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The MPAA film rating system is a system used
in the United
States and instituted by the Motion
Picture Association of America to rate a movie
based on its content. It is one of various motion
picture rating systems used to help patrons decide
which movies may be appropriate for children.
The current MPAA movie ratings consist of:
- Rated G – GENERAL AUDIENCES: All ages
admitted.
- Rated PG – PARENTAL GUIDANCE SUGGESTED:
Some material may not be suitable for children.
- Rated PG-13 – PARENTS STRONGLY CAUTIONED:
Some material may be inappropriate for children under
13.
- Rated R – RESTRICTED: Under 17 requires
accompanying parent or adult guardian.
- Rated NC-17 – No one 17 and under admitted.
If a film was never submitted for a rating, the label
"NR" (Not Rated) is often used; however, "NR" is not an
official MPAA classification. Films that have not yet
received MPAA classification, but are expected to, are
often advertised with the notice, "This film is not yet
rated".
History
The MPAA film rating system was instituted in
November 1968 as
an alternative to federal regulation of motion picture
content by the United
States government. The United
States came rather late to motion picture rating, as
many other countries had been using rating systems for
decades.
After the Production
Code approval system was abandoned in the 1950s,
movies had become more explicit and "realistic." The
realism movement had its advantages and disadvantages:
while it allowed for movies like Alfred
Hitchcock's Psycho
(1960)
to be filmed, it also sparked a rise in low-budget exploitation
films that became more and more explicit in their
sexual and violent content.
In 1967,
two movies, Ulysses
and I'll
Never Forget What's'isname, were released
containing the word fuck
in their dialogue. This precipitated interest in the
re-introduction of self-regulation. After a series of
meetings with government representatives, the Motion
Picture Association of America and National
Association of Theatre Owners agreed to implement a
uniform ratings system for all of its movies, a system
that would be enforced by distributors and exhibitors
(including movie theaters).
Earlier ratings
The original movie ratings consisted of:
- Rated G – Suggested For GENERAL Audiences
(including children).
- Rated M – Suggested For MATURE Audiences:
Parental Discretion Advised.
- Rated R – RESTRICTED: Children under 17
(originally 16) not admitted unless accompanied by a
parent or adult guardian; some theater chains
specifically stated that the "adult guardian" must be
at least 21.
- Rated
X – Children Under 17 Not Admitted; the
notation "Age limit may vary in certain areas" was
sometimes added.
Many parents thought films rated M contained
more adult content than those that were rated R;
this confusion led to its replacement in 1969
by GP:
- Rated GP – General audiences/Parental
guidance suggested.
In 1970
GP was changed to PG – Parental guidance
suggested .
From the adoption of the system through the
mid-1970s, it was not uncommon for mainstream films such
as Airport,
Planet
of the Apes, The
Odd Couple, and 2001:
A Space Odyssey to be released with G
ratings, but by 1978, that rating had become
increasingly associated with films, often poorly made,
intended specifically for children, while the PG
rating became increasingly common for "family" films,
with the G rating increasingly stigmatized by a
public perception that a film so rated was a "dumb movie
rated G for kids." This led to the PG rating
becoming overloaded with everything from family films
"spiced up" to avoid a G to very mature films
that were "toned down" to avoid R ratings. It
also led to the somewhat waggish public connotation
(never intended by the MPAA) of PG as "Pretty
Good."
In 1984,
the actions of Steven
Spielberg led to the introduction of the
PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) rating. [1] (http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/24/film.pg13.at20.ap/)
Violent scenes in the PG-rated films Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom (which he directed)
and Gremlins
(which he produced), were the catalyst. Public outcry
about the violence led Spielberg to suggest a new
PG-13 rating to Jack
Valenti, who conferred with theater owners and then
introduced the new rating on July
1. The rating still allows children under 13 to be
admitted without a parent or guardian, but it cautions
parents about potentially shocking violence or sexual
content. The first movie to be released with a
PG-13 rating was 1984's
Red
Dawn.
