Do People Care about Movie Ratings Anymore? (Part 3 – Conclusion)

Part 1:

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2023/11/do-people-care-about-movie-ratings.html?spref=fb&fbclid=IwAR1n23TQgeUU9xgqWmmbl2WT8sFIxnO8xdtTN6pEBNwqEO_vPpTniOBU-xI

Part Two:  

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2023/11/do-people-care-about-movie-ratings_19.html

In part one I started at the beginning of how films were censored and rated (or, rather, not rated) and last time moved into the era of the MPAA and the development of the PG-13 rating. For this last part we’ve reached the age of streaming, when watching movies at home changed drastically, and we face the answer to the question of what ratings mean in today’s society.

 

The Dawn of Streaming (2010s)

Let’s get to the big question here: do ratings matter anymore? The reason I ask is because there isn’t the same kind of enforcement with them that once existed before streaming. If I went to the video store as a kid I couldn’t rent a movie that carried an R-rating without a parent or guardian accompanying me and saying it was OK, and even then, they had to rent it for me; t wasn’t like I had my own account. Were some kids able to get away with renting something they weren’t supposed to sometimes? Of course. I’m sure it happened often; some 19-year-old working a late shift at the local video store who didn’t really care and wasn’t being paid enough rented out The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to a seven-year-old on probably more than one occasion. But unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) video stores aren’t around anymore so that kind of thing is no longer an issue. Now, there are new issues that have resulted from streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu taking over how films and TV shows are primarily viewed at home.

I don’t know if the rules about selling DVDs/Blu-rays are/were the same as renting them, but I never seemed to have a problem buying R-rated movies from the store even when I was still technically too young. I still buy physical media and prefer it to streaming, but the reality is undeniable. Streaming is more popular because it’s more convenient and offers the illusion of ease as well as unlimited variety of choices. I say illusion because most streaming services don’t have as wide of a selection as large chain video stores used to have, and the movies may be removed from some services after a while because if a streaming service didn’t create the movie (meaning it was made by a movie studio not directly affiliated with the service) then they are just paying to host it there, until they stop doing that, which it seems they inevitably do (this is mainly a Netflix and Prime issue). If a video store had a video, you could rent it whenever you wanted, so long as someone else hadn’t rented it first (but often there would be more than one copy so that wasn’t always a problem) and it was pretty much a guarantee that it would never be removed from the store’s catalogue. To bring it back to ratings, video stores had clear guidelines that aligned with the Motion Picture Association film rating system, but streaming services do not.

Netflix, one of the most popular streaming services, is part of the Motion Picture Association, along with the five major film studios (Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Disney, and Sony), so it’s not like Netflix original films get rated differently than movies released in theaters, and that makes sense, especially since many Netflix movies get released on the service and in theaters. But, a rating won’t stop a curious kid from logging into Netflix and clicking on a movie and watching it. So, what will? There’s a kids option for setting up a Netflix account, which limits what movies or shows can be viewed, but speaking from personal experience and many reliable accounts, not many people bother to do that, nor do they keep their login password private. Some parents let their kids make their own Netflix account and don’t even bother to check what they have been watching. You might have one user account for the whole household and be able to see what others have been checking out, but it’s easier than ever now for kids to watch whatever they want whenever they want without any restrictions. I know of twelve-year-olds who have watched the Jeffrey Dahmer series released on Netflix last year. Something like that would’ve probably put me in therapy had I seen it that young.

One thing that hasn’t changed is this: it is ultimately up to the parents to be aware of what a movie or show is rated and make the final decision. I had friends growing up who were allowed to watching anything no matter what it was rated, which didn’t seem fair when I was a kid, but I look back on the way my mom and dad (mainly mom) navigated what was OK for me to watch and what wasn’t and decided when I was old enough for certain movies or able to make my own decisions about what to watch and I think they did a good job of keeping me from getting traumatized. It was also easier to do, I think, before streaming. Sometimes I don’t even know what a movie is rated on a streaming service until after I’ve started watching it. Videos (VHS and DVD and Blu-ray) would display the rating on the box as well as before the movie began and it was usually un-skippable on a DVD. It’s not that streaming services don’t show what something is rated, but it certainly isn’t in your face about it most of the time.

