[Part 4 in a brief series about movie content and ratings. Links to earlier posts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3]

Originally, there were four ratings for movies: G, PG, R, and X.

Then came Steven Spielberg...

Starting with his breakthrough movie “Jaws” in 1977, and continuing with “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”, and his executive-produced “Gremlins” (the latter two released within a month of each other in 1984), Spielberg created films that pushed the boundaries for what was considered PG movies at the time, while not really falling into the “Adults Only” R category, either.  When a great many parents complained about seeing someone’s beating heart being snatched out of their body and/or a green gremlin exploding inside a microwave in a supposedly “child-friendly” PG movie, Spielberg himself suggested to the MPAA that perhaps another rating was needed, to specify movies suitable for older kids, but not necessarily younger kids.

Later that year, “Red Dawn” was released in the US bearing the new PG-13 rating, defined as a subset of the PG rating that gave the implicit warning that it contained material unsuitable for young kids—hence the 13 cutoff line--but not to the extent that it deserved an R.

Since PG-13 was named and conceived as a subset of PG movies (to my knowledge, no originally rated R movie was downgraded to PG-13 at the time) the initial thought was its creation would attract opposition from filmmakers, who found their films that would have originally received just a PG rating under the old system, were now given a higher rating which would (in theory) limit their audience.

It didn’t take long, though, to discover that the new rating seemed to ADD viewers instead of subtract: that a fairly substantial segment of the population—teenagers—largely viewed the PG rating as “kids stuff” and found the implication of material with an “edge” to it attractive (considering they were largely blocked from seeing the R-rated stuff, anyway).  Conveniently, teenagers were also the most likely demographic to re-watch movies they like in the theater time and time again, and the PG-13 rating soon became the rating of choice for big budget Hollywood films.

Since 2000, PG-13 movies have brought in close to $35 billion dollars in ticket sales, versus $17 billion for R-rated movies, despite having over 600 more R-rated movies released in theaters over that time period.  19 of the top 30 grossing movies of all time are PG-13, with only one of them (“The Passion of the Christ”) being R.

Is the dominance of the PG-13 rating a good or bad thing?  Depends on your point of view…

Many conservative watch groups consider the higher money-making potential of the PG-13 versus the R as a good thing, since it appears to give Hollywood a financial incentive to tone down the ‘objectionable’ material in a film in order to reach a larger audience.   If true, that should result in ‘cleaner’ films, right?  (As it stands there are still more R-rated movies released every year, but that’s largely due to the smaller independent films which heavily skew R—mainstream Hollywood films are primarily PG-13.)

Unfortunately, the financial incentive works in the opposite direction as well:

• Studios will often add ‘objectionable’ material to an originally PG movie in order to get the higher rating, and avoid seeming ‘wimpy’.  One film in 1998 famously dubbed in (badly) an F-word in post-production for the sole purpose of avoiding the PG rating.
• Studios will also try to get as close to the R-rating line as possible without going over, and/or give the MPAA subtle pressure to give them a PG-13 rating anyway if they do go over.  (Part of the R-rating trend within independent film is that independent films are more likely to get an R in the first place, with a major studio film more often getting the ‘benefit of the doubt’.)

The end result is that the dominance of the PG-13 may actually lead to an increase in ‘objectionable’ material in many cases, along with a broadening of the PG-13 rating into what previously would have been R territory.  Which means the current PG-13 culture may actually expose more people to “R-rated” material, but without the benefit of the “Adults Only” warning beforehand.  Arguably, it may actually be better, from a conservative perspective, if the R-rating were more popular among movie goers than PG-13, because that would push the incentive to broaden the R-rating downward, instead of the PG-13 rating upward, resulting in cleaner PG-13 movies in the long run.

“Ratings Creep”

Which leads to a fundamental question: Are ratings looser and more lenient now, than they used to be?  While the PG-13 culture discussed above suggests an obvious response to this question, the answer may not be as simple as you think…

Strictly speaking, if you’re comparing pre-1984 ratings to post-1984 ratings, the creation of the PG-13 rating in itself means ratings are a lot ‘stricter’ now than they used to be, as virtually all movies released in 2008 that are PG-13 would most likely have been released as PG in 1982.  Viewers not aware of the ratings change and who were judging PG movies from 30 years ago alongside PG movies released today would most certainly conclude that ratings today are a LOT stricter than they used to be.

