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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.
I realize the importance of having a rating that differentiates between a kid's movie and one for young adults, but as a non-parent I look on it with contempt. Ever since the R rating begun to be widely enforced, studios have toned down violent films so they can still have a chance at making money from the younger market. For example: I might actually have gone to see the recent Alien vs. Predator film had it been rated R, but since it was PG-13, I decided to wait until I can rent it. Enforcement of the ratings system, and the studios' response to it, has dealt the death blow for true horror/action films, because studios must now focus on making higher quality products for a more discerning audience if they want to make profit and carry the R rating. Instead they choose to neuter their movies and add some more special effects and popular cliché to entice the kids.
I'm not suggesting that just because a movie is rated PG-13 that it is, by default, a bad movie. What I am suggesting is that continuations of previously successful films, and modern horror/action flicks will never be what we all remember them to be. We will never see truly cheesy and senselessly bloody movies like Evil Dead ever again.
Also, if anyone hasn't heard of a decent NC-17 movie since Showgirls, this one looks promising. I saw the trailer for it the other day.
PG13 has been able to watch itself.
Did anyone else think they were raising the allowed age for letting kids into a PG-13 movie to 20?
Or maybe 20 year olds could be naked now in a PG-13 movie.
Or... how old are the Olsen Twins again?
For a second there, I thought PG-13 was about to become PG-20!
CNN has a story about the 20 year anniversary of PG-13
In a related story... nobody cares.
The funny thing is that actor that plays Ram was a popular Indian actor that played villian roles. His lines were all in Hindi, and not gibberish. Something about "Black mother" if I remember correctly.
The article talks about how it was adopted and loved and all that when for a long time - even after Indiana Jones and such - it was the No Man's Land of ratings. Teens could still get in to R movies, while parents wouldn't want to take younger kids to PG-13 movies. I'm not sure where they came up with this tripe of a story. Then again it seems to be an RIAA press release gifted to them by CNN so it's understandable that it's full of shit.
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.
For those of you who don't know what I'm referring to, in the U.K. cut of Temple of Doom, the British censors refused to screen the movie without deleting the heart-removal scene, and the scene of Short Round being whipped, and maybe one or two other scenes. (The recently released Indy boxed set in the U.K. kept with the original theatrical versions, which pissed me off when I realised the difference.) As you might expect - and as I mentioned above - the heart scene was sorta crucial for making sense of a couple points of the movie.
The fine brat-esque-pack Red Dawn.
Why is this "knews" piece even relevant? CNN has a pro-MPAA, pro-RIAA, Valenti puff piece every couple days. You don't see a whole lot of well-rounded copyright discourse on the major media news outlets. (Gee, I wonder why...) CNN: We're tough on music fans. We like suing kids and grandmas. We equate infringement with theft. We are fair and balanced, too.
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Not many know the actor who played Mola Ram is a Bollywood actor who has the badguy act down to the dot. Some info on how this talented actor landed this role can be found here
:).
However the first time I saw Temple of Doom, I specifically didnt enjoy the manner in which Speilberg sought to portray the culture and traditions of India and Hinduism. Thanks to movie such as Temple of Doom, a big part of Western Hemisphere thought this sad portrayal was still true of India until the Indians started stealing their jobs
But heck, its a movie and though not as good as the other two, it is still enjoyable. I hope Speilberg and Ford gets around to making one more and I wouldnt complain if they threw Sir Sean in to the mold as well..
Rapid Nirvana
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
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
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....
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
Don't you mean SNT, PC and NPC?
SNT = Skirts & Ties
PC = Practicing Catholics
NPC = Non-practicing Catholics
I knew it! Know how I knew it?
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Give up?
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I RTFA!
[antilamenessfilter!]
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Ha, you probably underestimate kids. He's probably already seen plenty of PG-13 and R rated movies, and he probably has seen pr0n at least once in his life. If he's 16 and hasn't done all 3, that's just sad. Parents suck at trying to be over-controlling. It just ends up having a negative effect on the kid later in life.
