posted
I know that in the US people ue "R" ratings to rate films of slight harsher content.
For instance, a film that has the two Tetragrammatons ("F" and "S") would be rated "R" (restricted). Then, there's X. So I gather that films like "Schindler's List", where full human anatomy is revealed, but not in erotic context, would be regarded as "X"?
If so, does that mean that all those pornographic films called "XXX" something actually refer to ratings, in which sexual actions happen with full revealing? If so, what's "XX"? A film like "American History X", where penes (gr?) are shown in the shower - off sexual context - and there is a scene of homosexual rape (where the penetration is not shown)?
posted
There isn't really an X anymore, and there never was a xx or a XXX,IIRC.
NC-17 is the X now, I think.
XX and XXX were made up by the adult film industry to promote how graphic their films were.....to someone interested in thiose things, the more X's it had the worse/better it would be assumed it was.
Here is a good link about it, I think... I didn't read the whole article, but ut seemed pretty good from what I did read. It may not talk about the adult film ratings, but it should clear up some of the other questions you had about ratings in the USA....
BTW, Shindlers' List was R, as was American History X....
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So what's the criteria for rating a film: when does a "PG-13" become an "R"; when does an "R" become an "X"; and what is the difference between "XX" and "XXX"?
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posted
First a nitpick: I assume this is just a translation misunderstanding, Jonathan, but the term "Tetragrammaton" specifically refers to the ineffable Hebrew four-letter name for God, not to other "four-letter words."
There isn't really a specific set of rules to distinguish between, say, a PG-13 rated film and an R rated film. The MPAA has a panel of viewers who see the entire film and assign it a rating; in theory, both the content and the context are important. In practice, its decisions are seen by many as being inconsistent and not always very useful, although I imagine there are others who don't see it that way.
The "X" rating was meant for films not suitable for children, but not necessarily for those considered obscene. The pornographic film industry used "X" and "XXX" as selling points, the latter intended to emphasize that the film was really dirty. The latter was never an official rating, just a marketing ploy; to my knowledge, "XX" was never used. This association effectively made it impossible to market a mature but non-pornographic film to a mass audience.
The MPAA eventually switched to the "NC-17" rating in an attempt to designate mature films without the pornographic stigma, but this has largely been a failure; films that would get an NC-17 are often released without any rating at all instead.
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posted
I might have them mixed up, but it's quite simple.
The filmmakers decide what rating it is, they say the stuff that's in the movie that could be questionable and make a rating based off of that.
Then there's video games with ESRB, there they have a universal rating system for all games... why can't movies adopt something like that?
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posted
The filmmakers usually have a rating in mind when they shoot and edit their movie, but they most decidedly are not the ones to assign it.
Check the movie listings, they usually say something like "The MPAA has rated this movie R, for extreme sexual situations, drug humor, and gratuitous puppy bashing."
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I was simultaneously reminded of the Crab Scrambly comic "Everything can be Beaten" and the "Everytime you masturbate, God kills a kitten" picture that circulated the net a while back.
posted
As for the plural of "penis," both "penes" and "penises" are correct. Personally, I think the latter sounds more natural to contemporary speakers of English, but either is fine.
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quote:What are the plurals of 'octopus', 'hippopotamus', 'syllabus'?
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English words of Latin or Greek origin have rather unpredictable plurals, and each one usually depends on how well established that particular word is. It may also depend on whether the Latin or Greek form of the plural is either easily recognizable or pleasant to the speaker of English.
Although it is often supposed that octopi is the 'correct' plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural octopuses, it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its 'correct' plural would logically be octopodes.
Other words ending in -us show a very varied pattern. Like octopi, the plural hippopotami is now generally taken to be either funny or absurdly pedantic, and the usual plural is hippopotamuses. Common usage appears to indicate a slight preference for termini rather than terminuses, but syllabuses rather than syllabi. Other usual forms include cacti and gladioli, and our files at the dictionary department show scarcely any examples of nucleuses or funguses. (Omnibi is simply a joke, and quite ungrammatical in Latin!)
Among words ending in -um it seems worth drawing attention to the word curricula, plural of curriculum, and warning against confusion with the adjective curricular (as in extra-curricular).
posted
You more or less can't win on the plural of "octopus"; no matter what you choose, somebody is going to think you're wrong. Strictly speaking, "octopi" was coined due to a misunderstanding, and "octopodes" would have been more correct; in practice, the former has made it into standard English usage, while the latter is virtually never heard outside of conversations such as this one. Your best bet is the native English "octopuses." (See also this article and the "plural" section of this one.)
On similar grounds, I'd opt for "hippopotamuses," although "hippopotami" has also made it into English.
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posted
I always went for "plateaus" (not "plateaux", maybe because my father hates French people - as an Australian from true British aristocratic heritage, and look at my surname), "indeces", "appendices", and I thought of "suffices" - but that's taken already. So how about "prefices"?
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