David Pogue is one of the English-speaking world's best technology writers and a reviewer for the New York Times. After he recently looked into the pros and cons of renting DVDs by mail — a field pioneered by the excellent Netflix and then joined by Blockbuster and Wal-Mart — a reader responded by unveiling a bit of corporate censorship that the intrepid reporter had missed. Pogue was big enough to run the comment in his weekly e-mail newsletter.
"I wondered," [wrote the reader] "why you didn't mention one of the biggest differences between the three DVD-by-mail services: censorship. Blockbuster and Wal-Mart refuse to stock and ship movies that are unrated or rated NC-17. 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' for example, is available to their customers only in a sliced-and-diced version. Thank goodness for Netflix, which has the corporate courage to let people make up their own minds about what is appropriate for them to see and hear!"
Indeed. Other readers pointed out that Blockbuster doesn't identify the movies it has edited; renters don't know about the switcheroo until they're actually watching the disc, and smelling a rat.
speaking as some one who lives outside of America i can not see what the big deal is with the NC-17 rating and fail to understand the puritanical ideals behind it. Why is it ok to rate a movie such as 'The texas chainsaw massacre' 'R' when it depicts acts of horrific violence against people, yet if a movie which had no violence but instead a full frontal nudity scene that wasn't sexual it would be rated as NC-17. Its a flippin joke and some people in america need to realise it, as well as remember america is supposed to be the most democratic nation in the world, which isn't the case if responsible adults are being dictated to as to what they can and can not watch with in reason.
Posted by: Begbie | Monday, May 09, 2005 at 09:15 AM