"It was like fighting with the MPAA... to me it was like this is an R easy... but it was NC 17 over and over and even with this cut they were like, you are right on the edge buddy, one more thing and it's NC-17"
About this Quote
Rob Zombie isn’t bragging about being misunderstood; he’s diagnosing a system that treats adult intensity like a contagious disease. The line lands because it’s half war story, half punchline: “an R easy” vs. “NC-17 over and over” turns a bureaucratic decision into a recurring nightmare, the kind you wake up from and immediately get dragged back into. His phrasing is tellingly informal and adversarial - “fighting,” “buddy” - as if the MPAA is less a standards board than a bouncer at a club that keeps moving the velvet rope.
The subtext is about power masquerading as taste. Zombie’s work lives in the grime of American horror: sex, violence, cruelty, the stuff polite culture insists it doesn’t consume while streaming far worse at home. The MPAA’s “right on the edge” warning isn’t guidance; it’s leverage. An NC-17 isn’t just a label, it’s economic quarantine: fewer theaters, limited advertising, a stigma that makes distributors and exhibitors flinch. So the negotiation becomes a game of centimeters - trim a thrust, soften a frame, mute a sound - not to change the movie’s meaning, but to satisfy an opaque threshold.
Context matters, too: Zombie comes from shock rock, a scene built on pushing buttons and getting policed for it. Here, he’s pointing out the contradiction: America markets transgression until it looks too real, too bodily, too uncomfortably adult. The rating isn’t measuring harm so much as enforcing a narrow idea of what “acceptable” art is allowed to feel like.
The subtext is about power masquerading as taste. Zombie’s work lives in the grime of American horror: sex, violence, cruelty, the stuff polite culture insists it doesn’t consume while streaming far worse at home. The MPAA’s “right on the edge” warning isn’t guidance; it’s leverage. An NC-17 isn’t just a label, it’s economic quarantine: fewer theaters, limited advertising, a stigma that makes distributors and exhibitors flinch. So the negotiation becomes a game of centimeters - trim a thrust, soften a frame, mute a sound - not to change the movie’s meaning, but to satisfy an opaque threshold.
Context matters, too: Zombie comes from shock rock, a scene built on pushing buttons and getting policed for it. Here, he’s pointing out the contradiction: America markets transgression until it looks too real, too bodily, too uncomfortably adult. The rating isn’t measuring harm so much as enforcing a narrow idea of what “acceptable” art is allowed to feel like.
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| Topic | Movie |
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