MPAA film rating system

• A reference to drugs, such as marijuana, usually gets a movie a PG-13 rating at a minimum. A well known example of an otherwise "PG movie" getting a PG-13 for a drug reference is Whale Rider. The film contained only mild profanity, but received a PG-13 because of a scene where drug paraphernalia was briefly visible. Critic Roger Ebert criticized the MPAA for the rating and called it "a wild overreaction." [link]
• A "graphic" or "explicit" scene of illegal drug use will earn a film at least a PG-13 rating and, especially in the case of "hard drugs," even an R rating.
• If a film contains strong sexual content, it usually receives an R rating. The film Lost in Translation had a scene in a strip club that had brief topless nudity and a song in the background that repeated the phrase "sucking on my titties." The scene was brief and the rest of the film had PG-13 level content, but the film still received an R rating. In the case of I Capture the Castle, a shot of a topless woman got the film an R rating "for brief nudity." In every other country with a similar ratings system (such as the UK, Australia, and Canada), the film received an equivalent of G or PG.
• If a film contains male rear nudity, it is more likely to be given a lower rating than if the nudity were female. Male nudity is generally regarded as ribald (i.e. mooning), whereas female nudity is generally regarded as sexual.
• Films that have legitimate historical or educational value are often granted leniency. Some have argued that the level of violence in Saving Private Ryan merited an NC-17, but that the film was given leniency because it was a historical war movie. This argument also came up when The Passion of the Christ was released without cuts, with an R-rating.

Members of the MPAA's Classification and Rating Administration, which consists of a demographically balanced panel of parents, 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 reedit the film and resubmit it, or can appeal to an Appeals Board. Appeals generally involve a film which was rated R for which the producer is seeking to have the rating changed to PG-13, or a film rated NC-17 for which the producer is seeking to have the rating changed to R.

Effects of ratings

One of the unintended side effects of the rating system is that the G and (in recent years) PG ratings have been associated with children's 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, which was not targeted at children, received a PG rating, which some believe caused it to underperform at the box office as preteens and teenagers may have brushed it off as a kiddie flick. [link] On the other hand, the R rating also has a negative effect on the box office performance, due to common social and cultural controversies. In fact, most R rated films released in the 1990s generated a box office revenue of less than $100 million. [link]

While some may debate the degree to which any such things are truly unintended, since the ratings now have a clearly established use as part of the marketing strategy for a film, the whole question of children tending to scorn "unchallenging" G or PG fare in favor of whatever they can get away with seeing is a legitimate criticism of an age based rating system. Most R and NC-17 fare is not aimed at older adults, but at a high school and college age market eager to engage in what they perceive as mature activities. Thus, the pretense that offensive content can be considered "adult" serves as a misleading marketing strategy to attract a youthful audience, often for purely sensational and provocative content for its own sake.

The minimum age for unaccompanied patrons at R films, and all patrons at X films, was originally set at 16. By 1970 it was raised to 17 (in some areas the age may be higher still—often 18—but in rare cases as high as 21). Theater owners could still allow children between 13 and 16 years of age into R-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. Attendance at films with strong enough content to merit an NC-17 rating could be restricted by law due to the possibility of being considered obscene.

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. 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 and NC-17 rated movies; however, only a small percentage of cinemas (as of 2005) are doing so.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

Many retailers of videos, especially Wal-Mart, tend to restrict the sale of R rated movies to minors. POS systems are set up to prevent a transaction without a sales associate checking an ID.

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. Earlier, the NC-17 rated Kids waged a similar campaign, part of which included exhibiting the film to persons under 18 and publishing their (generally favorable) reactions to it. Another film to successfully challenge its NC-17 rating was the cult classic 1994 comedy Clerks., which eventually garnered an R rating. Kevin Smith geared up for another MPAA battle when the sequel, Clerks 2 was released, but was surprised and relieved when the MPAA passed it uncut with an R-rating.

Earlier in the rating system, African-Americans complained that rating criteria was too heavily biased against inner city conditions and dialects. For his 1971 film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, director Melvin Van Peebles came up with a winning ad slogan ("Rated X by an All-White Jury") that proved successful with the urban market. The revision of the ages upward corresponded with a slackening of standards that generally allowed most such product to receive an R rating thereafter.

Since the rapid expansion of the home video market in the late 1990s, studios have been known 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. Films that have been rated PG-13 in their theatrical run are sometimes extended with footage equivalent to an R (but not NC-17) rating and marketed as "unrated" 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, while other unrated video editions add scenes that have no sexual or violent content whatsoever, making them "unrated" in the technical sense even though they don't contain more provocative material than the theatrical version (examples of this would be Unleashed). 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 arthouse audience, so the expense is unnecessary. Canadian films use the American system to an extent as well. The commercials for the movie often use the same ratings that the American ones do, and when the movie is released on video, if it has a rating on it, it has contains the American rating as well as the rating given to the film in which it is being distributed.

