The current movie rating system in the US gets a lot of criticism – most of it deserved. However, it also gets prematurely dismissed as unhelpful and irrelevant.
It’s not irrelevant. A movie’s rating – subjective as it is – still presents information about that movie.
As an example, suppose you see the following films on a movie store shelf and have absolutely no information about content other than the title:
If you had the ratings to go by, you’d know that in this list one movie is G, one is PG, two are PG-13, two are R, and one is NC-17 — isn’t that fairly significant information when making an informed decision? There is a big difference between a PG movie and a NC-17 movie, obviously, and movie rating in a general (but accurate) fashion reflects that difference — helpful for knowing if a “Kids…” movie is, you know, appropriate for kids. Most movie rating debates happen at the margins — the border between PG-13 and R, for example — but in the broad, general categories they are meant to represent, they provide useful information when making decisions. (No one gets into debates about the rating given to a book, for example, because books don’t have ratings at all!)
However, smart viewers know that movie ratings’ usefulness has limits. Some important truths about the current rating system:
Ratings change over time
Virtually everyone accepts that rating standards have changed from decade to decade. However, you may be surprised to learn in which direction.
Contrary to conventional wisdom — which suggests movie ratings have become more lenient over time — the opposite is actually true: movie ratings are a lot stricter now than in previous decades.
The PG-13 rating, for example, was created in 1984 to classify a subset of PG movies — meaning in a direct comparison between ten PG movies from 1981 and ten from 2010, the newer PG films would be found to be much cleaner than the old set, since the new ones exist in an age where the higher-end PG movies are given PG-13 instead.
(Oftentimes, people will complain about nudity and f-words — “R-rated material” — in PG-13 films today, forgetting that in the 80′s those were found in PG movies as well. Even after the PG-13 was created there were several films released with f-words and/or nudity that still received PG ratings before 1990 that would never be released as such today.)
Today, a single ‘damn’ automatically moves a movie from G to PG. Not so in previous decades, where Gone With The Wind and Planet of the Apes – containing arguably the first and second most famous “damns” in movie history, respectively – cheerfully received G-ratings.
While the research that suggests that ‘objectionable’ content in movies has increased in recent decades may be compelling, one cannot automatically depend on older movies being ‘cleaner’ than modern movies with equivalent ratings. Often it is the opposite. The primary principle is that understanding the era in which a film was released is an important angle to understanding what the given rating represents.
Ratings change by country
I fully support foreign films — I think viewers with an aversion to subtitles are missing out on some great movie experiences — but watching foreign films brings the understanding that movie ratings will also differ by country, as different cultures have different views on what counts as ‘objectionable’ content.
In Europe, for example, nudity and sex are tolerated to a far greater extent than violence (it tends to be the reverse in the US). Therefore, a “European PG” is far more likely to contain nudity than an American PG (and proportionally less violent). In Asia, there is a greater cultural tolerance for “violence-as-slapstick-comedy” than in the West, which Western viewers may not find as funny.
Ratings treat all categories equally
The current rating system depends upon standard “PSV” categories: profanity, sex, and violence — however, the rating system treats all three categories as being equivalent. A movie with an “R-rated” amount of violence is indistinguishable from a movie with an R-rated amount of profanity…and a movie with R-rated amounts of violence AND profanity receives the exact same rating as the first two, despite having ostensibly twice as much objectionable content as either of the others.
(If you’re the producer of a violent R-rated action film, under the current system why *not* add in lots of profanity and nudity as well? You’re going to get the same rating either way…)
The rating system is inelegant in that it assumes all viewers have equally strong feelings (for or against) each of the PSV categories — that someone who happily tolerates R-rated profanity in movies will also happily tolerate R-rated violence in the same way. This assumption completely ignores the possibility that many female viewers, for example, may genuinely not be offended by “R-rated” female nudity, but repulsed by even low levels of blood and gore. Or that foreigners who have no cultural connection or experience with English swear words may not be offended by “R-rated” levels of American profanity at all (in the same fashion that American viewers aren’t generally offended by hearing British or Australian profanity).
