The archive roulette button’s icon features the rating system NC-17. Read below why this is Otherness Archive’s icon.

The Motion Picture Association of America created NC-17 (No Children Under 17 Admitted) in 1990, to replace its previous highest rating X and the “stigma of pornography” associated with it. However, most mainstream cinemas in America refuse to screen NC-17 films; which lead to older work being black listed, which meant no distribution and little to no life after a films creation. This prevented art house films, experimental moving image work, new queer cinema and erotica work from any success. NC-17 and X rating have a history of being used specifically against “representations of otherness” such as trans, lesbian and gay films especially black queer moving image work, preventing them from reaching mass audiences and being easily accessible.

This rating systems may not make it self aggressively known to those who it don’t exist outside the film industry, but it demands an acknowledgement of the queer culture it has repeatedly censored.

This is why the NC-17 logo has become a a symbol for Otherness Archive to remember censored/ erased/ forgotten history but also as a way to subvert it’s original function and reclaim it as a symbol of transgression which is the ethos Otherness Archive stands for.

- Sweatmother