Critics of the system

Perhaps with these objections in mind, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting (a descendent of the formerly influential 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 MPAA system, especially independent distributors, have charged that major studios' releases often receive more lenient treatment than independent films, although it should be noted that the independently distributed film The Passion of the Christ received an R rating despite graphic depictions of violence. 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 , 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).

Another criticism of the ratings system involves the vagary concerned with film content relating to the difference between the PG-13 and R ratings. Many critics (professional, the general public and religious and moral groups) believe that the content of recent PG-13 films equals that of R-rated films from the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. For example, depictions of sexual content, violence, profanity and other objectionable content in a PG-13 film from the late 1990s on may have been considered "R level" in the 1970s and 1980s. Critics of film content seem to want that standard to continue despite shifting cultural norms about what is socially acceptable. Many believe the focus of the debate should be whether the sexual content of a film is meant to be an interpretation of an important social issue (teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease) or simply entertainment or exploitation, possibly to boost ticket sales among a specific age group.

Some other problems include odd ratings for movies. For example, most horror films that do not contain extreme graphic violence can get a PG-13 rating, whereas Kung Fu Hustle, an action-comedy movie with unrealistic, "animated" violence and minimal coarse language in the Cantonese version with English subtitles, gained an R rating, although the PG-13 rated movies are generally more realistically graphic. This happens frequently with martial-arts films due to an MPAA rule which gives an automatic "R" rating to any film which features martial-arts fighting with kicks to the head.

Other critics have argued that the sexual (and to a lesser extent, drug and profanity) standards for movie ratings are ideologically biased in favor of socially conservative values. They generally advocate allowing more slack in such categories as nudity and four-letter words, while maintaining the current rules for violence ratings.

However amdist the critics, Nationwide scientific polls, conducted each year by the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey, have consistently given the rating program high marks by parents, that 76% of parents with children under 13 found the ratings to be "very useful" to "fairly useful" in helping them make decisions for the moviegoing of their children.

On the evidence of the polls, the rating system would not have survived if it were not providing a useful service to parents.

Stephen Farber's internal critique

One internal critic of the early workings of the system was film critic and author Stephen Farber, who interned with the CARA for six months in its early years (1969–1970). His experiences with the board prompted him to write a book, The Movie Ratings Game (Public Affairs Press), which documented how, even in its earliest days, the board used many of the same tactics that persist to this day: the wielding of the X rating as a way to remove material from films that board members took personal affront to, the lopsided way sexual material was handled relative to violence, and later on the use of psychological jargon to justify placing certain films, even unexplicit ones, in restricted categories on the basis of theme alone. For example, an antiwar themed movie such as The Revolutionary were given a GP rating by the board, but later board members wanted an R simply because it was antiwar.

Farber contended that the ratings board used its power to "punish" the most challenging, creative, and interesting movies being made—A Clockwork Orange, Midnight Cowboy—while "rewarding" more conservative, uncontroversial films with more open ended ratings. Farber also contended that the ratings board's stance about the ratings being used as guidelines to protect children was hypocritical in light of the fact that most of the severities imposed on certain films seemed less borne of their potential impact on children than on reactions to them by parents. He registered great annoyance with the board when they rated the film Woodstock R, pointing out that the original festival had no age restrictions and that it seemed hypocritical to age-restrict the film (which was arguably a far less traumatic experience than the festival itself).

Another still-current problem Farber cited was how the threat of a restrictive rating was wielded freely by the board as a way to force studios to tone down submitted films; he cited a number of movies that were re-cut to not only be removed from the X category (sometimes going as far as two rating brackets to GP), but to be moved from R to GP, or even GP to G. This extended to screenplays submitted to the board as well, which were analyzed and given a projected rating; he used as an example the film The Panic in Needle Park, the script for which was given an X based on its vulgar dialogue and many references to shooting heroin. (The released film was rated R.)

Farber recommended that the X rating either be abolished or relabeled to "A" or "AO", but leaned towards the former on the grounds that the R rating really ought to be the most restrictive rating for a film in an enlightened society. He concluded by endorsing public pressure and activism as being the best way to proceed: "The rating system is certainly not going to be reformed from within ... In the era of the silent majority, a great deal can be accomplished by a little noise."

Rating creep

A systematic content analysis since the start of the rating system will show that ratings creep since 1990 is more concerned with an increase in the quantity of content allowed within each category, rather than any true stretching of the ratings board. The type of gruesome violence routine in many of the M, GP, GP* and PG films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, has caused many of them to recently be revised to an R by the board. Therefore, while certain trends can be found, they are not uniformly in the direction of permissive rating creep. Many films from the early days of the rating system have since been reclassified with a stronger rating. Excluding family films, many of these old G-rated films would receive a PG or PG-13 rating today.

