Rated R but for the bleeps

May 4, 2015 11:37 AM

Last December, we (The Dissolve) ran an excellent essay from familiar face Chris Klimek on the regrettable history of the PG-13 rating. He explained how the huge gulf in content between PG and R films necessitated the creation of a middle ground. The PG-13 rating was created expressly to attend to that problem, but that created a handful of problems all its own… Animator Mack Williams cooked up the video below, which reshapes Chris’ essay into a snappy, informative, and visually slick cartoon.
posted by Going To Maine (12 comments total)

Having created the so-called problem, Spielberg was just as quick to propose a solution. “I remember calling [then-MPAA president] Jack Valenti and suggesting to him that we need a rating between R and PG,” Spielberg told Vanity Fair’s Jim Windolf in a 2008 interview.

Isn't it great to be Steven Spielberg, where you can call up one of your own regulators and have a ratings category created just for you? I'm sure there are lots of independent filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s who would have loved to have had that kind of clout.
posted by jonp72 at 12:13 PM on May 4, 2015 [11 favorites]

And a month after that, the National Coalition on Television Violence condemned Red Dawn as the most violent film ever made.

Oh, the lulz.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:21 PM on May 4, 2015

And a month after that, the National Coalition on Television Violence condemned Red Dawn as the most violent film ever made.

Not only a laughably wrong assertion, but Red Dawn hadn't been shown on TV.

If you're interested in the (fucked up) rating system, I heartily recommend the documentary This film is not yet rated. It gave an in-depth view of the MPAA rating board, its religious nature, and its outright lies. The documentary received an NC-17 rating, assuring that it would never be shown in a mainstream theater.
posted by el io at 12:27 PM on May 4, 2015 [18 favorites]

What’s puzzling is that these studios believed these pictures needed the PG-13 to be successful, that the younguns supposedly welcomed in by a PG-13 would more than offset the aging fans turned off by the thought of a watery Die Hard picture.

You can see it work the other way too - witness the number of films rated PG-13 (or 12 in the UK) that do so by using the one "Fuck" rule; it pushes up the rating from a PG to PG-13. I recall seeing this (hearing this) in a fair few films from the mid 90s onward. Sometimes it's pretty jarring: i rewatched "Awakenings" at the weekend, rated 12, and it had the one "Fuck" rule; had it not done so i imagine it would have been PG.

But why do it? Well speaking from experience having worked in a video rental store people would be put off renting a film if it had a PG or U rating. So you would see the one "Fuck" rule often happen in those rom-com's aimed at a teen audience, and so on.
posted by lawrencium at 12:29 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Williams video from Pitchfork is what got posted today, and it's a good summary of the essay as well as amusing. I especially liked the final scene.

To me, the most interesting thing about both is the tacit conclusion that the auteur theory is the way filmmaking should be. Not that I disagree, really, but the new-style, 21st century studio system doesn't really support auteurs anymore. In essence the rise of the PG-13 blockbuster represents the reassertion of the producers and studio suits as the most important people involved in a project. To the studios these days, a director or writer is only worth what their name might bring in at the box office.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:36 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

The campy horror/comedy Student Bodies from 1981 (Pre PG-13) did a 4th wall breaking call out to the practice.
posted by Captain_Science at 2:05 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Before PG-13 and before PG (1972) there was GP (1970) and before that there was M. I saw a bunch of Rated M movies between 1968 and 1972.

The MPAA rating system that went into effect in 1968 . . . featured only four categories, only three of which were eligible for a Code and Rating Administration production seal:
G (Suggested for Genera! audiences)
M (Suggested for Mature audiences [parental discretion advised])
R (Restricted—Persons under 16 not admitted, unless accompanied by parent or adult guardian)
X (Persons under 16 not admitted.).

We found early on that the M category (M meaning "Mature") was regarded by most parents as a sterner rating than the R category. To remedy this misconception, we changed the name from M to GP (meaning General audiences, Parental guidance suggested). A year later we revised the name to its current label, "PG: Parental Guidance Suggested."
-- Jack Valenti

Isn't it great to be Steven Spielberg, where you can call up one of your own regulators and have a ratings category created just for you? I'm sure there are lots of independent filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s who would have loved to have had that kind of clout.

Before you go too far down this road, this isn't the first time a specific film has 'blown up' the ratings system.

The American release of [Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blow-up] by a major Hollywood studio was in direct defiance of the Production Code. Its subsequent outstanding critical and box office success proved to be one of the final events that led to the final abandonment of the code in 1968 in favour of the MPAA film rating system.
-- WP

When I became president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in May 1966 the slippage of Hollywood studio authority over the content of films collided with an avalanching revision of American mores and customs. . . . Almost within weeks in my new duties I was confronted with controversy, neither amiable nor fixable.

