I wrote a paper a few years ago attempting to devise an alternate rating system in a similar fashion to the one famously employed by the Motion Picture Association of America. It was probably as well-intentioned and presented many of the same problems as anybody else’s best idea. My main concerns then were the subjectivity of the review process, and that it conferred less responsibility on the parents than it did on the people selling and taking the tickets (likely kids themselves).

My opinion has evolved a bit since then. While those concerns are still operative in my mind, they’re no longer the most important. What has come to bother me more than anything else is the de facto censorship that the ratings represent. If your movie has a lot of really naughty stuff in it, the MPAA can’t ban it, but it can give it a scarlet letter to ensure that virtually none of the big theater chains will carry it.

As a filmmaker, your movies are not only your art, but also your livelihood. You have two options: voluntarily change your content according to the MPAA’s standards, or eat the production and distribution costs and probably never make a movie again. Never mind that even if your movie makes it into the big chains, the MPAA has an alphabet soup of other nice letters that allows them to exercise some control over who will and won’t be able to see your dirty little movie.

On the subject of those standards, whose are they, what are they, and where do they come from? Being perfectly honest, these standards are, on one hand, derived from a pseudo-traditional set of values determined largely by stuff in the Bible–not the nice stuff that applies to everybody, but the really stupid stuff that attaches weird rules to aspects of everyday life that are not harmful, and are in many cases quite good. On the other hand, the standards are also derived from the perspective the MPAA attempts to adopt, which is that of a fictitious person who is mortified by every bit of slightly offensive content imaginable. Never mind the countless people who aren’t offended by these things–if even one person objects to it, asses need to be covered. Forget artistic freedom. You’re at the mercy of a non-person who is mortified by guns, nipples, and the F-word, whether it is spoken or acted out.

As Frank Zappa said during the PMRC music sticker hearings, “If you are a songwriter, did anyone ask you if you wanted to spend the rest of your career modifying your lyric content to suit the spiritual needs of an imaginary 11 year old?”

My new proposal is this: we are in the information age. If you are a parent in need of information about a movie you might take your kid to see, there is no excuse for not being able to find it yourself, without the assistance of a committee of cranks and housewives. In other words, there is no longer any need for a rating system whatsoever. It brings no benefit that can’t be achieved by alternative means, and it brings with it some serious drawbacks. Let’s ditch the letters and at least pretend that the parental segment of our population is capable of making its own decisions, however poorly.

(And before anybody says anything, it shouldn’t be an issue that theaters will no longer be able to turn certain patrons away from certain movies based on the MPAA’s recommendations. Influencing which movies theaters do and do not show is, at least ostensibly, outside of the purpose of the lettering system. If this were not the case, then there would be no need to qualify “censorship” with “de facto.”)

Finally, I am also not particularly fond of corporate and governmental entities usurping the parents’ responsibilities as child-guardians in situations that don’t threaten the life and health of the children. Sure, some parents have unquestionably stupid ideas of how they should raise their children, but that doesn’t mean an organization with weird religious and/or political motives should be handed the reins. You probably wouldn’t trust a squadron of strangers to give your kids free candy, so why would you take their free advice on which movies are good or bad for them to see?

Famed ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews has been horribly violated. Video of her nude body has been leaked to the Internet, forever depriving herself of the respect she used to receive for her insightful commentary and her message of equality in treatment of the sexes. Things have changed so that nobody will ever again be able to watch one of her televised appearances without thinking about her body, because her very public image has been suddenly, irrevocably sexualized. How could one heartless pervert be responsible for ruining her chances at being taken as seriously and viewed with the same chaste respect as her male colleagues?

The answer is, he probably can’t.

When it comes to sexy sportscasters, apparently there’s Erin Andrews, and then everybody else.
ESPN’s leggy, lovely sideline reporter pulled in nearly 40 percent of the votes to win our poll in a landslide.

The results might not come as a huge surprise. Erin is the subject of fanatic adoration in every arena or stadium she visits, and she even has YouTube tributes lovingly devoted to her. The former Florida Gator basketball team dancer is now one of ESPN’s marquee names, and it’s always a pleasure to watch her sideline reporting during ESPN’s college football telecasts.