On the issue of drug use and violent content that includes visible blood (especially in the light of post-Columbine congressional scrutiny) the current rating system is possibly more conservative than it has ever been. It is more conservative about nudity as well, particularly for films of the late 1960s to mid-1970s, including THX 1138 which in its original 1971 release received a GP-rating, is now rated R for "some sexuality/nudity."[link]

Even the crudest of systematic surveys will show this, especially when including those films recently reevaluated and rated R (Vanishing Point, A Man Called Horse, The Good The Bad and the Ugly, Psycho, etc.) that had previously been classed with unrestrictive advisory ratings (M, GP, GP*, and PG) in the 1960s and the 1970s. It would be unthinkable for Bonnie and Clyde (originally pre-MPAA with "SMA" advisory, then rated M in 1969) to be rated anything but R today, but in the early days of the rating system, it, and many comparably rated violent films, were routinely rated M, GP, GP*, and PG. "The War of the Worlds" (1953) was later rated G because it had no cursing or sex, however it contained people bursting into flames and people fist fighting. Even 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark contained explicit violence and gore (including a gruesome and realistic shot of a man being shot in the head), and seemed to be the first film to prompt widespread use of the phrase "graphic violence" by film reviewers.

Early James Bond films released in the 1960s and 1970s that could possibly be revised to a PG-13, were recently reprocessed under the old "rating symbol changed" clause rather than officially reviewed in a manner that may cause their traditional M, GP, and PG ratings to be revised upward.

Soldier Blue was considered to contain one of the most repulsive massacre sequences the ratings board had seen, but a version of it with nearly all the violence of the original, and full frontal nudity during a sexual assault scene, was allowed a PG rating in its 1974 rerelease, due in part to its historical and antiviolent intentions. Billy Jack, Vanishing Point and The Getaway are good examples of the light treatment given to sexual assaults and gratuitous female nudity during the 1970s, when it was routine for women's tops to be visibly torn off as shown through the 1970s and early 1980s in films such as The Outlaw Josey Wales and The Beastmaster. The "cut off the bra" scene in Billy Jack became so notorious that many theaters pointed their projectors slightly low to keep the actress's nipple area offscreen. Conversely, others pointed it slightly high so there was no doubt it would be seen.

Strong levels of bloody violence could also be routinely seen in shocking sequences such as those contained in William Friedkin's Sorcerer or at the end of the 1976 horror film Burnt Offerings. The film Poltergeist is also a famous example, and had to be appealed from an R to a PG. The rating board took pride in releasing the politically relevant 1976 film All the President's Men with a PG rating (and a special advertising advisory) although it contained numerous uses of sexually derived words. There is no category of content for which a claim can clearly be demonstrated that ratings creep has occurred except during certain small segments of the period since 1988 in which many such "creeps" have been halted or even reversed.

The notion of "ratings creep" is appealing to watchdog agencies who desire increasingly restrictive classifications. The notion was "legitimized" by a recent but flawed study - On June 13, 2004, the Harvard School of Public Health released a study claiming that "rating creep" was documented by an analysis of content listed on film advisory sites such as "Kids in Mind" and "Screenit." Their claim that more adult content is allowed in films at a given rating than was allowed in the past was based on the indefensible assumption that the standards used by those web sites did not change over the time period in question, and that any discrepancy between web reviewers and the official ratings must therefore be due to changes in the ratings system. This unsupportable assumption nullifies all of the quantitative work included in the study. [link] Although the web sites provided more detailed information about profanity and other film content, the Harvard researchers ignored such data and instead compared only crude summary data to the MPAA categories, without any assurance that the web summary data categories had means of assuring consistency. An actual content analysis of films during that period demonstrates that the MPAA ratings criteria remained strict, while the claims of the web reviewers grew increasingly sensitive and exaggerated (to the point of listing hugs and "shirtless boys playing basketball" as potentially offensive sensual content!)

See also

• Motion picture rating system
• Marvel Rating System, with which the MPAA had a brief dispute
• Production Code
• X-rated
• List of NC-17 rated films
• TV Parental Guidelines
• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Office for Film and Broadcasting
• This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a 2006 film criticizing the MPAA rating system
• Edited movie
• Entertainment Software Rating Board
• OFLC, the New Zealand media rating system
• British Board of Film Classification, the UK equivalent

References

• MPAA: Ratings History

External links

• [MPAA Film Ratings website]
• [Searchable Ratings Database]
• [MPAA rating history and how it works] by Jack Valenti

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