Please note that I there may be some adult content in this episode as I discuss different reasons for film ratings. The second half of this episode is purely subjective -- I fully expect my listeners to have differing opinions, and that's okay. These are just the guidelines I go by when choosing to show my kids certain movies.
Welcome to season 4 of Life Through the Big Screen. Typically I've been keeping my seasons six episodes long, so being 4 seasons in isn't as impressive as it sounds. I do think that I'm going to start expanding the length of episodes per season eventually. I just love creating new introductions - and speaking of, which one has been your favorite so far? Give me some feedback.
A little update about my personal life, because I let you in on it on my last solo episode: my open heart surgery is no longer scheduled for late in July - it's been pushed back to September or October. I'm not thrilled that it might overlap with the holidays - but it is what it is. It was pushed back because there's fluid in my lungs from possible COVID that needs to completely clear out before they cut me open. So I do appreciate that the doctors are taking extreme precautions.
I also got a job! It's my dream job of marketing and content creation. It's for a super cool retirement firm who seems to always want to be on the cutting edge of unique ideas and new ways of reaching their target demographics.
I start a week from the time of this recording. And if Zach, Dylan, and Larin are listening to this, my highest gratitude goes out to you for taking a chance on me.
And thank you, listeners for continuing to take a chance on this podcast. I know your time is valuable and you dozens of other podcasts you could be listening to right now, so I am honored that your spending your time with me. I do my best with the tools I have available to bring you the best quality podcast I can. And with time I hope to continue to get better. I'm also open to hearing your feedback and any suggestions you may have, so feel free to email me at author.andrewtoy@gmail.com or leave a comment in Apple podcasts.
As you know, I open up each season with me gabbing about a particular topic that I feel I want to discuss for a little bit. As you know my kids are seven and eight at the time of this recording and that means that they're becoming of age to start watching more movies that fall outside of the Disney catalogue.
This also means that my wife and I can find more common ground on what we can show the kids - or at least that it's easier for her to allow more space for me to show them what I think might be appropriate, because they're no longer tiny children. They're growing kids, who, as long as they know what's on screen is fabricated with great skill and masterful imagery and film magic, they can take in what I allow to be placed in front of them. They know too that movies are meant to be vessels of enjoyment and pleasure.
And Sarabeth knows that movies are my best way of connecting to the kids. The same way that Tim Taylor was obsessed with his tools and wanted to pass that love on to his boys, that's how I am with movies and my kids. It's also fun debating with them, for instance, which of the Star Wars movies are superior. My daughter claims that Kylo Ren is a great villain, but I get a little overzealous when I try to explain to her how he started off as a great character, but went downhill quickly as Disney executives started listening to the angry mobs rather than focusing on telling a great story, thus his character was ruined for time immortal. I'm looking at YOU Kathleen Kennedy and Ryan Johnson, and whosever idea it was to make Ray-lo a disgusting reality. But I do thank you on behalf of my daughter.
Yesterday my son said that The Empire Strikes Back is his least favorite Star Wars movie. When I pressed him, he said it was because Yoda was boring. I'll be interested to see if and when his opinion changes on that.
So what is the MPAA? You'll know it as soon as I say one color: Green. That's right, when you go the theater and that green screen with a bunch of random words nobody has ever read pops up on the screen - and if you were cool like me, you yelled "Green!" when you were in high school. The words state that the following preview - or trailer - has been approved for all audiences by the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPAA. These are the people who have been telling parents which movies they can or cannot take their kids to see.
You already know by the title of my episode that I'm not going to speak very favorably about the MPAA, and I'll explain why they're full of crap, and always have been.
But first, a little history on the MPAA.
According to motionpicture.org, the MPAA was, and I quote: "Established in 1968, the film rating system provides parents with the information needed to determine if a film is appropriate for their children." This sounds like it had good intentions. "Ratings are determined by the Classification and Ratings Administration (CARA), via a board comprised of an independent group of parents."
Before I read a little about the history of the MPAA, I'm going to breeze through a quick refresher course of what the individual rating are today:
If a film is rated G, that means it's approved for general, or all, audiences: Nothing that would offend parents for viewing by children.
A PG rated film stands for Parental Guidance. Where parents are "urged to give “parental guidance.” May contain some material parents might not like for their young children."
