Do People Care about Movie Ratings Anymore? (Part 1)

While writing my Super 8 review I grappled with whether or not the Netflix series Stranger Things was more or less violent/gruesome than the film I was reviewing, and therefore whether or not I would recommend Super 8 to a younger viewer if their parents thought Stranger Things was too violent. But, would a parent really care? It was at that moment I started thinking about how different the landscape of film and television is today compared to what it was two or three decades ago in terms of how we consider what is appropriate for people who are not yet adults. The way people can access media has changed so drastically, and there are now so many possibilities, how do we even keep up with what the ratings system suggests? When I say ratings I don’t mean reviews, I mean the guidelines set for each film and TV program about which audiences should or should not be watching. In 2023, does a show or movie’s rating carry the same impact it once did?

Film ratings have always been a point of contention for many people. Some parents are very strict about following them, while others are more lackadaisical about what their kids can watch. Ever since the beginning of cinema there have been rules about what is allowed to be shown on film, and filmmakers have been pushing the boundaries for decades, but the rating systems that have tried so hard for so long to categorize what we watch may be no match for modern technology. Let’s go back to where these rating systems first came from so we can understand how they have shaped the way a movie or show is rated today.

 

From Pre-Code Hollywood (1927-1934) to the Days of the Hays Code (1934-1968)

 

There was a brief time when Hollywood films were not being censored very consistently, which meant some filmmakers got away with things that many people viewed as problematic at the time. This isn’t to say censors didn’t exist or that films were released without any consequences. In the early days of motion pictures with sound (remember, it was a new thing to be able to see and hear a movie in the late 20’s/early 30’s) many filmmakers ignored the censors, and censors eventually put forward a code that was kind of like the pirate code: they were more like “guidelines” than actual rules everyone had to follow. Guidelines included “Don'ts” and “Be Careful's” but some of the other authoritarians of whether a film was accepted or not included local laws and even popular opinion.

Push came to shove when the Catholic Church stepped in and started protesting in the early 30’s, calling cinema immoral, so that was when filmmakers could no longer just ignore the guidelines—they became definite rules after that. There was no such thing yet as a restriction on who could see any given film in a movie theater. Kids still usually went with their parents to the cinema, but anyone could go see anything that was playing if they could afford admission or sneak in without getting caught. The Motion Picture Production Code, otherwise known as the Hays Code after Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) president Will H. Hays, went into full effect in 1934 and there was a shift in the content of films, though it might be tough for modern audiences to identify what the do’s and don’ts were because we are so desensitized by today’s standards. Every movie had to be approved by them, or else the producer could be fined and the film could not be legally shown in an American cinema.

Films from the pre-code era were often re-released numerous times over the years long after their initial premieres, but many of them were not the same once the censors cracked down. If you watch the original King Kong (1933) today, you’ll find the uncut version that runs about 100 minutes and has such violent moments as people being eaten by dinosaurs and getting stepped on by the giant ape, and that was the version people saw when it first premiered, but subsequent releases couldn’t get past more rigorous censorship. If you watched King Kong in the 1940’s or 1950’s, scenes like the Brontosaurus eating the guy in the tree or Kong putting a native in his jaws were either trimmed or cut out completely.

Frankenstein (1931) had been even more controversial a couple years before Kong, and suffered from even worse censoring in at least one state. The scene of The Monster throwing the little girl in the lake was cut completely and didn’t get restored until the 1980’s. The state of Kansas was so appalled by the movie they demanded to have 32 scenes cut if it were to be shown—that would mean cutting half the runtime, and the complete runtime was only 70 minutes to begin with! Speaking of Boris Karloff and Universal monster movies, one last clear example of how things had changed since Pre-Code is when you compare The Mummy (1932) with The Mummy’s Hand (1940). In a flashback in The Mummy you see a man impaled by a spear—that was quite violent and gruesome for back then. The Mummy’s Hand repurposes nearly all of the same footage for a new flashback, but the one impaling shot was noticeably left out.

For over three decades the code dictated what was OK to show to audiences and what was not OK, but it’s glaringly obvious looking at it from a modern perspective that most of those rules would not fly today. You could not depict homosexual relations at all on screen. In fact, if you depicted any kind of relationship that wasn’t what was considered a healthy, happy, normal relationship at that time, it was not likely to be shown in a theater at all. The Catholic influence on the code was kept under wraps in the early days of the code, but it’s pretty clear to look back on it now and see why some of the rules existed. The Production Code Administration was created so Hollywood could self-regulate censorship and avoid involving government censorship, and nearly every Hollywood film produced after 1934 adhered to the code.

In the 1950’s Hollywood was pressured to change. The pressures came from multiple factors, including the birth of television, which now gave people a way to watch stuff at home and not need to go to the movie theaters, the increase in foreign films, which did not need to adhere to the American Hays Code, and a shift in post-war culture that showed, just like Bob Dylan sang about, “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. Adjustments were made to the code as certain subjects that had previously been taboo were re-evaluated. For example, prostitution was something you might see in a pre-code movie, but not something made in the early 1940’s, and after 1956 the code allowed for it to be depicted again. Filmmakers and producers were constantly challenging what was possible in film, and eventually the Hays Code gave way to a new system that is still around today.

Next time, we’ll look at what replaced the old system of censorship and where this idea of “rating” a movie first began.