Many of the parental watch-groups argue that the creation of the PG-13 rating now allows filmmakers to slowly move R-rated material (such as nudity or F-words) into PG-13 movies, when previously (in theory) they wouldn’t have been allowed to do so in a PG-rated movie.

Except, nudity and F-words *were* allowed in PG movies from previous decades, even after the PG-13 was created:

• "Sixteen Candles", "Big", "Eight Men Out", and "Beetlejuice" received PG ratings despite prominent F-words in the dialogue, with the latter three being released after 1984 when the PG-13 rating was available.
• The two "Airplane" movies and 1980 Best Picture Oscar winner “Kramer vs. Kramer” all featured female nudity, yet still had PG ratings.
• “Whale Rider” received a PG-13 rating in 2002 for a brief glimpse of a bag of marijuana.  “The Goonies” (written and produced by…wait for it…Steven Spielberg) got away with much larger drug content than that in 1985 with its PG-rating intact.
• Today, a movie with a single ‘damn’ automatically gets moved from G to PG.  Not so in the olden days, where classic films such as “Gone With The Wind” and “Planet of the Apes”—the former containing the most famous ‘damn’ in movie history—still had G ratings. 

It’s hard to conceive of any G or PG rated movie released today having quite the same content as these examples above, and that seems to point towards ratings getting stricter in the 21st century, rather than looser.

Now, there certainly is some evidence of change in the opposite direction.  The “standard” for F-words used in PG-13 movies used to be one, then two, and I’ve seen a couple of films in the last few years that had three, so there’s probably good cause to believe that the ratings are getting looser in that respect.  (And we’ll ignore the question for now of whether there’s a significant difference between hearing the F-word four times in a movie versus three…)

Also, some of the extremely violent R-rated horror films of recent years seem to have reached far beyond any comparable film of yesteryear (although one can argue this is only because technology has improved such that films can be much more realistic, and thus impossible to properly compare to older films…)

One can probably compile lots of evidence in both directions, which probably serves to prove only that the ratings system was, is, and always will be arbitrary and subjective—without necessarily moving in one clear direction or another as a whole.

Viewing PG-13 in perspective

Church members have a variety of standards regarding movies: some will watch just about anything, some will watch some R-rated movies (but not the “bad” ones, of course), some don’t watch any R-rated movies, and some don’t watch anything rated R or PG-13 at all. 

Trying to argue what standards for movies Church members “should” have is a recipe for disaster--and I won't bother attempting it today.  However, I end up defending the PG-13 at times among my friends and peers, if only to the extent that the R-rating and the PG-13 rating have some fundamental differences that should be kept in mind—it’s not just a matter of degrees.
 
R-rated movies receive the R-rating because of profanity, sex, and violence—the standard PSV categories—and I know of no R-rated movie that has received its rating for any other reason than those three. 

While PG-13 movies often DO contain PSV material, of course, that’s not the only reason PG-13 ratings are given.  As we saw with “Whale Rider”, PG-13’s can be given by ‘drug content’ alone.  (I know of no movie rated R for drug content alone, although if the smoking ban discussed earlier takes effect, this may change…)

A movie featuring a serial killer (such as Richard Dutcher’s Brigham City), even if there’s no direct on-screen violence, is inherently a PG-13 movie, no matter what.  Likewise, any movie that features a dead corpse…or an undead corpse, or other scary creatures are not for seven-year-olds.   Those kinds of movies should be PG-13…yet do not fall under the traditional PSV categories.  “Scary images” are not enough, in my mind, to make a movie ‘inappropriate’ for adults.
 
In short, I believe you can find PG-13 movies that, as the cliché goes, you would watch with the prophet from start to finish without feeling ashamed of any of the content, because the ‘adult material’ that makes it PG-13 can be fundamentally different than ‘objectionable material’.  Other than “The Passion…”, perhaps, I don’t know if you can say that about any R-rated films, although, of course, what people find objectionable—particularly in the broad category of ‘violence’—will vary person to person…

Next: The paradox of edited movies