Another complicating matter is how streaming has blended the worlds of television and film. TV ratings have never matched up with movie ratings, so if a movie was broadcast on TV, it might very well be a censored version depending on the rating, perhaps with coarse language removed or violence cut out. That used to seem annoying, but now I look back at the “TV edit” with a certain fondness. It’s almost a lost art in and of itself. I like that movies can now be more easily seen as they were originally intended to be seen without being censored, but at the same time there are now fewer options for how to see a movie because of streaming. I saw some of my favourite movies of all-time on TV for the first time, and usually they were at least censored for coarse language, which I didn’t think was so bad, but now I don’t even have cable and most kids probably aren’t growing up watching movies on TV either, they’re watching them through streaming.

Streaming allows for longer form storytelling without the limits of major network censorship or the need to insert commercial breaks, so now some stories that could have been told in a two-hour movie are made into a ten-hour season of a show that may or may not continue, but how is that rated? It can’t really be rated using the MPA rating system because it’s not a movie, but it also isn’t going to be rated the same as a TV show on cable, so I don’t even know how they decide what to rate a Netflix or other streaming service original show. It’s a bit like a premium cable channel used to be (or still is) like HBO, which could get away with more swearing and violence than a network like NBC or CBS or FOX. But, because the streaming service is the one producing the show, they can set their own standards (hence why there are so many Netflix original series).   

The Death of Ratings?

Let’s bring it back to Stranger Things. That’s a show I know I would have loved as a kid, but there’s a decent amount of content in it (violence, horror, coarse language) that probably would have made it an R-rated show if we were to apply a traditional film rating to it. The rating Netflix gave it was TV-14, meaning it’s not recommended to anyone younger than that. That’s what it’s rated in Canada, at least. Something I haven’t touched on yet is how movie ratings are not universal. I live in Canada so I was able to see some movies in the movie theater as a teenager that US teens would not have been allowed to see without a parent. Up here we have 14-A (no one under 14 admitted without parent), which is what a violent, cursing-filled movie will sometimes get if it lacks sex and/or nudity or much explicit blood and guts. The same movie will likely still be R-rated in the states. Usually sexual content will boost a movie to 18-A in Canada, which is about the Canadian equivalent of a restricted US flick. TV ratings get even more confusing because they don’t align with the Canadian movie rating system or the US rating systems.

The Amazon Prime series The Summer I Turned Pretty is rated TV-14, and the show is based on a YA novel, clearly targeting a teen audience…and yet it has quite a bit of swearing, enough that it would have been R-rated had it been a movie (remember, more than one F-bomb is an auto R). It’s as if the creators and the streaming service know that kids talk like this and they’re going to watch the show anyway so why bother omitting coarse language? This could be a sign of the times. There are conversations had by people all the time about what a movie released decades ago would be rated if it was released today, because our standards have changed. Parents are constantly complaining about the violence in movies and TV shows, and I get it, because a lot of it does seem to be getting past the censors largely unchecked now. I never understood as a kid why Alien (1979) was rated R but AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) was rated PG-13, because AVP was incredibly violent and intense, arguably even more so than Alien. Apparently it’s fine to show violence as long as the blood isn’t red…I wish I was joking, but that’s pretty much the truth. Sexual content will also escalate a film’s rating, sometimes to the point of getting the dreaded NC-17, but guess what? In the age of streaming, that doesn’t really matter anymore. I can click on an NC-17-rated film just as easily as a G-rated film, and so can everyone else if they have access to a streaming service with an account on standard settings.

So, is it a bad thing if we have reached the end of an era in which a rating system is enforced? Well, I don’t think ratings are dead, exactly, and I don’t think they are completely obsolete, but it is time they changed. As I’ve gone over in this lengthy exploration on the history of film ratings, the system has undergone many modifications over the decades, and I think we are on the cusp of a new bout of changes. Perhaps a new system that works for both films and shows on streaming services will be implemented, or the streaming services themselves will adopt new user guidelines for self-guided censorship. Just to be clear, there are ways of making your account password protected and safeguarding the content on those streaming services from younger viewers, but it just isn’t the same as having a theater usher or a video store clerk do it for you. It’s not as if the ratings are no longer relevant—I think they still serve that purpose of informing viewers about the general content of what they are about to watch—but it’s the enforcement of those ratings on younger viewers that’s dying out. 

