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.