cunnilingus is a topic less
frequently approached.

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In 2003, filmmaker Wayne Kramer wrote an op-ed piece for Variety describing an issue
that had yet to be really addressed: his film, The Cooler, was given a NC-17 rating by the MPAA
because it featured suggested oral sex. Wrote Kramer,
The scene starts with a close-up on Maria Bellos face as she experiences an
orgasm and cuts to a wide shot of Bill Macy rising up from between Marias legs,
offering up the briefest glimpse of Marias pubic hair. We dont see between her
legs and we dont see Bill servicing her in that shot either. It doesnt matter that
were witnessing two characters in love, involved in a committed relationship,
expressing an act thats as common in human sexual interaction as eating lunch or
brushing ones teeth.
Kramer went on to note that he didnt think the MPAA was offended by the appearance of pubic
hair, or even any of the other naughty bits that tend to show up in films that featured explicit
content; rather, he suspected that the MPAA was uncomfortable with realistic depictions of
sexualitythe rawness of watching a woman achieve an orgasm by focusing on her face was
much too real for them. The film was ultimately recut and released with an R-rating, and a
directors cut with Kramers original vision was released sometime later (Kramer, Cooler).
This of course happened only twelve years ago, while the MPAA has existed more than
forty years now; when Last Tango in Paris came out in 1972, it was among the first films that
MPAA attacked with censorship. As with all the films that would come out decades later, the film
dealt with explicit sexual content in an era that was still rife with experimentation of sexuality in
cinema (it should be noted that hardcore pornography was also on the rise at this time as well).
Wrote Roger Ebert in 1995, The movie frightened off imitators, and instead of being the first of

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many X-rated films dealing honestly with sexuality, it became almost the last. Hollywood made a
quick U-turn into movies about teenagers, technology, action heroes and special effects (Ebert,
Last Tango). Last Tango in Paris came out the same year as Deep Throat and Behind the
Green Door, two hardcore pornographic films that in themselves have enjoyed notoriety. But
while Last Tango in Paris was slapped with an X-rating (and as Roger Ebert notes, a lack of
mainstream films to emulate its style), pornography was able to flourish, and the honest portrayal
of human sexuality was still missing from the industry.
So what happened?
Joan Mellen in a 1973 issue of Film Quarterly described Last Tango in Paris as a kind of
startling visualization of the conflict between sexual freedom [] and the psychological
repression in which we are all victims, namely with Maria Schneiders character, a young
Parisian woman who is engaged to be married but is also engaged in an affair with middle-aged
Marlon Brando (Mellen, Sexual Politics). Throughout the course of the film, Schneider is
raped anally and undergoes traumas at the hand of her older lover. While the film is focused on
the couple as a whole, the sadder aspects to it are found within Schneiders suffering, making
her the more empathetical character of the film; Last Tango ends with Schneider killing Brando,
and with Schneider telling herself that Brando was a dangerous stranger who deserved to die.
Because Maria Schneiders character is painted as the heroine of the film, its possible
this elementinherently feministfueled the way the film was received and perceived. While
hardcore pornography was being produced to be male-focused (and was essentially getting away
with it), a single mainstream film that focused on the struggles of its female protagonist was
getting attacked. The film lacked the positivity and the carefree attitude of pornographic movies.

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And yet, while pornography was not meant to be rated anything lower than an X-rating by the
MPAA, Last Tango in Paris was not trying to place itself in similar ranks. It was no Deep Throat,
or Behind the Green Door; it had explicit sexual content, but unlike those films, was not
supposed to allow its sexual content to rule it. Sexuality is a driving force in Last Tango, but not
the point. And yet, the MPAA attempted to place the same standards onto it as it did for
pornography.
The way the MPAA wielded their rating system was certainly not going unnoticed: in a
May 1974 interview for the feminist publication Off Our Backs, Molly Haskell, a film critic for
the Village Voice, observed how the MPAA gave out ratings. Said Haskell,
With the new permissiveness, American directors were sort of obligated to put in
sex scenes. But they lack a feeling for sensualityall of a sudden theres a naked
woman. American directors seem to be more at ease with violence. [] But the
MPAA is the real farce. A film [that shows] a female breast gets an X, but you
can chop off her head, or even her breasts for that matter, and the film gets an R
at most. (Siegel, Women in the Movies)
Meanwhile, there were films during this time tapped with the X-rating that werent female
focused, or had explicit depictions of female sexuality: when A Clockwork Orange came out at
the end of 1971, it received an X-rating. Vincent Canby, a film critic for The New York Times,
described how a film receiving an X-rating instead of an R was almost like a death sentence.
When newspapers refused to advertise the film because of its rating, Jack Valenti, the president
of the MPAA, reacted by commenting, A tyrant first appears in the guise of a protector. Wrote
Vincent Canby, The [New York Film Critics] sent Valenti a letter noting [] the reasons for

