It is certainly an interesting concept to think about - whether the government should be involved in movie production and if so, how. In the Wired magazine article, the government used a fake Science fiction flick to assist in a real life situation. Of course, the government has had a hand in the entertainment business for quite a long time before this, with propaganda films and even before that with the newspaper industry and yellow journalism. Nowadays you see ads on TV that depict the Marines as hardcore servicemen being courageous in times of despair, which may be true but it's still one shot of a much bigger picture that isn't shown on TV.
The governments in other countries play a huge role in what is allowed on screen and what isn't and I'm grateful that, for the most part, American cinema can do and say whatever it wants. There is a certain stigma that comes with government censorship that says it has to censor certain things because its people are too stupid to understand that whatever is being censored is bad. I think the rating system that the U.S. has is a great way to keep the camera rolling while still laying out some guidelines for people. While some rules are more stupid than others, the rating system allows people to judge if they want to see a movie based on a standardized set of policies.
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