That anon post is exactly right - Red Dawn was not the first film to get a PG-13 rating (I can't remember which one was), but it was the first film *released* with a PG-13 rating. At the time, Red Dawn had more scenes of graphic violence than any other movie ever made.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
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
All the provinces in Canada have a movie review board that is empowered with determining a rating on all publically released movies. What one province will rate PG another might give 14A (think PG14, it's a Canadian thing).
Quebec and Canada in general, seem to have a more liberal ratings policy than their American counterparts. I had the same reaction when I was out for a movie in Texas and saw several movies rated "R" that were 14A back home in BC. Another difference that comes to mind is while the Canadian ratings system is mandated by provincal law, the American ratings system was a compromise created by the MPAA to stave off government censorship (if memory serves).
Something else to note is while in the U.S. the MPAA rating carries over onto the video release, the Canadian distributors apply a "Canadian Home Video" (or somesuch) rating that reflects the liberal Canadian ratings during the theatrical release. No province that I know of classifies home movies other than adult, thus the "Canadian Home Video" rating system.
Oddly enough, she gained a large homosexual following from it.
Possibly because she played a lesbian in Showgirls and Bound, among other movies?
AVP is a prime example of abuse of the PG-13 rating by a major studio. AVP was shot as an "R" rated film, but the studio, at the last second, decided to cut the film to a PG-13, so the younger crowd could get into see it, and make more money. To me, they ruined the film by doing this. Thankfully, they did not cut Freddy vs. Jason to a PG-13, yet it still was the number one movie that week and made a lot of money. Hollywood has long since lost it's segregation in regards to ratings. Instead of making kid films, teenager films and adult films, the studios are making "all in one" films that just about everyone can see.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
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?
Though my position on this issue probably doesn't sync with the norm, I've found the problem with PG-13 to be the exact opposite of yours. Sometimes I'd just like to see a good movie without any of the questionable junk. (I know, I know - lots of people seem to prefer to see the stuff I just called junk in their moves - I'd rather that stuff be in movies rated R though.) Movies which for the most part probably could be rated PG throw some gratuitous scene or language in just to get the coveted PG-13 rating so that the teenage crowd won't dismiss it. So, what you end up with are movies which are mostly pretty good, but have some questionable content which may or may not fit with the rest of the story or the intended audience in one small scene just to get the more mature rating. So, from my perspective, the PG-13 rating has actually worsened my movie going experience. But, I recognize I'll be hard pressed to have very many other people on Slashdot agree. Let the puritanical accusations commence!
Disney owns ABC america
News Corp owns Fox News and 20th centuary fox
Time Warner owns CNN
Viacom owns Paramount and CBS (and also UPN)
I dont know who owns NBC (I think it is or was Vivendi or General Electric or something)
No matter where you go, most "news" outlets are biased.
When it comes to any issue that affects the big $$$$$ that Big Media makes, they are always going to go with whatever side makes them the most.
With regards to copyright, expect the MPAA to push for HD-DVD players (or whatever the new standard for blue-laser hi-definition DVDs ends up being) to only play protected content. And for any commercially available recording devices to use different disks. Their stated goal for that would be "preventing piracy" but their real aim would be to prevent anyone from being able to produce content for the format unless its been vetted by the MPAA first.
Not coincidentally, thats why Big Media is winning in congress over the technology companies (because Big Media can paint the congressmen that support them in a favorable light and paint those that wont in an unfavorable light)
And it could possibly be because she is hot .
You mean films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey? That's probably my all time favorite. I find that "adult" film really means adolescent film. I don't care to spend hours and hours filling my head full of blooshed and gore. There's a whole universe of stuff out there that could make for interesting films, but people are so in love with violence that that's what we get. Either that or just plain stupid, sappy stuff.
Long ago I decided to vote with my buck and just stop going to the movies.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
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.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
But then again, is that surprising.
3 308&trkid=73), rated PG-13. If it scared off people for having brief nudity (a 70-year-old man's bare ass) and sexual content (discussions about panties and what they mean on a date), then maybe Hollywood wouldn't have made such a shitty movie.