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their actions [were] because of the implication that X stands for pornographic. There is no
differentiation between what someone has called the good Xs, A Clockwork Orange, and the
bad Xs, the stag films (Canby, The Ratings Are Wrong).
Thus by the mid-1970s, perceptions were firmly set: X-ratings were synonymous with
pornographic content, and a non-pornographic film that received that rating could not enjoy the
same mainstream appeal as a movie with a lower rating. Throw the emerging stigma of female
sexuality into the mix, and the films of the 1970s found themselves typically steering clear of the
topic of sexuality at all. But times were changing, and so was film; while they still werent
tackling human sexuality, the explicitness of violence was being depicted to the fullest extent.
Movies such as The Godfather and Taxi Driver are still remembered today nearly forty years
after their respective debuts for featuring physical brutality; interestingly enough, both films also
have sexual themes (The Godfather has a non-explicit sex scene, but said sex scene also shows a
womans breasts and nothing much naughtier than that; in Taxi Driver, Jodi Foster portrays a
twelve-year-old prostitute, but is never involved in anything explicit)yet none of these sexual
themes are quite prevalent enough to override the violent content.
By the early 1980s, however, the stigma towards sex was beginning to soften: in a 1981
article for The New York Times, Moira Hodgson looked back at three X-rated films from the
1970s (Medium Cool, If, and Midnight Cowboy) and commented, Times and community
standards change, and there is general agreement among most people in the movie industry that
none of these films would cause much of a stir today (Hodgson, Movie Ratings). Bruce
McCabe of the Boston Globe described how sex in movies was finally selling tickets to the
general public rather than pushing them away (McCabe, Sex In Movies). Sex (that is,

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missionary, traditional, in-the-bedroom-sex) could now be found in films that have the R-rating.
And in 1990, the MPAA forwent the X-rating and replaced it with NC-17, as the MPAA finally
recognized that films with X-ratings that were not pornographic were being stigmatized as such.
An article in a September 1990 issue of the Los Angeles Times noted, Irate producers and
directors had begged for an alternative rating, as they did for years, so their films could secure
a lettered label acceptable to theater owners, who typically do not show unrated or X
films (MPAA Nixes X).
The 1990s, then, found mainstream film enjoying a balance of all the things the industrys
opponents found taboo, but only in ways that were conventional and normal to the general
public. One of the more groundbreaking films of the 90s was Jamie Babbits But Im a
Cheerleader, a film starring Natasha Lyonne about a high school cheerleader who is sent to a
special camp for conversion from being gay. Amy Taubin of The Village Voice describes a scene
from the film:
[T]wo teenage girls are having sex in, of all places, a bed. Its night, but a single
light, reflected off a mirror, allows fleeting glimpses of the movement of a
shoulder, a hand, a thigh. The darkness limits perception and calls your
imagination into play. Tender and sweet, the scene is erotic without being prurient
But maybes that a matter of what you bring to it.
Because But Im a Cheerleader dealt with lesbianism rather than a more familiar (and safer)
heterosexuality, the MPAA jumped on it immediately. Taubin interviewed Babbit on some of
films comical elements she was forced to change. Babbit said,

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When Natasha [Lyonne] is expelled from the camp, she asks why, and one of the
girls answers, Because you ate [her girlfriend] Graham out. They made me
change the line to Because you had a sleepover with Grahamwhich isnt
funny at all. But theres also a scene where someone accuses one of the boys at
the camp of sneaking out to a bar called the Cocksucker and he quips, My
cocksucking days are over. [The MPAA] didnt object to that line. (Taubin, The
Pleasure Police)
Homosexuality in film had been appearing in mainstream film at this point for some time
(following the Stonewall Riots in 1969, movies such as Cabaret, Cruising, and Philadelphia all
predate But Im a Cheerleaders 1999 debut); blowjobs, as far back as the 70s (think The Last
House on the Left and even Carrie). The one thing I have struggled in researching for this paper
was a finite date for the first appearance of cunnilingus in mainstream film: after the academic
databases were fruitless in their results, a Google search only provided pages upon pages of
female oral sex dating back to 70s pornography, but nothing pointing me in the direction of an
actual introduction in mainstream non-pornographic film. Suggestions of female oral sex have
appeared in film before: Re-Animator, released in 1985, has a scene in which a reanimated
severed head shoves itself between the legs of an unconscious woman. It isnt outright obvious if
the head is attempting oral sex (or even if its outright touching the womans vagina at all), but as
my research shows, that scene wasnt met with any disapproval. Called a major bloodbath in
its New York Times Review, the only mention of that scene in the article is described as the evil
doctor [to whom the severed head belongs] attempts to ravish [the main characters] cute young
girlfriend (Maslin, Re Animator). While it wasnt exactly explicit anyway, the fact that an

