COMMENTARY : Dropping the X : Rating movies is a slippery business, and after 22 years the severest of ratings has outlived whatever usefulness it had

It is clear that the dreaded, hated X has got to go.

In its 22nd year as part of the movies’ rating system--the so-called Valenti ratings adopted in November, 1968--the X has not only outlived whatever usefulness it ever had, it has clouded perceptions of how the ratings are meant to work, and it has now become the focus for legal attacks on the system.

From the start, the X was an awkward member of the G-PG-R family. It was like an adopted child that did not get along well with the natural kids. It was the only non-copyrighted symbol, which meant that anybody could appropriate it. It also arrived with a scarlet past, synonymous forever, it seemed, with disreputable materials, nude flicks and naughty publications.

Until it became part of the ratings, X never identified anything more positive than the spot on the map in pirate tales where the treasure was buried. It was a selling point, not a warning. Once it was in the system, however, X marked not only exploitative films but those films of unquestioned artistic intent that the raters judged to be unsuitable because of their intensity for viewers under the age of 17 or 18.

That has always been the mischief: The inflammatory X applied equally to films of merit like “Last Tango in Paris” and “Midnight Cowboy” and to other films only a distributor could love--and which may or may not have actually been rated by the system at all.

It was, in fact, a further mischief that any film not rated by Motion Picture Assn. of America’s CARA--the Classification and Rating Administration--is technically regarded as an X. And since the X is not copyrighted, it could be self-applied by a distributor to any film for which X was a selling point, not a handicap.

What remains true is that some publications will not accept advertising for X-rated films. (The Times goes on a case-by-case basis, checking its critics’ opinions on whether a given X-rated or unrated film has aspirations to artistic merit.)

For that reason, and because the number of play dates for X-rated films is also limited, most contracts between distributor and filmmaker call for delivery of a finished film of a certain maximum length and of a particular rating, occasionally a PG or PG-13, more often these days an R but absolutely not an X.

The push now is to dump the X, with its overtones of the illicit, the spicy and the non-meritorious. Going to A (the most frequently mentioned alternative) or “17” or “NC” (for No Children) would end a particular mischief.

But it will not solve the root problem that the X itself has always posed. The new rating would not distinguish between the tough films of undeniable artistic intent (however well or ill they may come off) and the films whose quantities of sex and violence most viewers would agree are merely exploitative. (The exploitation films are seldom submitted for ratings anyway, but there are borderline exceptions.)

The most difficult task for the rating board members--and the hardest to make both the public and indeed the industry itself understand--is that they are supposed to be rendering quantitative judgments on the film at hand, not qualitative or subjective judgments.

The members of CARA’s board, themselves parents, are in effect meant to be proxies for all parents. They are asked to judge that most parents would agree, let’s say, that Film A is acceptable for audiences of every age, Film B too intense for small children but all right for early teen-agers, Film C acceptable for maturer teen-agers, Film D fine for an accompanied teen-ager, and so on.

It’s a slippery business and the raters themselves are not always unanimous. But whether they think Film A is a tedious bore or a soaring triumph is quite another question, and not for the raters to say (whatever they may feel privately). It certainly ought not to be for the raters to say. And it would be a new mischief for the raters to assign A or 17 or NC for the good intense films but retain X for what MPAA president Jack Valenti calls smut films.

Making such distinctions as between A and X would, not least, turn the raters into psychics, trying to probe the minds of filmmakers and discern whether their intentions were honorable or dishonorable.

Applying the ratings is complicated by what is actually a virtue of the present ratings system: its flexibility. Unlike the ironclad “Don’ts” of the Hays Code (which was in force from 1934 to 1968), the Valenti system has a built-in flexibility that can reflect changing community standards and tolerances. “Ryan’s Daughter,” controversial when it was first rated R in 1970 for a brief semi-nude love scene, would very likely draw a PG or PG-13 today.

The present ratings offer only the most general guidelines, placing responsibility on the filmmakers and offering them great freedom of expression--at the price of a particular rating.

That price continues to be the point of friction, although in the face of more than 10,000 films rated, the arguments, while very conspicuous, have been relatively infrequent.

To cite one example of changing standards, the f-word, which used to demand an automatic R, no longer does, although excessive use of profanity is still grounds for an R. Violence appears to be a prime determinant now as before, although the raters apparently perceive that some violence is less intense and more make-believe than other violence.

Over the years, Valenti had steadfastly resisted changes in the system on grounds that it was fairly complicated to begin with and that it was dangerous to complicate it further. There have been frequent cries for more explanations as to why a film was rated PG, R or X, for example. Expanded ratings were tried experimentally in the Midwest a few years ago. They were reportedly well received, but the experiment was not repeated and the explanatory ratings were not adopted.

But the lawsuits filed against the Motion Picture Assn. of America and its ratings by the distributors of Pedro Almodovar’s “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” and the docudrama “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” will, whatever their merits, be costly and time-consuming to defend. They also arrive on a wave of complaint, from critics and creators, about the consequences of having to accept the X rating, or to edit a film to achieve an R rating.

A larger question is whether the industry’s voluntary self-policing in the form of the ratings is still necessary. The original Hays Code system in 1934 was a countermeasure to the Catholic Church’s newly launched Legion of Decency, which was in turn a reflection of a noisy stirring across Middle America against what was perceived as the low moral tone of the movies.

The renewal of the system in 1968 reflected many changes in society, including the arrival of television and the large-scale erosion of the film audience. It also acknowledged that the urge to censor the movies had not disappeared; several cities still had, and have, censor boards.

The uproar two years ago over “The Last Temptation of Christ” would suggest that the movies, despite their diminished position in the world of entertainment, still have the power to command fear and loathing as well as affection. And the pressure on public libraries to ban books as innocuous as “Tarzan” and a new edition of “Little Red Riding Hood” is a further suggestion that the vigilante mentality is extant.

The X rating has addressed not only parental guidance but also the prevailing legal situation on obscenity, which is that some material may be found to be actionable as obscene if purveyed to children but not if marketed to adults. The X has thus been a warning to exhibitors that legal prudence demanded they police their box offices.

Putting the new rating system in place was Valenti’s first major achievement after he became president of the MPAA in 1966. It was undoubtedly a triumph of political legerdemain, winning endorsement for the system not only from the major studios that make up the MPAA but from the distributors of foreign films and, above all, from the theater owners who were being asked to bar patrons from certain films or insist that others be accompanied by adults.

If Valenti elects to scuttle the X, as now appears possible, he should have no trouble getting the change past his constituents. The dismissal of X has the strongest appeal of all: enlightened self-interest.