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PG-13 Rating Turns 20
Ant writes "CNN has a story about the 20 year anniversary of PG-13 and how it was created/born from two of Steven Spielberg's movies. (Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and Gremlins)" Oh, Mola Ram and your heart-removing antics, little did you know the profound impact you would have.
What I don't get, is that the rating systems are inconsistent. Here in Quebec, most movies that are rated R elsewhere are rated PG-13. Take Hannibal for instance, I believe in the U.S. it was rated R, in Quebec it was PG-13 or maybe even PG-14, and in Brittish Columbia I think it was rated PG. How can anyone make sense of anything when the rating system is inconsistent? If you ask me, it's just a waste of time, completely meaningless.
PG-13 came around about the same time as the studios simply gave up trying. It has nothing to do with making movies teen-safe, and everything to do with the tactic also commonly seen in corporate board rooms: saying to hell with the future, let's see how much junk we can shove out the door on the cheap today before our customers abandon us.
Give PG-13 a break. If anything, it let studios add the occasional adult element to otherwise-PG movies while still allowing the chilluns to see them. Yes, current movies suck, but that has nothing to do with revamping the ratings system.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
An interesting bit of movie rating history: when the MPAA brought out the original system (G/M/R/X), they trademarked the first three but not "X." Pornographers were thus free to use it, and it came to be associated with "pornography" instead of "adult content," requiring the creation of the "NC-17" rating years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-rated
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When it came out in the 80's it was the best thing to happen to movies. Youu could have a good humor flick with a flash of nudity and still have the teens go to see it. Now it's an excuse to make a half assed horror/thriller and tone it down enough to make them extra money. So many movies have been killed by this rating. Blah....
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Spielberg had the brilliant idea of adding a sub-rating to a 2-level rating system (making *gasp!* 3 levels), told it to his buddy Jack Valenti, who then asked their opinion to theater owners (who, as everybody knows, are reknown experts in pedopsychology) and implemented it.
The new sub-level then quickly became a marketting tool to capture more teenager money, effectively turning the whole rating system into a 2-level system again, since no filmmaker wants a PG rating anymore.
In short: *yawn*
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The problem is with the unintended consequences of the ratings system. In theory, there should be 5 different ratings (G, PG, PG13, R, NC17). In reality, the ratings start to take on meanings other than the ones they were intended to have. For example, G means "kid's movie" and NC17 means "sex" so studios deliberately avoid putting out movies that have these ratings. Sometimes this means adding an expletive or two for the sole purpose of getting the movie up to PG instead of G.
I've heard of the Catholic rating system. One thing they do that the MPAA doesn't is they look at how the sex/violence/whatever is portrayed and not just whether it exists. So if someone gets murdered, but the movie shows the consequences of violence rather than glorifying it, the Catholic system tends to take this into account. Of course, it's all based on the Catholic Church's idea of morality, so movies can also get nailed for things like showing unmarried couples living together, gay/lesbian relationships, etc.
They must be doing something right, though. I believe Gigli was rated "Offensive."
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
No, movies are still good. I could name about 100 that have come out in the past 15 years that are spectacular. As shorthand, please note that 20 of IMDB's Top 50 Movies are from 1990 or more recent. I'm not saying all those are masterpieces, but they're damn good.
The issue, if you'll let me troll for a paragraph or so, is that you're old and/or not interested in researching truly good films being made now. The quality of films right now, I'd say, is probably better than before, certainly not worse. For every Empire Strikes Back there were five American Ninja movies. It's just that, over time, we forget bad movies. I mean, who remembers movies like Fklesh & Blood? But we remember Sunset Blvd.. In 15 years no one will remember Avp. Just give it time. All the good stuff will rise to the surface.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
So what they did was release the film as unrated, with instructions for theatres not to allow anyone under 18 into the film. Since it wasn't technically an NC-17 film it was okay to show. Since then I think this loophole's been closed.
Anyway rating systems are messed up. Like foreign childrens films like "Billy Elliot" and "Whale Rider" get PG-13, and films with no sex or violence, just people talking, like "Thirteen Conversations About One Thing" and "Before Sunrise" get an R rating because they used the word "fuck" more than twice. I don't get that, use the f word twice it's PG-13, three times it's an R. On the Bourne Identity commentary they said they had to carefully decide which character would get the alloted f word. I don't think language should even be a criteria, kids can see worse language in school libraries.
And what's up with Europeans get the uncut version of "Eyes Wide Shut" while the U.S. gets the family friendly R-rated version?
It's also lead to an interesting counter-trend out of Hollywood... they're now putting out the "unrated edition" DVD for movies that had to get some scenes cut to qualify for the lower MPAA rating. The American Pie movie series comes to mind as an example of just such a case.
Effectively, two cuts of such movies end up on the DVD marketplace, and the consumer decides how offensive they want the movie to be.
I was surprised to find out that the motion picture rating system is a voluntary system. It is enforced by the ownership/management of a theater and not by law (like age limits on alcohol or driving).
I found this out when Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was released this year. There was such an uproar about the film being rated 'R' (and thus a "Bush led conspiracy to keeping some people from seeing it") that a couple of theater owners in the Bay Area said they wouldn't enforce the 'R' rating on the film.
I'm not sure what would happen if a theater owner consistently ignored the rating system.
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This is an interesting side-effect of subscriptions - it enables intelligent first posts. Trolls aren't really gonna subscribe because they are all broke 13-year-olds (or broke 23-year-olds). So you have a bunch of people selected from what is likely to be the most intelligent posters getting a head start. An interesting strategy would be to just delay stories for people with low/no karma. It could possibly make this effect more pronounced. Of course you would market it as a reward for having high karma.
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I've never seen a rating system for books - thank God. Some popular music is dissed for sex, obscenity, etc., but a rating system? Why are movies special?
Let the film makers make the flick they want to make. ASSume the flicks are viewable by those who have reached the age of majority. Most film makers are already required to shoot alternate footage for the TV version. With digital distribution to theaters (How are we coming on that?) let the theaters show the different versions at different times of the day.
I don't want my media censored. At the same time, I'm weary of writers, musicians and film makers who act like little kids and try to see what they can get away with just for the sake of doing it.
If you don't want to watch something, fine, don't watch it, but you don't have the right to stop me from watching it, so bugger off.
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it? ~ Albert Einstein