A PG-13 film is not only the most common film rating, but it's also the newest. This means that parents are strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13, so parents are urged to be cautious.
An R-rated film means "Restricted." This type of film contains some adult material. Parents are urged to learn more about the film before taking their young children with them. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
And finally NC-17 means that no one under 17 is admitted. I can't recall a mainstream film being given this rating and being shown in a local movie theater. So we're not going to touch on this one for the purposes of this podcast.
Now MotionPictures.org makes this beginning part sound much moralistic than it really is, and for a good video on what went on to REALLY inspire the formation of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), check out a video called The History of Hollywood Censorship and the Rating System by Filmmaker IQ. I'll put a link to that down in the show notes. But this organization was formed in 1922, basically to protect the rights of corrupt elitists in Hollywood.
In 1945, the organization changes its name to what we now know it today as the MPAA. In 1968, the film industry sought artistic freedoms and the removal of strict limits on certain content. The result? The MPAA created the film rating system (G, PG, PG-13, R) we use today.
I got a little curious about the rating system, so I looked up some interesting stats. I looked up the most inappropriate G-rated movies. Screencrush gave me a list of 15 suggestions. I'm going to list just 10 of them.
And 3. 1968's Planet of the Apes, and 1970's Beneath the Planet of the Apes. These I haven't seen, either but apparently Charlton Heston gets shot in the throat and bleeds to death, Tarrantino-style, and entire planets of people die. Sarabeth cannot stand blood, but these movies did not traumatize her as a child, so I'm sure it's fine for kids today.
Dracula has Risen From His Grave (1968). I promise you I've watched movies before, but I also have not seen this. Maybe I just tend to stay away from G-rated movies as a rule. But I'd think any Dracula film rated G is a little suspect, unless it's those Adam Sandler cartoons.
Romeo and Juliet from 1968 is also rated G. Not sure I'd care to watch a G-rated version of this story - and yes, that was my adolescent self talking.
The Andromeda Strain (1971) - Didn't see this either, but I read the book. The book was bull crap with 0 suspense. Can't imagine the movie being any different.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). Sure it was a little unsettling when Violett turned into the blueberry, but I don't think this film is outside the range of being G-rated. My kids like it.
Gone with the Wind - I can get on board this one not being G-rated. This is a dark, dark movie, filled with corpses, attempted abortion, child death, racism, a lot of traumatizing stuff here. Still one of the greatest films ever made, to be clear.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - I'm in the middle of reviewing this for an episode. So far, nothing very unsettling.
Old Yeller. I mean, it gets pretty freaky when they show Old Yeller baring his teeth like he's about to rip Travis' throat out.
Moving along with the stats: There used to not be a PG option. The rating system actually began with four categories: G, M (for Mature audiences, which changed in 1969 to PG), R, and X. I couldn't find the first PG movie, but the first Disney-released PG movie was the Black Hole, which came out in 1970.
Most people know this, but I'll talk about the history of the PG-13 rating briefly here. This is the newest on the rating system, even though it's the most populated. In 1984, parents were outraged at the PG rating of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (remember, at that time it went from PG to R). And I believe Gremlins was also part of the outrage as it was PG as well, as a little holiday horror classic with bloodthirsty puppets ravaging the small town of Kingston Falls. (But I think the most traumatizing part of that movie is when Phoebe Cates talks about her dad suffering and dying in the chimney that might have justifiably resulted in the PG-13 rating.) So after the outrage from parents, the PG-13 rating was invented and thus Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze, was the first to earn the most popular rating in the system.
A movie called Greetings, which was released in 1968, was the first film to earn the R-rating. The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, held the record for the number of the uses of the F-word at a count of 569. It has been beat by two other films since then, but neither are R-rated.
And finally, here is the list of the top 10 highest grossing R-rated films of all time as of July 2022: Number 10, is Fifty Shades of Grey, followed by The Hangover 2 (bad start). Then we get into better territory with The Passion of the Christ at number 8 and Logan at number 7. Number 6 is Defective Chinatown 3, whatever that is. Number 5 is appropriately It from 2017. Number 4, The Matrix Reloaded, sure whatever. And the top 3 are appropriately Deadpool raking in $78.6 million, followed by the superior Deadpool 2 at just about the same amount of earnings at just a few million more. And the highest grossing R-rated movie is also the only R-rated film that has earned its spot in the billion-dollar movie club, Joker, at just over a billion dollars.