However, the current system does not allow viewers to judge levels of PSV content compared to another directly from the rating, even though it is inevitable that viewers are going to have differing levels of tolerance and acceptance per category. An “R-for-violence” looks exactly the same as an “R-for-language” from the outside.
In practice, this means that movie viewers who want to make informed decisions will have to do their own outside research, to respect their own personal PSV preferences. And that means going outside the MPAA.
Parental-watch sites like “Kids-In-Mind” take content analysis a step further by rating movies with more specific criteria: determining individual values for Profanity/Sex/Violence content, rated on a 0 to 10 scale.
Instead of four or five very broad movie ratings, this system creates close to 15,000 specific and detailed ratings which will assist viewers who may care about one area of PSV content over the others. Such a system can especially help differentiate between the wide range of PG-13 movies released today.
Some examples: On the PSV scale, KIM rates Twilight: Eclipse as 5-7-3, with the second Transformers movie judged a 6-7-5. The Blind Side, by comparison, is a more moderate 4-4-4.
LDS who (defensibly) stay away from anything rated PG-13 on principle may miss some good ‘decent’ film candidates such as Lars and the Real Girl (2-1-3), or Two Weeks Notice (3-1-3), both of which received the same PG-13 rating as the other movies mentioned above, but whose KIM analysis reveals significant differences in content from many of the more well-known releases.
Are these numerical ratings just as arbitrary as an “R” or a “PG”? Of course. The only thing we know about a movie with a Violence rating of 6 is that it was judged to be slightly more violent than a movie rated with a 5. And who knows if a 6 in Violence is really ‘equivalent’ to a 6 in Profanity since that’s obviously comparing apples and oranges.
Still, the Kids-In-Mind ratings (and other similar systems) present information – and more information of any kind is *always* helpful when making personal and family viewing decisions.
4 comments
1 ping
Adam K. K. Figueira says:
August 20, 2010 at 7:25 pm (UTC 0)
This is a great post with lots of valuable information, but I have two issues:
First, the generation of LDS now starting and/or raising young families are young enough not to remember the introduction of the PG-13 rating. Most people I’ve discussed this with would assert that objectionable content in films of the same rating has increased during their lifetimes rather than over the whole history of film. The comment I most often hear is that “things that were R rated when I was a kid are in PG-13 films now.”
That doesn’t annul the value of the broader historical perspective, but it does create an situation where comparing ratings before and after the advent of PG-13 is inherently unfair from the stance these couples are taking.
Second – and this isn’t something I disagree with as much as something to add to your comments – the KIM ratings take literally everything into account. Under the broad umbrella of “Profanity” is included nicknames and teasing as much as “swear words” and other more offensive content. So a P rating of 4 doesn’t mean the movie has swearing in it.
Likewise, the “Sex” category includes holding hands, amorous looks, and the like. “Violence” also doesn’t equal blood and gore or weapons. It might be a hand slap or a comical swat on the behind from an old crone to a young whippersnapper.
The great thing about KIM is that it gives more than a general description of the reason for the rating like “sensual material, some brief partial nudity.” The listings define the exact content in great detail. This is valuable not only because it helps users understand the ratings, but because seeing written descriptions of the things we’re watching can be a revelatory, even shocking experience. When it’s worded in raw terms, as KIM generally does, I’ve been personally led to think “wow, that is what I saw, isn’t it? Do I really think that’s okay?”
KevinB says:
August 20, 2010 at 8:54 pm (UTC 0)
Without specific examples it’s hard to judge what “things that were R-rated before” those people are talking about — Most “things” like that can be found in older PG movies from the 70′s or 80′s that they just aren’t aware of.
