I’ve learned a lot about how films are rated through my research. I’ve learned that they’re rated by a board of parents, as opposed to a board of film experts which is what I previously believed. I’ve also learned these parents have no special training in any field that could possibly help them do this monumental task of applying ratings to films which will ultimately influence the movie goings of thousand upon thousands of kids and teenagers. And although the current movie rating system works, it doesn’t take into account the developmental stages of children. I’ve also found that the movie ratings board tends to bias itself towards major studio films rather that independent ones, giving them either lower ratings, or very specific notes on how to make their films meet the rating specifications to be shown in theaters.
“The MPAA board's arbitrary behavior and its bias toward mainstream studio films are sharply illustrated by
In the MPAA’s defense they are attempting to make their ratings more transparent to parents, as they have recently added descriptions to the ratings on movie posters and such. They’ve added things like “Mild drug use”, “strong language”, and “Swashbuckling action” (Seriously, it’s on the poster for Shrek the Third. What the hell is swashbuckling action?). These ratings however don’t give parents a good
idea as to how much language/drug use/ sex/ or violence is in a movie. In my paper I proposed a rating system based on a ten point scale. For instance an extremely violent movie would have a violence rating of ten, a low sexual rating and perhaps a high profanity rating. It’s simple and it could possibly give parents a better insight as to what their children are seeing.
MPAA website:
Film ratings website(A website with pretty much every movie ever and their ratings)