When we come back I'm going to talk about how to break movies down when deciding what to show my kids.
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One thing the MPAA has improved on is that now they'll actually list the reasons a film is rated what it is. That wasn't always the case. Our poor parents would take us to Blockbuster and see that Mr. & Mrs. Smith, for instance, was rated PG-13, but it wouldn't state why. Was it sequences for action/violence? Sensuality? Sexual references? So you see, the rating, without the reasoning, is pretty useless.
Take for example The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Twister, two PG-13 movies that came out within a year of each other. Both have the same ratings, but for very different reasons and to extremely differing degrees.
If you're the kind of parent who doesn't want their kids seeing people die on screen, The Lost World: Jurassic Park won't be the movie to watch with your kids. Peter Stormare gets savagely attacked by the compys, Arliss Howard gets toyed and played with by a baby T-rex before he's eaten by it and the mommy T-rex. My favorite character in the movie, played by Richard Schiff gets the worst death in the Jurassic Park trilogy when the two T-rexes flip him in the air and rip his body apart. Not to mention several deaths of people in the camp and in the sigh San Diego scene. It also has more blood than the first movie, but it's not nearly as scary.
Twister, by contrast, has an unusually low body count, especially for a disaster film. Helen Hunt's dad dies his needless death in the movie's opening, and no one else dies except for Cary Elwes much later in the film, and it's sort of off-screen. Those are the only two deaths in the entire movie -- everyone else lives happily ever after, and completely bloodless.
Yet, despite the high body count and flowing blood, I'll show The Lost World: Jurassic Park to my kids before I show them Twister. Why?
Because Twister, as silly of a movie as it is (though don't knock it too hard, because it's my favorite natural disaster movie), is based off of real-life threats. Living in the mid-west, or south, we get tornado warnings pretty regularly. When I showed my kids the original Jurassic Park, they didn't go to bed afraid that they'd be attacked by dinosaurs. Real life disasters, however, might have a different affect on them. I could be wrong, but I know from experience when my parents had me watch Unsolved Mysteries or Eyewitness News, I sometimes had a hard time going to sleep because I knew the things were credible, though distant.
Now let's compare a couple of R-rated movies to some PG-13 ones and I want you to tell me which one you'd rather have your young kids watch with you.
Would you rather watch Swimfan with your kids, or Mel Gibson's The Patriot? If you said The Patriot, that's R-rated for "strong war violence." But that strong war violence is momentary and brief. But Swimfan is PG-13 for mature thematic elements, sexual content, disturbing images, and language.
Would you feel more comfortable showing The King's Speech to your kids, or The Dark Knight? Can you believe that The King's Speech is the R-rated one, and The Dark Knight is deemed appropriate for children as young as 13? The King's Speech has a few F-words, which is always meant for humor. My kids have heard Sarabeth and I use much harsher language. But for those of you who've seen The Dark Knight, you'd agree that that movie could be scarring for young audiences. And the MPAA reasoning is only half-truthful. It reads that the Dark Knight is PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and some menace, but it makes no mention at all of terrifying imagery. I'm sorry, but Two Face is much scarier than any monster I've seen depicted in an R-rated film.
Let's do one more comparison, shall we? Would you rather show your kids the PG-rated Poltergeist, or the R-rated Planes, Trains, & Automobiles? The MPAA has not bothered to go back and re-rate 1982's Poltergeist, despite the moderate use of violence, and severe and frequent use of frightening and intense scenes. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, however, is only appropriate for adults, according to the MPAA, because Steve Martin cusses out the car rental lady.
So are you starting to see what I mean when I say ratings mean nothing? My kids' first PG-13 theater experience was Ghostbusters: Afterlife and it was for my son's 6th birthday and my daughter was 7. Felix got a little freaked out during the big climax, but I told him to hang in there, and before he knew it, it was over, and now he wants to own the movie and watch it again.
Some people may say that the rating system is completely subjective, but I say it's not subjective enough. There's no board of parents anywhere that can predict or dictate what would be okay or not okay for my kids to watch. Sometimes it's not based off the content at all, but more about the message being delivered.