After 1990, I don’t think you can find nudity or F-words in PG movies, like many in the 80′s (Airplane + Airplane 2, Eight Men Out, Sixteen Candles, Beetlejuice, some others I’m forgetting). However, for younger couples who grew up in the 1990′s, we would have to look at specific examples to judge whether ratings have changed significantly in the short-term between the ’90s and the ’00′s. Other than getting away with 3 f-words in a PG-13 film today, versus one or two in the 90′s, I’m not familiar with any specific example of confirmable ‘ratings creep’.
Even if the PG-13 / R boundary has moved in the ‘liberal’ direction, however, every other rating category and boundary seems clearly to have moved in the conservative direction over time, meaning on the whole the rating system is stricter now rather than looser. Anyone who rents a set of G or PG rated movies today and compares to a set of movies that were given the same rating from previous decades would almost certainly find the newer ones are cleaner.
The KIM ratings are broad, and the site lists the exact content so you can judge for yourself. And their search function makes it easy to look for films that meet specific numerical criteria (which I’ve used for some statistical research for future articles)
Adam K. K. Figueira says:
August 21, 2010 at 1:22 am (UTC 0)
Yes, it is hard to quantify, which is at least part of why this general sense that things have gotten worse is so prevalent.
I’ll be honest, I don’t spend my time perusing films from different decades with the intent of cataoguing their offensive content. I don’t expect anyone else to, either. It may well be an increase in this content (and not a decline in ratings standards) that is the most notable thing. Perhaps we just assume that since movies seem more profane, sexy, and violent – since we’ve grown dependent on the ratings system – we feel betrayed. We assume that the standards have dropped because it’s harder to find movies we approve of.
I agree completely with you that there’s plenty of good out there, but I also notice that a lot of LDS don’t feel that way – or they don’t know how to find it.
I think for me, it’s not a case of worse content as it is more regular offensive material at the same level. The violence may not be more graphic in a PG-13, for instance, but it seems to be more dominant. More glorified, maybe. I don’t know. But this sense comes from somewhere, and I think it’s somewhere legitimate.
Topher Sherwood says:
August 21, 2010 at 4:23 am (UTC 0)
I recently started subscribing to the MPAA’s weekly “Red Carpet Ratings” e-mail that contains the rating and reason for that rating for all films coming out that week. It’s put out by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA) branch of the MPAA. The site can be found here.
I’ve found it to be very informative. It goes more in-depth with the descriptions than you would normally see on movie posters, in the trailers, or even on the movie’s web-site. For example this week’s e-mail offers a very clear distinction between films with the same letter rating:
Piranha 3D
R
Sequences of strong bloody horror violence and gore, graphic nudity, sexual content, language and some drug use.
The Tillman Story
R
Language.
Right away the difference between these two R-rated films is evident, and it’s a big difference. The second likely says the f-word just enough times to push it into an R rating, while containing very little other strong or objectionable material. Let’s look at two PG-13 films that came out this week:
Lottery Ticket
PG-13
Sexual content, language including a drug reference, some violence and brief underage drinking.
The Switch
PG-13
Mature thematic content, sexual material including dialogue, some nudity, drug use and language.
And two PG films:
Mao’s Last Dancer
PG
A brief violent image, some sensuality, language and incidental smoking.
Nanny McPhee Returns
PG
Rude humor, some language and mild thematic elements.
I have learned a lot about how the MPAA rates films just by receiving this e-mail each week. It’s very short. It takes about two minutes to read, most likely less. It has helped me understand what the MPAA means by “nudity” and “graphic nudity”, or “language” and “pervasive language”. A film rated R for language might have 5 f-words for example, while a film rated the same for “pervasive language” might feature the word and it’s many variations up in the hundreds. This is then where sites like Kids In Mind come in to give us a more specific idea of what the film contains.
The MPAA uses a lot of specific terms that seem unspecific to us, but when we understand the language they are speaking it allow us to better make sense of the ratings they give us. This makes us more informed and better able to make smart choices for our children, and for our selves.
Sexual Content vs. Violent Content in Movie Ratings » LDS Cinema Online says:
September 27, 2011 at 1:15 am (UTC 0)
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