In the early years of the ratings system, X-rated
movies such as Midnight
Cowboy (1969)
and A
Clockwork Orange (1971)
could win Academy
Award nominations and awards. But the rating, which
wasn't trademarked,
was usurped by the adult entertainment industry to the
point where an X rating (which was never intended
to imply anything about the nature of the adults-only
content) became equated strictly with pornography.
This led to large number of newspapers and TV
stations refusing to accept ads for X-rated
movies, and some theaters' landlords forbade exhibition
of X-rated movies. Such policies led to a compromise
with the distributors of George
Romero's 1979
horror film Dawn
of the Dead: the audience restriction for X
would be enforced, but the letter "X" itself would not
appear in the film's advertisements or displays, with
the following message being substituted: "There is no
explicit sex in this picture; however, there are scenes
of violence which may be considered shocking. No one
under 17 will be admitted." The same dispensation was
granted to some later horror films, including
Zombie and Day
of the Dead.
The MPAA introduced the NC-17 (not for
children 17 or under) rating on September
27, 1990
to differentiate MPAA-rated adult-oriented films from
movies rated X by their producers. This move was largely
prompted by Universal
Pictures' Henry & June (1990), which
would have otherwise received a dreaded X rating.
However, media outlets which refused ads for
X-rated titles simply transferred that policy to
NC-17 titles, as did many theater landlords;
large video chains including Blockbuster
Video and Hollywood
Video refuse to stock NC-17 titles. While a
number of movies have been released with the
NC-17 rating, none of them has been a box-office
hit.
The rating process
While the MPAA does not publish an official list of
all the exact words, actions, and exposed body parts
used to determine a movie's rating, some details have
nonetheless been made available:
- if a film uses "one of the harsher
sexually-derived words" (such as fuck)
once, it remains eligible for a PG-13 rating,
provided that the word is used as an expletive
and not in a sexual context;
- if such language is used more than once, or once
if in a sexual context, it usually receives an
R rating; therefore
- a reference to drugs
usually gets a movie a PG-13 at a minimum,
though a few movies were rated PG for mild drug
references;
- a "graphic" or "explicit" drug scene earning a
film an R at a minimum;
- while total female nudity is permitted in an
R-rated movie, any display of naked male
genitalia will (usually) result in an NC-17
rating. Non-sexual male nudity is the one exception.
Members of the MPAA's Rating Board view the movie,
discuss it, and vote on the film's rating. If the
movie's producer is unhappy with this rating, (s)he can
re-edit the film and re-submit it, or can appeal to an
Appeals Board. In nearly all appeals the film was rated
R and the producer was seeking to have the rating
changed to PG-13.
Effects of ratings
Legally, the rating system is entirely voluntary.
However, given that MPAA member studios are expected to
submit all of their theatrical releases for rating, and
few mainstream producers (outside the pornography
niche) are willing to bypass the rating system due to
potential effects on revenues, the system has a de
facto compulsory status in the industry.
One of the unintended
side effects of the rating system is that the
G and (in recent years) PG ratings have
been associated with childrens' films and are widely
considered to be commercially bad for films targeted at
teenagers and adults. For example, the 2004
action/adventure film Sky
Captain and the World of Tomorrow received a
PG rating, even though it was not targeted at
children. The movie flopped hard. In a number of cases,
such as the movie Sneakers
or Mystery
Science Theater 3000: The Movie, directors have
intentionally added profanity in order to avoid the
G rating.
The minimum age for unaccompanied patrons at R
films, and all patrons at X films, was originally
set at 16 and by 1970
raised to 17, though theater owners could still allow
children into R-rated (but, at least in theory, not
X-rated) films without being accompanied by an adult
since the rating system is technically voluntary and
does not have the force of law behind it (those films
with strong enough content to merit an X rating being
presumably subject to obscenity laws at one governmental
level or another). In the 1970s
the East
Coast-based Century theater chain used its own
rating system, with only three categories instead of
four: For All Ages, For Mature Audiences
and No One Under 17 Admitted, with most, but not
all, R-rated films receiving the middle
designation, under which no age limits were enforced.