I've told you that I've shown my kids the first two Jurassic Park movies because 95% of the human relationships are people helping people. There is very little human infighting. The struggle is between man and creature, and the overall idea is people depending on the kindness and bravery of others. That's a good message that I want to subconsciously sink into my kids' heads. But I'll skip the first beginning part of Home Alone where Kevin is a complete asshole to his mom. "Content-wise" and I'm doing air-quotes, it's acceptable, because it lacks violence or sexuality, but the message behind it is something my kids aren't ready to see because if they watch that part enough, they'll think it's acceptable to talk to their parents the way Kevin does. Also, he doesn't really get punished for that particular crime - his punishment, if you want to call it that, is unrelated to the way he treats and talks to his family. (Best Christmas movie ever, by the way.)
I know this is sort of a lot, and I hope you're tracking with me. I hope this helps you see past just the rating system that the MPAA offers.
Another example is this. The Lord of the Rings, compared to Jurassic Park, is relatively bloodless. However, it's going to be many years before I show that trilogy to my kids. Why? It's action and adventure and fantasy, you'd think it'd be a great candidate to show the kiddos. Well, it never let's up. Pretty much once the hobbits leave the Shire within the first 30 minutes of Fellowship, it's nothing but heartache and stress and nightmare visions until the last 30 minutes of Return of the King. And there's no comic relief to relieve the heavy tension. Also, it gets pretty convoluted and drawn-out. So even if the stress didn't get to them, I don't want them to get bored on their first viewing and not have an appreciation of the films from the start. I want to make sure their brains are developed and mature enough to be able to grasp the magnitude of the story beyond just the sword fights.
In the previous episode about Spider-Man: No Way Home, Dean Letini brought up a great point that there are many movies in the MCU that he has yet to show his 9 year old, notably Winter Soldier because some guy gets kicked into the propeller of a helicopter. PG-13. You know what else is PG-13 in the MCU? Ant Man.
That's right. The giant Thomas the Train bouncing off the tracks in the little girl's room warranted the same rating as Winter Soldier, or The Sixth Sense. Why?
It's one word, and it'll come as no surprise: Money.
You better believe that the studio execs at Disney know full well that if they release an MCU movie with a PG rating, it'll lose a lot of money. When's the last time a G-rated movie snuck into theaters? I don't know either. Frozen is PG. Ice Age is PG. Zootopia is PG. They're all PG because it's a chance that it'll get more butts int he seats - those kids teetering on adolences who might be skeptical going to see an animated movie.
You know what's rated G? Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Pinocchio. All Dogs Go to Heaven. Those movies are nightmare-inducing! Pinocchio was banned in Germany for any child at the time of its release - it had an equivalent of an R-rating.
But what kid do you know that got a single nightmare from Moana?
So the rating system is stupid. Lightyear is PG, but I don't give a crap because I'm not taking my kids to see a movie where lesbians are normalized. That doesn't make me a bigot and I'll tell you why.
Sexuality is complicated enough without a million different influences and ideas barraging our kids. Sexuality needs to not be discussed in front of or around kids for the simple reason that kids need to be kids. We need to keep their minds clear of all that stuff. They've got the rest of their lives to figure it all out, and wrestle with it and grapple with what sexuality is and what it means to them. If we're in such a hurry for our kids to grow up, why the hell not hand them over the keys to our cars? Put them to work in the factories? Take out a portion of their allowance for taxes? Actually, that last idea isn't half bad.
But please understand what I'm saying. Once human beings are of age, where their brains are fully developed and they can reason on their own and take in entertainment with critical thinking and they've been properly educated on the basics of sexuality, then we can loosen things up a little bit.
I'm not a bigot because Oscar is my favorite supporting character in The Office. Those two guys in Modern Family? They were hilarious. The fact that Negasonic Teenage Warhead has a lesbian lover in Deadpool and the way Ryan Reynolds plays it is awesome. Deadpool himself is practically bi or A-sexual or something, and I love him anyway.
But my kids don't need to see any of that because they barely know how a mommy and a daddy make a baby. They're still at level one knowledge. There's absolutely no reason for them to know anything more than that at this age.
And I understand that they're likely not going to turn to me and ask why two women are married and kissing in a cartoon movie, but the thought will stick with them, and it will grow overtime the more they see that. My religion teaches that it's wrong to be in a same-sex relationship, and I'll teach my kids the same, but when they're of age, it's ultimately going to be their choice. All I can do is teach them what I know to be morally right and to love those who don't see it that way.
