It’s a partly a myth.
>Profanity may be present in PG rated films, and use of one of the harsher “sexually-derived words” as an expletive will initially incur at least a PG-13 rating. **Multiple occurrences will usually incur an R rating as will the usage of such an expletive in a sexual context. Nevertheless, the ratings board may still award a PG-13 rating passed by a two-thirds majority if they believe the language is justified by the context or by the manner in which the words are used.**
>**There are several exceptional cases in which PG-13-rated films contain multiple occurrences of the word fuck:** Adventures in Babysitting, where the word is used twice in the same scene;The Hip Hop Project, which has seventeen uses; and Gunner Palace, a documentary of soldiers in the Second Gulf War, which has 42 uses of the word with two used sexually. Both Bully, a 2011 documentary about bullying, and Philomena—which has two instances of the word—released in 2013, were originally given R ratings on grounds of the language but the ratings were dropped to PG-13 after successful appeals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Association_film_rating_system
It’s not just one F word though. The F word can’t be referring to actual sex and it can’t be calling someone fucker or something. It has to be an abstract use of the word. Like fuck that or I just stubbed my fucking toe. And there are no hardline rules or guidelines. It’s a really stupid system with loose guidelines open for interpretation. And the MPAA is pretty secretive about the whole process. They get a random group of anonymous people to screen a movie and give it a rating. It’s part of the reason, but not the only reason, that I don’t consider a movies rating when I watch movies with my kids.
PG-13 being invented in the first place is what led to this. They tried to find a middle between R (which before usually meant that there was cursing and nudity) and PG where it was just “hey parents, this movie doesn’t show boobs but can be scary so know what you’re taking your kids to see” (Jaws and Poltergeist are rated PG, for example).
Then they decided to say there should be a happy medium when Temple of Doom and Gremlins came out in the 80s. And when they did that, suddenly a LOT of movies were motivated to be rated PG-13 so they could appeal to a more general audience. Since the “rules” were/are still being figured out, the MPAA has just arbitrarily decided on the one F-word rule.
Latest Answers