Originally posted by: Yoda Is Your Father
I wasn't asking about banned movies. I was saying that if they are not banned, then cinemas should show them. I don't need a theatre chain deciding what I can and can't see. It's bad enough that the classification board does it.

Absolutely. BUT that said, welcome to the United States film production and distribution system. We have theatres with 30 screens and they can still only show and promote six films at a time. We have a society that can watch gratuitous violence on television and yet internally combusts at the sight of a woman's nipple. And we have a motion picture ratings board that, though filmmakers are technically under no obligation to get their films rated, wield a great and arbitrary power over what can and cannot be shown to audiences. The vast majority of cinemas are owned by a very very few corporations and they have absolute power over what films they will exhibit- 99% of them will never show unrated films and very few will give any screen space to NC-17 films as most exhibitors regard as pornography-lite. This is one of the many reasons the DVD market has flourished- just slap the words 'Unrated Edition' on a DVD cover and many people will buy that version instead of the 'theatrical' or watered-down Blockbuster Video version.

What the MPAA and cinema chains tend to forget is that there is a vast audience of *adults* in the USA who don't need a nanny telling us what we can and can't see. The MPAA thinks it is protecting children but they are not. Especially not while the video game industry and television with their arbitrary ratings systems go almost always overlooked. Why is it that we as adults are capable of changing the channel on the television when a 'TV-MA' program comes on but unable to know better than taking our kids to a NC-17 film? The answer is we ARE capable of making informed decisions- its a shame Hollywood is not.