That’s according to the 2008 edition of Playboy’s “America’s Sexiest Sportscaster” poll. You might notice the complete absence of any reference to Andrews’ qualities as a reporter, aside from the basic identification of her as such. In the same feature, Playboy also boasts that

The first-ever sexy sportscaster, Jayne Kennedy, posed for the magazine in July 1981. Our inaugural 2000 poll featured, among others, the ultimate winner, ABC’s Jill Arrington, Monday Night Football’s Melissa Stark, CBS reporter Bonnie Bernstein and The NFL on Fox’s Lisa Guerrero, who posed for the January 2006 issue of Playboy.

What does being sexy have to do with sports? A lot, actually.

Football, to use just one example, is a relatively safe sublimation of a smorgasbord of basic human instincts. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because those instincts, acted upon in a less vicarious and structured way, might be unsafe to society at large. Watching refereed tribe-on-tribe violence on TV is probably safer than acting it out in real life.

There is no deeper, more powerful basic instinct than the sex instinct. If anything is good, the addition of a “leggy, lovely” female will make it better. And when the situation combines the sex instinct with another set of ancient tendencies–e.g. in the form of sports–there is a certain synergistic effect. (Cheerleaders, try not to fool yourselves into thinking you’re around for any other reason.) It isn’t necessary to combine sports with sexual titillation, but the combination is a powerful one.

Marketers and television programmers have a great understanding of this concept–perhaps as good or greater than that of the best scientists in the relevant fields of study. They know of the close links among sex, violence, and bandwagon behavior. And that’s where Erin Andrews comes in.

It’s nice that females can do the things that males do. It’s nice that females have ambitions to succeed in fields that are overwhelmingly dominated by males. It’s nice that they might even have the merits to do so. But make no mistake; the number one thing most people appreciate about Andrews isn’t the insightful commentary she adds to the events she covers. They appreciate the mental image of her without clothes.

Again, I stress, this is not necessarily wrong. Icky? Yes, but entirely understandable, and probably a sign of good health. The wrong doesn’t lie in the simple act of wanting to watch sports and see a leggy, lovely female at the same time. The wrong lies in the fact that the People In Charge will take advantage of the simple, healthy tendencies that lie at the heart of this behavior and stoke it into a national obsession. It fosters a climate in which Erin Andrews’ sexuality is put so far out there that she’s all but primping herself nude for the viewing pleasure of the world.

Perhaps it wasn’t as shocking or dreadful as it should have been when a video surfaced on the Internet in which Andrews actually was primping herself nude. In fact, it seems almost like the next logical step. First, marketing essentially encourages the viewers to imagine this woman with her clothes off. It took someone, perhaps only one, whose respect for interpersonal boundaries had evaporated just slightly further than that of the average Andrews viewer, to realize that fantasy. And, as always, Andrews’ appearance was broadcast to the world, the sexuality only slightly more overt for having dispensed with the clothing.

Until now, Andrews has (ostensibly) been sexualized and transmitted on her own terms. Most people can understand the difference between being filmed for your job and being filmed without your knowledge in a private location, but I wonder if there’s much of a difference besides that. Aside from the sanctity of her own room on her own time, the only thing that seems to have been taken away from her and distributed to the world is a simple choice. Does the audience ogle Erin Andrews’ body with clothes on or off today?

The Chronicle of Higher Education is a newspaper for educators, by educators. Not too long ago, an issue of this paper came across my desk with an interesting story in it: a college professor had waited until the 11th hour to prepare her materials for a lecture she was to give the next day, and frantically consulted the Internet for help. She might have consulted her own knowledge, but she didn’t really have any to speak of.

The lecture she ended up giving was, in large part, based on what she could find on Wikipedia. That is an interesting choice of source, because anyone who’s been a college student during the time of Wikipedia’s prominence has been told that Wikipedia–a website written and edited by the public–is unfit for academia. Most professors do not tolerate it when their students include it as a cited source in their work. It is also interesting that an academic professional could get paid to deliver a lecture derived from such a source, which the students easily could have consulted themselves and gotten the same information without taking the class.

