Heath Hutcheson, Campus Carrier features editor

The MPAA Rating System is rarely taken seriously by modern moviegoers. What was initially conceived as a system to tell parents what was and was not suitable for children has now become something often overlooked by them. Why is this exactly? I think it’s due to how vague the rating categories are, how muddy the PG area has become, and how outdated it is now. While I do think it is vital to have a rating system for feature films, I think the current one being used could definitely use some improvements, at least for the sake of practicality.

The system’s modern incarnation follows a seemingly basic and easy to understand structure. If a film is rated G, that means it’s intended for general audiences, or just anybody. If a film is rated PG, that means parental guidance is suggested, so it contains a hint of some adult material, but nothing major. PG-13 means that parental guidance is more strongly suggested,

so some material might not be considered suitable for even pre-teens. An R rating means a film contains a strong amount of adult material, and parents must be with their children to see it. NC-17 ratings are given to movies that are strictly for adults, so nobody under the age of 17 can even be admitted to see them. These ratings all use pretty broad terms if you look into what they’re really referring to. One R rated movie like The Matrix contains very little language, while The Wolf of Wall Street contains over 500 uses of the f word alone and has the same rating. I understand that this system can’t really afford to be too specific, but perhaps some little subtags to go along with certain movie ratings might help in this area a bit, so if a movie is rated R for violence, it could be rated R-V or R-S for sexual content.

So what else is wrong with this system? Well for starters, PG and G are basically seen as the same thing nowadays. For example, what makes a movie like Inside Out require parental guidance, but not Toy Story? The reason given for Inside Out’s PG rating is “some action” as if Toy Story didn’t end with an action packed chase scene with a rocket chasing a moving van. It’s really a no brainer to anybody that any Pixar movie can be watched by general audiences. My point being, the two ratings are practically interchangeable and seem to read to modern audiences as “kids movies”. So, should we just toss out the PG rating altogether? Maybe. The merge of PG and PG-13 would be difficult to try to get used to again, so perhaps a gradual merge would be better, although I think it would definitely be more practical in the long run. They aren’t the only ratings with problems though.

The R rating brings with it a lot of issues due to its policy of restriction. By not allowing teenagers under the age of seventeen to attend without a parent, that’s not only locking off some potential revenue, but also pretty outdated considering how accessible profanity, violence, and sexual content are on the internet today. A kid under the age of seventeen today has likely already been exposed to that type of content frequently without any parental supervision, so just locking them off from seeing it again in a theater seems a bit odd. The R rating should instead act more as a recommendation than a restriction.

In the end, the rating system for movies will never be a perfect one, given how subjective these types of things can be. However, where it stands now, some changes really should be made to it. The system is growing more and more arbitrary by the day it seems, so a revamp is due much sooner than later.