What led to PG13 movies being allowed to say the F-word once?
In: Other
I recall a comedy from the 80’s that was rated R. There was no nudity or profanity in the movie, but in the middle it stopped and and someone announced something similar to “Teenage movie goers prefer R rated movies. To ensure an R rating, I only have one thing to say. Fuck you.”
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Ratings board figured out that teenagers already know what the F-word is. Since they were 3.
Another one I feel gets ignored is the 2001 Ocean’s Eleven. It has 2 F-words but it’s otherwise extremely tame. Virtually no violence or sexual content and a PG-13 rating.
I’d argue because they wouldn’t want a Dustin Hoffman string of 11 F words again (Accidental hero)
I always found it funny how movies and games have ratings, and even music (explicit), but books have nothing. A kid could buy a book with extremely graphic detail about all kinds of stuff – sex, war, rape, torture, drugs, etc. It could be a racist manifesto (Mein Kampf). Doesn’t matter, it’s a book, no rules against it.
Good too mention the fact that the body rating these films are not known, and have many conflicting agreements over the years . As in this actor does this he’s gets R, 5hat actor does the same this gets pg13. Alot of weird censorship goes on
I used to work for a very small movie distributor company. Part of my job was helping producers get their movies rated.
We once had a family friendly movie that got rated G. The producers were upset because a G rating made it feel like it was for young children, but they wanted a PG rating because that would more likely attract kids of all ages and their whole families.
We called up the rating people and basically convinced them to bump it up to a PG in one phone call.
I learned the rating process is basically a few people in a room watching a movie and giving a vote. The MPAA is like a guild, and they usually don’t want to piss off producers. The rating process is pretty subjective, it changes over time, and there really are no hard and fast rules.
Titanic.
The scene where Bill Paxton’s friend with the beard elaborates how the ship broke in half and says something along the lines of “it’s whole fucking ass is sticking up.”
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