While it is astonishing that today’s exorbitant tuition rates could be paying for something that could just as well be gotten for free, the university was apparently not offended by this particular element of the professor’s conduct. Instead, the university was offended that the professor had posted the details of her troubles on her Facebook account. Her list of friends who could view those details included some of her own students, giving them access to the less desirable information about the nature of their expensive education. It was her carelessness in getting found out, rather than the behavior that was found out in the first place, that put her in hot water.

I doubt the sort of unprofessional conduct this teacher participated in is shared by the majority of college professors. But the ones who do, for the most part, are probably more savvy about keeping it quiet than this particular professor, and the colleges they work for are almost certainly complicit in that silence. What might the odds be that your own education comes partly from sources you were told weren’t good enough, and which you yourself could have accessed without having to pay excessive class fees? This particularly rankles me, as my own college hiked its tuition by an impressive amount just last month. (I’m anxious to see the major improvement in goods and services that the extra money will get me, as I’m sure everyone here is.)

We are also left to speculate as to the Chronicle’s motive for bringing this particular story to their audience of educators. It doesn’t seem to be here as an example of a teacher who badly failed in her duty both to her students and to her institution. It seems to be here as a cautionary tale: if you’re going to bilk somebody into paying for an education that isn’t worth its weight in computer pixels, try not to tell them about it.

I will be spending the upcoming three-day weekend away from the Internet, so this week’s entry is a little early.

It’s often said that kids are too busy playing video games to play outside anymore. While such an assertion is probably founded on reasonable observations, I would call the assertion itself into question. Why would kids choose video games over playing outside? Maybe there’s a good reason, but I doubt the people saying such a thing have thought it out that far.

I was a bookish kid, and I played my share of video games in my youth. I also played outside a lot. If the weather was fine and I had the time, I was outside with the other kids in the neighborhood. It wasn’t a question of conscious decision-making; that’s just what we did. I’m sure previous generations all had alternative activities waiting on deck when they were out playing football, riding bikes, or whatever.

One thing that I have noticed—and this is purely anecdotal, so if you’re looking for an empirical argument, pay it no mind—is that previous generations had perhaps a little more freedom during their expeditions to the great outdoors. When my father was a boy, he and his brothers had the run of the town. This might have been the product of being taken care of by a single mom who was in nursing school, which I find wonderfully progressive, but that’s beside the point. They still had a number of friends and family members to look after them, and even so, they would be out for hours at a time. I’ve heard enough long-winded stories about trips to the candy shop and the time Uncle S decided to swim across the river, which was nearly opaque at the time.

For my generation (again, anecdotal), we were a little more tethered. For us, playing outside didn’t mean going downtown to the candy shop on our own, or swimming across canals of industrial runoff. We stayed in the neighborhood. In retrospect, we probably had the supervision of at least one parental authority from the vantage point of at least one kitchen window at any given time. I doubt this was much our own doing. The parents wanted us in their line of sight at any given time.

The less real estate you have to work with, the less fun there is to be had. Combine that with the advent of home video game consoles, and there’s your explanation as to why kids might opt for the X-Box more often than they might have years ago. It’s not that video games are intrinsically more attractive than outside. It’s just something else to do.

But more to the point, why the change? What resulted in the increasing restrictiveness of child freedom? Does anybody really believe it’s what the kids want? If left purely to his own devices, would my father have still gone to the candy shop if he were growing up today, or would he have stayed put on the street on which he lived?

I would guess that it’s something that provides a whole other can of worms, and it’s the increased level of risk-aversion in parents. To cite a few possible examples of parental fears, it could be sex offenders, speeding cars, mercury poisoning, gangs, and so on. Rational examination of these phenomena would reveal that, statistically, there isn’t much to worry about, but if there’s one respect in which ordinarily intelligent adults veer into irrationality, it’s where their children are concerned.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s nice that my mom didn’t want me to get raped. But it’s also hard to develop a sense of independence when you’re stuck on a square block of land, with only so many sights and sounds to behold, and always within the watchful eye of the nearest authorities. And, if casual observation is any indication, the tether grows shorter with each generation.

During outside recess, I remember the playground supervisors interceding when my friends and I had woodchips in our hands. To us, they were the corporeal section of the standard-issue Jedi lightsaber. To them, we were engaged in a struggle to fatally wound one another with makeshift wooden daggers. I’ve heard that some schools don’t even have recess anymore.