So the rating system is based off of 4 or 5 main elements.
Just as there's different styles of violence, there's also different degrees of it. Yes, I'm okay with my kids watching dinosaurs or creatures eating people, but even that can be taken too far for them at this age. I wouldn't dare show them the bear attack in The Revenant, for instance, because that's way too realistic and could be traumatizing. Or even the pig-creature attack in Annihilation, or any of the Alien franchise just yet. Why? Because that's a level of gore and creepiness that's above Jurassic Park. It's also prolonged. When someone gets eaten in Jurassic Park, it's usually pretty quick and the movie movies on. I admit that this is all purely subjective. You may think Jurassic Park is too gory for your kids, and I won't tell you you're wrong. Only you know what your kids will be able to handle.
We've talked about sex, in movies. It's not that my wife and I are sensitive to the subject. No, it's that we're unabashedly over-protective of our kids when it comes to it. And when they're ready to talk about it, we'll be ready to lead them in a frank and honest discussion that we're not afraid to have with them. The point here is that we want to be the first source our kids get that information from. Thankfully there are a lot of movies - PG, PG-13, or even R that don't mention or show anything sensual. But be weary of the PG movies from our youth.
We turned on a random movie from Disney + not too long ago. It was a movie that starred Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Chevy Chase called Man of the House. Now to be fair, I remember watching it as a kid and it didn't affect me, but we turned it off 15 minutes in, first because it was boring, but secondly, it seemed like all they were talking about was how JTT didn't want Chevy Chase to sleep with Farrah Fawcett. It was just a little TMI in this JTT "family comedy." Air quotes again.
And honestly, even when my kids do come of age, there's a ton of stuff I'll be uncomfortable watching with them. I'll never forget how awkward it got watching Friends with my parents on Thursday nights - especially the later episodes - and particularly when I learned how to ahem do certain things, and the show addressed that more and more. So, so awkward.
As far as language goes in movies, this is sort of a funny story, and it's not to shame my kids, but to celebrate their innocence. They've seen plenty of PG-13 movies where there's cursing throughout - I even showed them the PG-rated Back to the Future films which are basically just damn and shit every other line (that's not a fundamentalist complaint, by the way, that's just an observation).
But you know where my kids have heard the majority of cursing? That's right, from their mom and dad, during our dark days leading up to our separation and even a bit afterwards on some bad days. And we use every word in the book and then some. Thankfully it's not like that any more, but if any kid had reason to mimic curse words, it would be ours. But recently we asked them to list off some bad words they know - we did this with wry smiles and curiosity - they could only come up with "stupid" and "dumb." I wonder if they know more than they're letting on.
I showed them Raiders of the Lost Ark not too long ago and Harrison Ford goes, "God Damn it," at one point, and of course my son laughs because of the line delivery and he goes, "He just said God damn it." Sarabeth promptly explained that that's not something we say, and he hasn't since.
Every movie is going to have cursing. You're going to hear cursing when you take your kids to Taco Bell or to the beach. It's everywhere. Just remember, it's not a sin for them to hear it. And I believe when they're older, it's not even a sin for them to curse. I curse all the time, though I do try to limit it in front of the kids.
Lastly, ratings can be determined on drug use, and now tobacco use. I've really got no reason to show my kids Pineapple Express or any stoner movie. And seeing Peter Pan smoking a bong never made me want to go out and try it myself. Nor did the racist depictions make me think racist thoughts against Native Americans. But really, are the Indians in Neverland REALLY Native Americans? Shouldn't they be called Native Neverlandians?
All that to say, the MPAA can look like they're nit-picking things and trying to be more protective, but in my opinion, they're nitpicking the wrong things. It's up to each parent to decide what's important to restrict from their children, because only each parent knows their children. Not the MPAA, and certainly not Hollywood.
Thanks for tolerating this little lecture about my thoughts on movie ratings. If you have different thoughts or opinions, I'd love to hear them. Drop me an email at author.andrewtoy@gmail.com or leave a comment down below. You can follow Life Through the Big Screen on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, all that stuff is in the show notes below.
Here's the video talking more about the history of the MPAA: The History of Hollywood Censorship & the Rating System
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