Movies that Earned the Dreaded NC-17 Rating
Everett CollectionLast year, Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn Monroe drama Blonde made headlines for its NC-17 rating.
Despite the controversial certification, star Ana de Armas still earned Best Actress Oscar nomination.
The NC-17 rating was officially created in 1990 to replace the X rating, which distributors had disliked since it evoked pornographic films and not adult dramas with explicit scenes.
But it did nothing to stop the NC-17 from courting controversy and igniting shock. The rating, often given to films with full frontal nudity or explicit sexual acts, has often been criticized as outdated.
Andrew Dominik’s Netflix drama Blonde is rated NC-17 for “sexual content,” because it includes prolonged nude scenes and one extended sequence centered on John F. Kennedy sexually assaulting Marilyn Monroe while she’s unconscious.
Ana de Armas, who has earned career-best reviews for playing the Hollywood icon, said ahead of the film’s release that she was baffled by the movie’s explicit rating.
“I didn’t understand why that happened,” de Armas said. “I can tell you a number of shows or movies that are way more explicit with a lot more sexual content than ‘Blonde.’ But to tell this story it is important to show all these moments in Marilyn’s life that made her end up the way that she did. It needed to be explained. Everyone [in the cast] knew we had to go to uncomfortable places. I wasn’t the only one.”
Dominik added, “I was surprised. I thought we’d colored inside the lines. But I think if you’ve got a bunch of men and women in a boardroom talking about sexual behavior, maybe the men are going to be worried about what the women think. It’s just a weird time. It’s not like depictions of happy sexuality. It’s depictions of situations that are ambiguous. And Americans are really strange when it comes to sexual behavior, don’t you think? I don’t know why. They make more porn than anyone else in the world.”