Another scary thing about films existing on streaming is how easily they can be manipulated. Many Disney movies and shows have been edited or censored for the Disney+ streaming service, often because they contain depictions or references that are racist and outdated by today’s cultural standards. I take issue with this, and many others do, as well. When the controversy about the editing of The French Connection back in June of this year flared up online people bought out the stocks of Blu-rays because they panicked and realized the studios who own these films on these paid services can do whatever they want to them, because we are really only renting movies by using streaming, and if it isn’t a physical piece of media it can be subject to change at any point. The French Connection was missing a scene in its streaming version that contained use of racial slurs, with the argument being it’s no longer appropriate today, but many viewed this censorship as outright vandalism, altering a piece of art simply because of something that was a product of its time. It’s certainly a slippery slope, because where do you draw the line? Who knows? This is sort of a separate issue, but it relates to how films are viewed, and how we view them has been dictated by ratings for a very long time.

In conclusion, I don’t think most people care about movie ratings the way they used to, because the lines have been blurred, many of the enforcers have gone extinct, and the MPA have become so lenient with some things and so overly strict with others that they are no longer taken as seriously. Back in the day a studio really cared about what their movie would be rated because it could dramatically affect how much money it would make at the box office. A wider audience meant higher ticket sales, and it’s not like this isn’t still something studios think about, but it’s much easier to have a film that’s limited in who can view it (i.e. R-rated) be seen more widely by people at home checking it out on streaming. I think all this turmoil over the strikes in Hollywood this year largely surrounding the concerns from writers and actors about the threat of AI technologies and streaming services has shown that not everyone is so sure about the course Hollywood is currently taking with how movies and shows are being made and distributed. I wonder how long it will be before we hear some news about a change to the ratings system in relation to this new climate of watching movies on numerous devices wherever we can get an internet connection.

Do People Care about Movie Ratings Anymore? (Part 2)

Part 1:

https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2023/11/do-people-care-about-movie-ratings.html?spref=fb&fbclid=IwAR1n23TQgeUU9xgqWmmbl2WT8sFIxnO8xdtTN6pEBNwqEO_vPpTniOBU-xI

Last time I asked the question of whether or not movie ratings carry the same significance in 2023 that they used to in the past, and I looked back at the origins of movie ratings and how they affected the content of films throughout the first few decades of cinema. Now, we’re moving into the formative decades of filmmakers forcing the ratings system to adapt to the changing times.

 

The Motion Picture Association Rating System (1968) and the Birth of PG-13 (1984)

It’s important to make a big distinction between the era of the Production Code (pre-60s) and the era of the Film Rating System (60s to present): films were more heavily censored for audiences in the earlier decades but audiences were not as regulated with what movies they could or could not see. The idea was to create films that were acceptable for everyone to watch, which is why they refused to show too much violence or sexual content. Once TV became prevalent in homes across America there was a bit of a parallel between films and television programming in terms of what was allowed to be shown, but TV shows became censored far more heavily than films. The era of primarily wholesome family entertainment at the movie theater gave way to less censorship under the new direction of President Jack Valenti in 1966, who renamed the MPPDA to the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and implemented the use of a ratings system only a couple years later. This didn’t exactly open the floodgates for vulgar uncensored filmmaking, but it wasn’t long after this that we got the first R-rated film, The Split (1968) and the first use of the F-word in a movie, in M*A*S*H (1970). After this, movies really changed, and audiences started a war with the ratings board, because some of the decisions about what was OK and was not OK for kids to see were highly questionable.

Stephen King has recounted in interviews the story of seeing Night of the Living Dead for the first time in the movie theater in 1968. He was 21 at the time, and not yet the horror icon he’s become so well known as today, but he has talked about how the theater in which he saw Night of the Living Dead was packed full of kids (as was common during matinee showings back then), and all of them went silent as it began, because they were freaked out of their minds by George A. Romero’s flesh-eating zombie horror movie. King would go on to work with Romero over a decade later and even become friends with him, and many horror historians cite Night of the Living Dead as the end of the silver age of horror and the beginning of the bronze age. It premiered on October 1^st 1968 in Pittsburgh, just one month before the MPAA rating system was introduced, and while it was groundbreaking for its depiction of on-screen violence, another movie that came out a year earlier is often cited as a game changer when it came to violence in film, and it was not a horror picture.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) was expected to be a box office flop because of its focus on the violent crimes committed by the main characters, inspired somewhat loosely by the real crime duo, and unlike Night of the Living Dead, the murders were shown in colour. The first time I saw the scene where Clyde shoots a guy in the head at point blank range through the car window and the cracked glass is splattered in red I was utterly shocked—and I saw it after I had seen nearly two decades-worth of graphic movie violence that far exceeded the simplicity of that kill. It was so unlike anything ever seen before that the influence the movie had on the next wave of directors is undeniable. Bonnie and Clyde continued to do well at the box office for the rest of 1967 and into 1968, and ended up being the studio’s highest grossing movie of all-time up to that point.

