The MPAA is at it again, this time with “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Charlie Countryman”

Continuing its trend of limiting the vision of various directors and producers, the MPAA is at it again, forcing several films–The Wolf of Wall Street and Charlie Countryman–to cut scenes of people doing things that everyone does at some point: having sex. Oh, the horror! Won’t you think about the kids?! I mean, sure, we can show a bunch of people getting their heads blown off, but show a nipple? Burn it all down!

This has been a persistent problem over the years, and sadly, we’re a culture that shies away from the apparent stigma that comes with being an adult; you know, I’d say most adults don’t encounter a triple-ax wielding monster in dark alleys at night, but DO have sex. Right now, we’re worried about shielding our kids’ eyes from naked bodies, and then we’re slapping a flimsy “I’m protecting them!” excuse on our blatant transgressions. Look, I’m not adopting a “They’re going to see it eventually” attitude; that’s the last thing I want. I just implore us to be realistic about these things.

Anyway, in the case of Scorsese’s new epic The Wolf of Wall Street, some of the film’s “abundant, explicit sex” had to be cut to receive an R rating, bringing the film’s running length down to 179 minutes from its original length of 654 minutes. At least 200 of those minutes featured Jonah Hill dancing naked on top of Leonardo DiCaprio’s facial hair while Kyle Chandler smirked off to the side.

In Charlie Countryman‘s case, Evan Rachel Wood took to Twitter to rant about the MPAA’s deletion of a scene in which Shia Labeouf performed oral sex on her; no word yet on Michael Bay’s interpretation of that scene, which probably involves big robots and explosions. As for Wood’s Twitter rant, even given the site’s 140-character limit, her epic diatribe against the MPAA spanned nearly ten tweets and didn’t lose its impact. Sincere kudos to her; head to https://twitter.com/evanrachelwood to see the whole thing.

Of course, sadly, our films will continue to acquiesce to the demands of the MPAA, and eventually, we’ll see NC-17 ratings on kids movies for depicting two cartoon dogs licking each other. Or something like that.

Credit to Red Granite Pictures and The Wolf of Wall Street for all pictures. I own nothing.

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