Movie rating system strives to guide viewers

by Arik Durfee DUR01014@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

When it comes to questionable material in movies, how much is “too much?” Many people today seem frustrated by the ambiguity and inconsistency of the modern rating system for movies.

Eric Smith, a junior from Helena, Mont., said that he often isn’t sure what to expect from a movie based on its rating.

“I’ve gone to a lot of PG-13 movies that have been horrible,” Smith said.

Amanda Wilson, a sophomore from Colorado Springs, Colo., said that she finds movie ratings to be very inconsistent.

“Sometimes a PG-13 can be absolutely vile, while an R can leave you wondering what was so inappropriate,” Wilson said.

Many students share their frustration.

However, when the Motion Picture Association of America first introduced the rating system in 1968, they did not have college students in mind.

“If you are 18 or over, or if you have no children, the rating system has no meaning for you. Ratings are meant for parents, no one else,” according to the MPAA’s official Web site.

The original rating system was created to give parents advance warning about the contents of a film so that they could decide whether or not to allow their children to view it.

The 1968 system included four ratings: G for general audiences, M for mature audiences, R for restricted audiences (meaning that children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult), and X for adult only audiences.

The M rating was later changed to PG, for “parental guidance,” and in 1984 the MPAA introduced the PG-13 rating, which designated a movie that was somewhere between a PG and an R, largely in response to parental outrage at the disturbing material found in the PG-rated Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Throughout the evolution of the ratings system, the MPAA has never intended for its ratings to be used by anyone other than parents.

Nevertheless, this does not change the fact that today many adults use the ratings as a guide for their own viewing and not just that of their children.

This could explain why college students like Smith and Wilson are frustrated to find that movie ratings do not necessarily give a clear picture of what kind of material to expect in a movie.

“I think they need to sit down and consider what constitutes what rating and actually stick to it,” Wilson said.

With the current rating system, the standard for exactly what content should be allowed for each rating is not strictly followed.

For example, any more than a single use of “harsher, sexually-derived words” merits an R rating, according to the MPAA’s official explanation of what the ratings mean.

However, many of today’s PG-13 rated movies, such as the recent Coach Carter, contain more than one use of the F-word.

The reason for this lies in the way ratings are decided. Under the current system, a Rating Board made up of 8 to 13 parents views each movie and votes on a rating for the movie, which they think the majority of American parents would agree with. The MPAA gives them guidelines to follow, but the Rating Board is not required to strictly adhere to the official criteria.

Films containing heavy uses of profanity, extensive violence or sexually related nudity, despite the MPAA criteria that requires such films to be rated R, can be given a PG-13 rating “if by a special vote, the Rating Board feels that a lesser rating would more responsibly reflect the opinion of American parents,” according to the MPAA’s official Web site.

Some efforts have been made by the MPAA to ensure that movie ratings give an accurate description of a movie’s content.

Starting in 1990, R rated movies began to include brief explanations of the material in the film that caused it to receive an R rating. Several years later, the MPAA began including such explanations with the other ratings as well.

Currently, it does not appear that the MPAA has any intention of further defining their ratings to give adult moviegoers a better idea of what to expect in a movie.

Smith suggests that, in the end, ratings are sometimes unnecessary because you can often tell what kind of material to expect by the theme of the movie and by who is in it.

“If it has Ben Stiller in it, I know it’s going to be dirty,” Smith said.