Small Town Survival

Warning: This entry may contain sexual references, including but not limited to pornography. This entry is also parent- and friend-safe. If I had to give it a rating it'd be PG, you know, because of the sexual references. There will be no sex in this entry. (I bet I could get some crazy google hits from that sentence alone.)

Side Note: In deciding to rate my entry I've decided to check up on the actual movie ratings and what they mean. You can find a more detailed explanation here. When considering the actual rating of this entry I might take the following into account.

1. I am not a parent, but am an adult. Most of my readers are adults. All of them? (actual age or mental age? :)

2. G rating states: Nudity, sex scenes, and scenes of drug use are absent; violence is minimal; snippets of dialogue may go beyond polite conversation but do not go beyond common everyday expressions.

Hmm, no nudity or sex scenes here, no drugs, no violence. I don't think I'm required to be polite and I certainly won't be going beyond every day expressions.

3. PG rating states: Some material may not be suitable for children. This signifies that the film rated may contain some material parents might not like to expose to their young children .

I suppose what I'm going to talk about isn't something I sit down and discuss with a child. I suppose it's not suitable.

4. PG-13: Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. This signifies that the film rated may be inappropriate for pre-teens.

Yeah, okay, this isn't for kids. I can also get bumped to this level is I swear, more than once. I think so anyway. They say, "one use of the harsher sexually derived words may be heard." I suppose that's swearing? Where's my formal training on this stuff. Damn.

5. R: An R may be assigned due to, among other things, a film's use of language, theme, violence, sex or its portrayal of drug use.

Oh, here's a problem, I think the theme could be about sex. Does that make this an R rated entry?

6. NC-17: This signifies that ... the film is patently adult.... [It] may contain explicit sex scenes, an accumulation of sexually-oriented language, or scenes of excessive violence. The NC-17 designation does not, however, signify that the rated film is obscene or pornographic.

First this is great. This entry is .. er, intended for an adult audience. It may contain sexually-oriented language, no scenes of sex or violence though. As far as I know it's not going to be obscene or pornographic. Although like I said before, you may find references to pornography. Are you curious yet?

How about we stop with this rating system and get on with the entry? Yeah, I thought so too, after all, it's only an entry.

My classes started today; nice and early. The first class is called Saved from Desire (ah, now you know). It's also subtitled: Censoring, regulating, and rating sexual representations in film in the United States. There's also a full description of the course available. I think the best part was when we spent a lot of time the first day talking about porn. It comes up later in the course because, of course, we're talking about censorship. (I told you I would make sexual references.) Mostly what we're doing is taking a look at films and how they evolve along with the American Culture. I think so anyway. It looks like a really exciting class.

The second class of the day (starting right after the first in the same room with the same teacher) is a Media Studies class and from what I can tell we're learning about film composition. The elements that go into a film, including all the things I never noticed before. I'm sure if I could remember to pay attention I'm going to look at movies in an entirely different light. I probably said that about magazines too when I had my magazine journalism class. We did learn how to take an article apart and look at the bare bones of it so to speak.

So, those are the classes I've had so far and I'm really excited about them. Okay, I'm a little tired too because they start at 8 a.m. and I'm in class 4 hours straight (with little breaks of course). I think class-wise this school year has been or will be one of those most rewarding years to date - this is including the fall semester of course.

Sweet.