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instance of sexual assault is overlooked and a rape scene from, say, Last Tango in Paris, is
criticized because it reveals a more emotional and in-depth side to its victim peril is an
interesting and very problematic concept.
Returning to But Im a Cheerleader, which, again, came out at the end of the 1990s and
only sixteen years ago, to be among the first film to come under fire for its female sexual
content (not even precisely explicit, either) meant that mainstream films in Hollywood had not
overcome all its hurdles. (Boys Dont Cry also came out that year, a film that featured a
transgender man having sex with his female love interestit too was met with intense
opposition). When Wayne Kramers The Cooler came out four years laterand after the MPAA
slapped it with a NC-17 ratinghe described in his Variety article the imbalance of the way
MPAA rated its films:
[A] few weeks after my film was branded NC-17, I saw a screening of Francois
Ozons Swimming Pool, and I couldnt believe my eyes. There were copious
amounts of full frontal nudity on display, far more explicit than that in The
Cooler. You also see a woman simulating oral sex on a man. Theres even a
scene of a guy masturbating through his pants and you can see that hes erect. My
jaw almost hit the floor. They walked away with an R. (Kramer, Cooler)
With this and the before-mentioned films in mind, MPAA had come full-circle with an unspoken
policy for the way in which they rated their films: full frontal is okay, as long as its a woman; a
man get can blown on-screen and all portrayed elements of his pleasure are totally fine. But
when those roles are reversed and its suddenly the woman receiving pleasure (or even pain, as

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long as that pain is explored in-depth), the MPAA forgoes the R-rating they typically give to
films that deal with male sexual pleasure and slap it with an NC-17 instead.
On the flip side of this, Bob Waliszewski, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, wrote in a
2008 article that a lot of sexy films were actually being rated too low: when Yes Man came out,
a film starring Jim Carrey, Waliszewski observed a rather graphic scene where Carreys
character receives oral sex from a willing elderly woman and how its played for laughs, but
its hardly funny. In that same article, Waliszewski lists all the rated PG-13 films that came out
that year that he felt should have received an R-rating: The Women, Vicki Cristina Barcelona,
The Love Guru, Meet the Spartans, and You Dont Mess With the Zohan (Waliszewski, Sexy
Movies). What Waliszewski doesnt note is how all these films are comedies, with the latter
three being extremely panned by critics (The Love Guru, Meet the Spartans, and You Dont Mess
With the Zohan each have a 14% rating, a 2% rating, and a 38% rating on Rotten Tomatoes,
respectively). Because none of these films really take their content seriously, all their respective
sexual content isnt either: it would appear that the MPAA doesnt take the comedic use of
sexuality seriously because it isnt supposed to be a realistic portrayal of sexual intercourse. But
when sex is portrayed seriously, and as relatable (or if it isnt relatable, its traumatizing and
reflective of actual real-world experiences [i.e. a woman being raped]), its given a harsher
rating.
I can understand why a film featuring a rape scene would be given an R or even an
NC-17: its a combination of both sexual and violent nature and should be rated as such. But
when a film like Yes Man and its graphic oral sex scene still sneaks away with a PG-13 rating,
or Re-Animator, which has a lot of graphic gore but its sexual assault scene isnt taken into