The problem is that *all* of the ratings rely on someone else telling parents what's appropriate for their children. I know, but let's pretend that parents in this country actually parent.
A better system of rating would be to rate them for launguage, violence, sexuality, etc., very similar to what many pay-cable networks use.
Google for yourself - there's plenty of outraged people out there who think that some PG-13 movies are unacceptable for 13-year-olds, but if a movies was rated for brief nudity and sexual content, we could all make that decision based on personal morals, as opposed to the nebulus PG-13.
What I think is acceptable for me and my children is wildly different from many puritanical types in America. In plus, the aforementioned movie with nudity and sexual content is called Mooseport (http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=6003
They had their chance 20 years ago for reform, and now we'll never see it.
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.
-If
Bad Karma? No Probalo!
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
"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."
It's not a "counter-trend," it's a "profit-trend." The "Unrated" label is just a ploy to sell more DVDs. "Ooh look! This is unrated, it must be full of sex and murder! I want to see what I missed in theaters!"
G
As a movie employee, I see this myth being held by many, especially young, afraid adolescents; the myth you have to be at least 13 or with an adult to see a PG-13 movie.t m
The actual guideline (that the MPAA doesn't really like to promote) is that the
PG-13 rating still allows those under 13 to be admitted without a parent or guardian
source: http://www.mpaa.org/movieratings/about/content5.h
I'm even though a little surprised that PG-13 allow to get away with the RTFM word [In alien v. predator]; though it was used only briefly.
As for the article, it's accurate. I've seen customers turned off of a movie, who hold that a PG movie is mere anime and for little kiddies. [Napoleon Dynamite is one example]
Summary - Parents find out what your kids are watching; Tweens - don't feel bad sneaking into R-Rated movies. It's fun when me and fellow teenage workers watch your dissapointed & shockedlooks when you get kicked out. ^_^
The Roman Catholic system actually tends to reflect the ideas of quality, realism, and depth (granted - all often within the limits of certain moral biases, particularly about sex).
RC censors operate under rules where they are expected to look at West Side Story, recognize that it's based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, that the musical score is a skilled orchestral work and integral to the creation as a whole, and that there's an added message about racial and class intolerance that makes a number of profound moral points, and take such things into account in rating the film, while the current US system is expected to simply notice an underage romance is involved, and tack on some standardized points. Enough points for gang violence, knives being shown, and deaths and it's PG-13, a few more and its an R, and a "message" is often irrelevant to the final result.
Who is John Cabal?
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
I would agree with you. I lived both in this country and abroad and Americans are definetly obsessed with violence. Oh the horror if there is any nudity on the screen or any show of affection, the movie gets an R or NC-17 rating easily. But there can be limbs cut off and people blasting each other away and that is accepted. I am not saying that nudity should be shown to kids, its just that at least the same restrictive standards should apply for violence as there are for nudity and sex - something that is far more common and normal.
Ack, you missed the directors cut. Just after he whispers to the girl, space monkeys start attacking!
(Bows to Eddie)
I don't do this for karma, I do it for cash. It's much better.
"But there can be limbs cut off and people blasting each other away and that is accepted."
This is actually not true, although it is an oft-repeated myth on Slashdot. What immediately comes to mind is "The Matrix" and "Die Hard" - both of which garnered R ratings, and neither of which had any sex or nudity whatsoever. Violence will grab you an R in this country quite easily.
Violence _won't_ get an NC-17, or at least I've never heard of it doing so, but considering that such things as wars, death camps, and mass graves are covered daily in the news in all their graphic detail, I think this is relatively understandable. Simply put, violence tends to be a public issue, whereas sex is perceived as a private one - hence societal prudishness on sex/nudity vs. violence. I don't think that's really wrong or bad, just different than other places.
I agree, though: things would be a lot better if the same standards for nudity/sex were applied to violence. G-d knows I'm never going to let my kids watch TV without VERY close supervision.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Except that American Pie and Scary Movie are both rated R...
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
I always enjoyed reading their view on movies, it was usually the only reason I'd pick up the Catholic Key each week. Not that it ever stopped me from viewing them, but it was nice to know what they found offensive in them. The write-ups can be rather amusing in a stuffy sort of way.
