Roger Ebert: Bully and the MPAA

Roger Ebert has written a piece on the new documentary "Bully" and the challenges it's facing regarding its rating. Bullies like to use the word "fuck" and the documentary shows teenagers using the word repeatedly, earning it an R rating from the MPAA. PG-13 films are not supposed to use the word more than four times. The film's director and producer are making the case that this documentary is important for teenagers, and the R rating makes it more difficult for the target audience (which includes the teenagers shown in the film) to see it.

There was some discussion of possibly removing some of the objectionable language, but that tends to diminish the severity of the problem:

If a director wants to make a film against bullying, it is not for a committee of MPAA bean-counters to tell him what words he can use. Not many years ago, the word rape was not used in newspapers, on television--or in the movies, for that matter. But there is a crime, and the name of the crime is rape, and if you remove the word you help make the crime invisible.

Go to Ebert's blog and read the whole piece. This should be interesting to watch.