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account for its rating, it wouldnt be an unfair observation to make if one were to say the MPAA
rates films to their discretion. In fact, when Blue Is the Warmest Color came out in 2013 (a film
rated NC-17 by the MPAA that explores a lesbian relationship to its most explicit extents), its
distributor, IFC, chose to admit teenagers to its flagship theatre in New York City because they
felt it was appropriate for mature, inquiring teenagers, who are looking ahead to the emotional
challenges and opportunities that adulthood holds. That decision was met with immediate
backlash, but IFC did not back down (Stewart, IFC Center Blasted).
The MPAAs biased system of rating films was called out again back in 2010 when Derek
Cianfrances first feature Blue Valentine was distributed by the Weinstein Company: when the
film received an NC-17 rating because it featured a scene where Ryan Gosling goes down on
costar Michelle Williams, Harvey Weinstein told Entertainment Weekly that he had assembled a
team of lawyers to fight the MPAA on the rating they gave the film. Said Weinstein,
How did Piranha 3D get an R and Blue Valentine [get] an NC-17? If [Piranha
3D] got an NC-17, Id be the first going, All right, we gotta cut some of that
stuff. Its ridiculousa penis got coughed up in the movie by a piranha! They
show more in four scenes [in that movie] than we do in [all of Blue Valentine]!
And ours is a serious love story. I dont understand it. Were going to have to
overturn this. This is serious stuff. This could really hurt the movie.
Weinstein also added that he had not wanted to recut the movie either and wanted to preserve
director Derek Cianofrances vision (Vilkomerson, Blue Valentine). More famously, the films
starring actor Ryan Gosling issued a statement through his agency WENN, calling the MPAAs
decision misogynistic and revelatory of boards harsh double standards. Said Gosling,

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You have to question a cinematic culture which preaches artistic expression, and
yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant
society, which tries to control how women are depicted on screen. The MPAA is
okay supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and
violence for entertainment purposes, but they are trying to force us to look away
from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario, which is both complicit
and complex. It's misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman's sexual
presentation of self. I consider this an issue that is bigger than this film. (Carmon,
Patriarchy-Dominant Society)
Obviously, Blue Valentine was not the first film to fight its MPAA rating, but what makes it
particularly unique is how opposed its filmmakers were to the rating they received and what they
did to reverse it, which they did: shortly before the film was released in late 2010, the MPAA
changed Blue Valentines rating to an R. Senior executive of the Weinstein Company David
Glasser told The Hollywood Reporter how [m]ost people have another cut of the movie ready
just in case [] but there was no other cut of the movie. [Harvey Weinstein] believed it should
be an R-rating. If not, it was going out as an NC-17. He was not touching the filmmakers
movie (Block, MPAA Overturns). Because not only were the films producers fighting the
rating, but also the director, both its stars (in addition to Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams also
discussed and opposed the MPAAs initial rating), and even a sexologist: Dr. Logan Levkoff
wrote an op-ed piece for the Huffington Post, asking while films that contained decapitation,
torture, and murder such as Saw 3D were getting away with R-ratings, [W]hats wrong with
sex? We are all sexual beings, from birth on. We should want our children to know that sex is a

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wonderful and pleasurable part of a mature relationship and that Blue Valentine, which features
only consensual sex and nothing brutal, is far more tolerable to watch for a child than Saw 3D
(Levkoff, Blue Valentines NC-17).
I came into this essay with Blue Valentine as the first film I planned to use to exemplify
the MPAAs biases: Ryan Goslings calling out of the MPAA in late 2010 made headlines and
was my first exposure to the film, and the first time I had ever really heard of a film getting
unfairly rated for its sexual content. While that might just be because I had yet to become the
film nerd I am today, I can think of a handful of films that have since come out that were able to
escape MPAAs unfair discretions, possibly all due to the way Blue Valentine fought its rating
and outlined how flawed the system for rating films was: Away We Go, Greenberg, and Black
Swan all have scenes with cunnilingus, and they were all rated R instead of NC-17.
The fight isn't truly over: Fredrik Bonds Charlie Countryman, released in 2013, was
censored by the MPAA for having a scene with cunnilingus and was ultimately recut to an Rrating rather than released under an NC-17. Its star Evan Rachel Wood took to Twitter criticizing
the rating, saying, The scene where the two main characters make love was altered because
someone felt that seeing a man give a woman oral sex made people uncomfortable, but the
scenes in which people are murdered by having their heads blown off remained intact and
unaltered (Denham, Evan Rachel Wood).
Despite this, theres been some hope: while Blue Is the Warmest Color did receive an
NC-17 rating upon its release at the end of 2013, it did rightly so by representing the extreme
side of sexuality in mainstream film. Theres one explicit sex scene that lasts upwards of ten
minutes, which is finebut put it up against Blue Valentine and its one sex scene, and it would