As the 1960’s gave way to the 1970’s, Hollywood had entered what is referred to as the New Hollywood era, though how exactly this span of time should be defined is often debated. Was it the start of a new era, or a movement, or just a period in Hollywood’s history? Whatever you want to call it, a shift is definitely identifiable in the kinds of stories being told, the emphasis placed on the directors (many of them new), and the divides created by the ratings system. When the system was first implemented in 1968 a movie could be rated G (general audiences), M (mature audiences), R (restricted, 16 and under accompanied by parent/guardian), or X (no one under 16 admitted), but these ratings were adjusted a bit over the first few years and eventually they settled on Rated G, Rated PG (Parental guidance suggested – Some material may not be suitable for children), Rated R (adjusting age 16 to age 17) and Rated X. It seemed simple enough, but didn’t last long.

A significant release was The Exorcist in 1973, which was given an R-rating, meaning more people could see it than if it had been X-rated. But, after people wandered out of screenings having vomited in the aisles, passed out from fright, or needing therapy for how scared they had been, some people questioned if it should have been X-rated. Another example was Jaws a couple years later, which managed to get just a PG-rating, despite showing multiple people being eaten by a 25-foot great white shark and making an entire generation of moviegoers afraid to swim in the ocean. The Exorcist was one thing, but Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was another, and Mr. Spielberg would give the MPAA more trouble as the 70’s ended and the 80’s began.

The ratings system at that time made pretty clear delineations between what was acceptable for kids and what was better suited to adults when it came to sex, nudity, and coarse language, but violence was something that didn’t have as much consistency. Parents were mad about how gory and intense some PG-rated films were, specifically Poltergeist, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Gremlins, all of which bore Spielberg’s name as either producer or director or both. He suggested an intermediate rating between PG and R that would allow for more violence but also allow more audience members to attend, and so PG-13 was born, with Red Dawn (1984) being the first film to receive that rating. Only a filmmaker like Spielberg could have enough sway to have an entire new rating created. I can’t imagine anything like that happening today.

At the point of PG-13’s introduction it seemed the MPAA finally had all their bases covered. Is it a movie for kids? As long as it doesn’t have any sex, violence, or swearing it can get a G-rating. Does it have violence? If yes, does it also have a surplus of profanity, or is there just a little? That’ll help decide if it’s PG-13 or R. What about X-ratings, though? A complication arose when pornographic films started using that rating, which initially was used for films that were not at all suited for kids, but were still intended for general release. Eventually the X-rating was rebranded to NC-17 in 1990, but it was seen as a kiss of death for most movies slapped with it, because many theaters refused to screen NC-17 films and some video distributors wouldn’t carry them either. If you aren’t sure you’ve seen or even heard of a film with an NC-17 rating, that’s why. If you’re also confused about what level of swearing is acceptable in a PG-13 film, don’t worry, everyone is confused about that. If the F-word is spoken more than once it’s an automatic R, but PG-13 allows one use of it. If someone 13 or younger hears it once, how is that acceptable, but to hear it again means you have to change the whole rating? Now we’re getting into more of the problems this rating system presents.  

I’m not going to get into my own personal thoughts on this issue too much because I want to remain as objective as possible in presenting the facts and the way it is with how movies are rated and what those ratings mean. How the intensities of violence and gore are decided do not always line up with what some parents feel is appropriate, and that’s why the MPAA has been hit with criticism so often: you’ll never please everyone, but they try to create fair, consistent guidelines that filmmakers are constantly challenging (not necessarily with intention) with each new movie that comes out. Even with all those adjustments and changes along the way since the 1960s, the one thing that stayed the same from the 1970s right up until the 2010s was how people could watch movies: in movie theaters or at home by purchasing physical media or renting from a store. Now, in the age of streaming, it’s far more complicated.

In the final part of this exploration on movie ratings, we’ll look at the state of the ratings system today and how it functions when the world of television and the world of cinema has been blended into a new hybrid that people can access easier than ever before.