Harold & Kumar go to White Castle
"Danny Leiner's road picture makes pretensions of social commentary concerning race and identity, but the only race it seems to care about is a race to the bottom, shamelessly finding humor in a story built around getting high while behind the wheel of a car. Recurring drug use, two instances of frontal nudity, much rough and crude language, as well as strong sexual and bathroom humor."
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie
"Incoherent animated action adventure about a teenager named Yugi....this dizzying and disjointed mess is little more than a 90-minute commercial for "Yu-Gi-Oh!" products."
Gigli (you asked)
"Stale romantic comedy about a low-level leg-breaker (Ben Affleck) who falls for a beautiful lesbian mob enforcer (Jennifer Lopez) hired to assist him in kidnapping a federal prosecutor's mentally handicapped brother. Lopez and Affleck exhibit more fizzle than sizzle in this overhyped clunker written and directed by Martin Brest, full of forced lewd humor and fueled by a distorted suggestion that sexuality is a malleable social construct and a casual endorsement of homosexual activity. A sexual encounter, excessive sexually explicit and rough language, as well as profanity and brief strong violence. O -- morally offensive."
"My fingers Emit sparks of fire in Expectation of my future labours." William Blake
I thought this movie was great. I live in east asia (though not in Tokyo), and virtually all the expats I've met that have lived out here for a reasonable amount of time thought this movie was great, too.
The director -- Sophia Coppola was it? -- apparently lived in Tokyo for sometime, and used her experiences when making the movie. Whatever it was, it really shines through. No matter how enculturated you become (for example, I've lived in Shanghai for years now, speak Chinese, and am possibly now more comfortable with Chinese culture than the one I was born with), there are always these hopeless times where you realize that no amount of xenophelia will ever make you fit in, and that you will always be an outsider, if only because of your race.
Lost in Translation captures this feeling of hopelessness in such an incredibly poetic way.
Most of the people I've discussed this movie with that didn't like it (and sibling posts bear this out) seem to be mostly concerned with the fact that the film has the slow pace of real life rather than the accelerated pace of Hollywood blockbusters. It's really much more like a French film than an American one, I think, in terms of pace and style.
If you're not into that sort of thing, well... what can I tell you?
But understand that you are probably not the intended audience of this movie. It's about culture shock, and if you haven't experienced culture shock, you probably aren't going to identify with it.
People who are either kids, or are just barely not kids (i.e. most Slashdotters) don't like the rating system! Who woulda thunk it? ;)
But seriously ... grow up, have a few kids, and I don't think you'll mind having a few voluntary tools to keep them from becoming too coarse and vulger, too fast. Trash doesn't have to actually be harmful for you to want to keep your kids from wallowing in it.
After all, when that must-see, super duper important movie that the kids simply *have* to see comes out, you could just take them there yourself, you know. Or rent it, since movies come out on video about five minutes after they're released now.
Good movies are coming out at an alarming rate. In fact, I would say that for the first time since the 60s it is now possible to go to a mainstream cinema and have a high chance of finding a real grownup movie on. Even wide-appeal movies like the Kill Bill movies, Lost in Translation and so on are grown up in the way that 80's movies never were. We have more 'pure art' movies available than ever before, now that Japanese, Chinese and Korean movies are finally actually being shown on screens (admittedly only in big cities). And even the summer blockbusters, lowest of the low in pure trash terms, sometimes contain depths (LoTR, Spiderman, pity about Troy though) that nobody would have dreamed of bothering to add in in the 1980s.
What's more, from a technical point of view there has never been a greater reserve of knowhow and skilled professionals available. Even a flop like Van Helsing was able to call on cinematography that was really a work of art in it's own right.
You want Real Art? The usual suspects are doing it: Talk To Her, Dolls. Hollywood's doing it too: The Others, Donnie Darko. But even if you don't want Real Art, the average quality of every grade of movie has moved up SO far since 20 years ago...
The movies are not dying. Watch a week's worth of multiscreen fodder from 1984 and you will agree with me!
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.