The first issue was the film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in which, for the first time on the screen, the word "screw" and the phrase "hump the hostess" were heard.

The second issue surfaced only a few months later. . . . the Michelangelo Antonioni film The Blow-Up (sic). this movie also represented a first -- the first time a major distributor was marketing a film with nudity in it.
-- Jack Valenti

In 1966 . . . The Production Code Administration approved 168 feature films. . . . . Six films released in 1966 received the “suggested for mature audiences” designation. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf got its own designation: on all advertising for the picture, an MPAA legend read (all in capital letters),

NO PERSON UNDER 18 ADMITTED UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY A PARENT.

The number of films designated for “mature audiences only” [rose from six in 1967 to forty-four in 1968]. . . . In the twelve months preceding the adoption of the 1968 MPAA rating system . . . roughly 60 per cent of the films released by the studios carried the “suggested for mature audiences” tag. [Even so], some key studîo films were denied a production seal.

The most problematic of these films proved to be Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, . . . When MGM submitted Blow-Up to the industry’s censorship board, it was denied a seal. The controversy that followed spelled the end for the PCA. . . . .

The problem with the film, Valenti pointed out, was not its overall quality but rather a single nonnarrative/ nonessential sequence that featured female nudity. . . . Antonioni’s contract [mean that the studio] could not cut the film to suit the PCA or the National Catholic Office of Motion Pictures (NCOMP), which had, predictably, issued Blow-Up its condemned rating. . . .

[B]y the time Blow-Up [was submitted for review] it had already been released to box office and critical success in Europe. It was Great Britain’s official entry at Cannes and won the festival’s grand prix. . . .

[To avoid the choice between censorship or sanction] the studio distributed Blow-Up through its non-MPAA subsidiary Premier Films. . . . [T]he gamble paid off. Blow-Up opened to terrific reviews. . . and the film eventually grossed seven times the studio’s investment.
-- Jon Lewis , Hollywood V. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Created the Modern Film Industry

posted by Herodios at 2:57 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Actually, I have read Hollywood v. Hard Core. I would argue that the case of Blow-Up is different, because Antonioni found a way to circumvent the ratings system from without rather than simply call Jack Valenti on speed dial.
posted by jonp72 at 7:26 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Isn't it great to be Steven Spielberg, where you can call up one of your own regulators and have a ratings category created just for you?

But the MPAA isn't a regulator; it's an industry organization, funded directly by the studios. It's also the studios' lobbying arm. Of course one of the highest grossing directors of the time can call up the head of the MPAA. (Also, the main purpose of the MPAA rating system was to avoid government regulation/censorship, no?)
posted by nobody at 8:10 PM on May 4, 2015

You may have seen this official poster put out by the MPAA, explaining the ratings system.

What you might not have noticed, was the rabbit in the various movie going groups. Rabbit's in the crowd for G, PG, and even PG-13, though by that level of rating, it's eyes are being hidden by a little girl, who in turn has had to have have her own view shielded by a responsible adult since the crowd going to see the PG film.

The context here is clear. Rabbit's young and impressionable -- maybe not too young since the family was ok with Rabbit watching the PG movie, but it would seem that a PG-13 film is considered too much, to the point that the parental unit, who only has so many hands, gets help from the little girl to keep Rabbit from being corrupted.

Now skip down to the bottom, with the NC-17 film. Rabbit, wearing a large pair of face-concealing sunglasses, apparently has secured a Fake ID to be able to sneak in to the adults-only film.

An official MPAA poster explaining movie ratings, endorsing the message "Hey kids, lie about your age to get in to see the really fun stuff!"
posted by radwolf76 at 9:36 PM on May 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

But the MPAA isn't a regulator; it's an industry organization, funded directly by the studios. It's also the studios' lobbying arm. Of course one of the highest grossing directors of the time can call up the head of the MPAA.

Then we should just dump the phony moralizing and admit that this is about money, like it has always been.
posted by jonp72 at 10:33 AM on May 5, 2015

(Also, the main purpose of the MPAA rating system was to avoid government regulation/censorship, no?)

Yes, but only if you release films through the MPAA. The decision Jenkins v. Georgia set a precedent that MPAA films could not be proscribed by local or state censorship laws, but in practice, that does not apply to films that are not released through the MPAA.
posted by jonp72 at 10:36 AM on May 5, 2015