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be hard to understand why both films got the same rating. This past fall, David Finchers Gone
Girl drew a lot of attention for its dark themes and the complexity of its characters; it also had a
sex scene with cunnilingus that, in the trend of the films before it that gave agency to its female
characters and often led to the respective movie receiving an NC-17 rating, still got away with
just an R-rating. Writes Marlow Stern for The Daily Beast, describing the films main character,
played by Rosamund Pike,
She isn't a shrill shell of a woman yearning for male validation, a backwards
archetype that's force-fed to cinemagoers with all the subtlety of a Gitmo guard;
rather, she is anything but. Another was to corrupt what feminist film theorist
Laura Mulvey famously referred to as the "male gaze," wherein women serve as
passive "erotic spectacle" to accommodate active "male desire" on film. So, the
first time Amy and her future husband Nick, played by Ben Affleck, make love,
it's he who has his massive noggin buried between her legs performing
cunnilingus. The camera slowly pans over to Amy's face as she writhes in ecstasy.
Stern spends the majority of his article discussing how the films rating is an improvement over
the ratings films such as Charlie Countryman and Blue Valentine received (he describes the
MPAA as a shadowy trade organization that's long deemed any degree of corporal violence as
far more acceptable than female sexual pleasure, and has done more to shame male-to-female
oral sex than Michael Douglas). What makes Gone Girls R-rating remarkable is that there was
no fuss or struggle for it to receive it; what Stern calls the MPAA [loosening] the stick in its
collective ass means that the MPAA has finally started to recognize the flaws in its own rating

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system. And thats very, very good, considering getting into a tug-of-war with the MPAA is one
of the hardest and most difficult battles a film can get into.
Accurate representation and portrayals of different kinds of people is still a working
process in Hollywood; it only makes it harder to do when it can be censored and is prevented to
be viewed by the masses. As a film student specializing in screenwriting, I tend to find myself
forgetting that the MPAA is a thing and that my work, if (and when!) its made, could also be
subjected to the same kind of fight a lot of films have with the MPAA. Yet with Gone Girl
getting its R-rating, and even Fifty Shades of Grey (which is essentially just sexual abuse upon
sexual abuse upon sexual abuse), perhaps there isnt much to worry about any longer.
Filmmakers have learned how to fight back and to support there content, and in the age of the
Internet, where everything is widely discussed and out in the open, the MPAA can no longer
passively stamp a film with a certain rating and sit back. Which is a good thing. A very, very
good thing.
Works Cited
Block, Alex Ben. "MPAA Overturns 'Blue Valentine's' NC-17 Rating." The Hollywood Reporter.
N.p., 8 Dec. 2010. Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mpaaoverturns-blue-valentines-nc-57891>.
Canby, Vincent. "The Ratings are Wrong." New York Times: 2. Jun 04 1972. ProQuest. Web. 22
Apr. 2015 .
Carmon, Irin. "Ryan Gosling Questions "Patriarchy-Dominant Society"" Jezebel. Kinja, 19 Nov.
2010. Web. 30 Apr. 2015. <http://jezebel.com/5694506/ryan-gosling-questions-patriarchydominant-society>.
Denham, Jess. "Evan Rachel Wood Attacks Ratings Body for Cutting Cunnilingus Scene from
New Film." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 28 Nov. 2013. Web. 01 May
2015. <http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/evan-rachel-wood-attacksratings-body-for-cutting-cunnilingus-scene-from-new-film-8970530.html>.

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Ebert, Roger. "Last Tango in Paris Movie Review (1972)." Rogerebert.com, 11 Aug. 1995. Web.
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Hodgson, Moira. Movie RatingsDo They Serve Hollywood Or the Public? New York Times,
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Kramer, Wayne. "Will Cooler Heads Prevail?" Variety. 17 Aug. 2003. 19 Apr. 2015.
Levkoff, Logan. "Blue Valentine's NC-17: A Tale of Hypocrisy and Sex Negativity." The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 6 Dec. 2010. Web. 01 May 2015. <http://
www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-logan-levkoff/blue-valentines-nc-17-a-t_b_792919.html>.
Maslin, Janet. "Re Animator (1985) SCREEN: STUART GORDON DIRECTS 'REANIMATOR'" The New York Times. N.p., 18 Oct. 1985. Web. 28 Apr. 2015.
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Taubin, Amy. The Pleasure Police: The MPAA and Its Antiquated View of What Girls Are Made
of. The Village Voice. 3 Aug 1999.
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Waliszewski, Bob."MPAA must Rate Sexy Movies R." Los Angeles Times. Dec 27 2008.
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