Laughing Squid hat gestern obige Mini-Doku über die Geschichte von San Francisco als Porno- und Sex-Hauptstadt Amerikas gepostet: Documentary On When San Francisco Was Smut Capital of the USA. Und vorgestern hatte der Atlantic einen Artikel inklusive toller Poster-Galerie darüber am Start, wie das Label „X-Rated“ langsam in ein Synonym für Porno mutierte und was „XXX“ mit Bier zu tun hat.
When the MPAA introduced the X-rating in 1968, there was no conception of it having a pejorative meaning. In fact, if you refer back to the movie poster for Starlet! (slide #6), a film released the same year the MPAA’s four-tiered system was introduced, you can see that the producers actually reject the X-rating, substituting their own “XXX” in a faux MPAA-style ratings box, along with the tag line, “So adult one X isn’t enough!”
The implication is clear. At this point in time the X-rating is understood to simply denote Adults Only, with no suggestion that the content of a movie carrying that rating will be especially titillating or explicit.
The producers of Starlet! leverage the market’s understanding of what the X rating means by describing their own offering as XXX, borrowed from the old practice of using X, XX, or XXX to denote the strength of beer.