Many films which are rated R have been targeted at
teenage audiences. In 2000,
due to issues raised by Senator Joseph
Lieberman, the National Association of Theater
Owners, the major trade association in the U.S.,
announced it would start strict enforcement of ID checks
for R-rated movies.
The 2001
independent
film L.I.E. challenged its NC-17
rating and waged a publicity campaign against the
arbitrary nature of the ratings system. Lot 47, the
film's distributor, lost its appeal, and released the
film unrated. With the recent success of another
NC-17 film, The
Dreamers, some film producers and directors hope
that the rating may begin to lose some of its stigma and
more movie theaters will consider playing such films.
Video has allowed studios to skirt the rating system
and release unrated versions of films on videocassette
and DVD.
Sometimes these versions would have earned an
NC-17 if submitted for rating, but often their
unrated status is merely for marketing purposes, with
the implication that the added unrated material is
racier than an R rating would permit. For
example, one DVD release of American
Pie, rated R in its theatrical release,
exclaims on the box, "UNRATED! The Version You Couldn't
See In Theaters". Sometimes the difference between an
R-rated feature and its unrated home video
counterpart is as little as a few seconds. A number of
filmmakers have also taken to filming additional footage
specifically for video or DVD release, with no intention
of submitting this material to the MPAA.
Some foreign and independent films do not bother to
submit to the rating system, reasoning that they will
not be distributed widely beyond their art-house
audience, so the expense is unnecessary.
Critics of system
The movie rating system has had a number of
high-profile critics. Film critic Roger
Ebert argues that the system places too much
emphasis on not showing sex while allowing the portrayal
of massive amounts of gruesome violence. Moreover, he
argues that the rating system is geared toward looking
at trivial aspects of the movie (such as the number of
times a profane word is used) rather than at the general
theme of the movie (for example, if the movie
realistically depicts the consequences of sex and
violence). He has called for an A rating, to
indicate films high in violence or mature content which
should not be marketed to teenagers, but do not have
NC-17 levels of sex (or that rating's cachet).
Perhaps with these objections in mind, the United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film
and Broadcasting (a descendant of the once-powerful
National
Legion of Decency) maintains its own
film-classification system, which takes the overall
"moral tone" (according to its point of view) of a film
into account, rather than focusing on content alone.
Many critics of the system, especially independent
distributors, have charged that major studios' releases
often receive more lenient treatment than independent
films. It is widely assumed that Saving
Private Ryan, with its intense depiction of the
D-Day
invasion of Normandy,
would have earned an NC-17 if it were not a Steven
Spielberg film. The comedy Scary
Movie, released by a division of The
Walt Disney Company's Miramax
Films, contained "strong crude sexual humor,
language, drug use and violence" but was rated R,
to the surprise of many reviewers and audiences; by
comparison, the comparatively tamer porn spoof Orgazmo,
an independent release, contained "explicit sexual
content and dialogue" and received an NC-17.
Ironically, before its purchase by Disney, Miramax
heads Bob and Harvey Weinstein often clashed with the
MPAA, proclaimed the rating system unfair to
independents, and released some films unrated to avoid
an X or NC-17. Orgazmo director Trey
Parker's ratings battles later inspired the
(R-rated) film South
Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, which directly
criticized the MPAA and holds the Guinness
world record for most profanity and violence in an
animated feature (399 profane words, 128 offensive
gestures and 221 acts of violence).
On June
13, 2004,
the Harvard School of Public Health released a study
documenting "ratings creep" as more adult content is
allowed in films at a given rating than was allowed in
the past. [2] (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/movies/14MOVI.html?ex=1247457600&en=0ba776b4386f9655&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland)
The study reports:
- "The MPAA appears to tolerate increasingly more
extreme content in any given age-based rating category
over time. Movies with the same rating can differ
significantly in the amount and type of potentially
objectional content. Age-based ratings alone do not
provide good information about the depiction of
violence, sex, profanity and other content."
Films rated PG-13, in particular, seem to be
exhibiting the most "ratings creep" as more features
that would have received R ratings even five
years ago are now receiving the lesser rating.
The CAP Ministry had noticed and reported similar
results four years earlier.
See also
External links
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