What's the story behind the PG13 rating?!
Question: Would like to know what films stressed its creation, too.
Answers: Would like to know what films stressed its creation, too.
Hope the following helps:
The GP rating is replaced
By 1972, problems with the GP rating emerged; parents perceived it as too permissive, unindicative of a film's true content. In 1971, the MPAA had experimented with including a content advisory warning to GP-rated movies, the wording varied, but typically read: Contains material not generally suitable for pre-teenagers; thus, it was an early form of the PG-13 rating; the warning was indicated with an asterisk next to the GP letters. This short-lived rating can be called GP*, however, the number of such films quickly outnumbered GP films (sans the warning) and the MPAA, in February 1972 (standardising rating symbols used in movie advertising), announced that both the GP and the GP* ratings would be replaced with the new PG rating;[6] it was used through the 1970s.
Originally, the rating, and its content advisory warning, read:
Rated PG: Parental Guidance Suggested — Some material may not be suitable for pre-teenagers.
Today, the rating, and its warning, read:
Rated PG: Parental Guidance Suggested — Some material may not be suitable for children.
By then, the rating box contained the rating in boldface, the MPAA logo, and the content advisory warning. From the adoption of the system through the mid-1970s, mildly adult mainstream cinema — Airport, Planet of the Apes, The Green Berets, The Odd Couple, Tora! Tora! Tora!, and 2001: A Space Odyssey — commonly were released with G ratings, but, by 1978 (given substitution of "children" in place of "pre-teenagers" in the PG rating), the G rating became over-associated with children's films, while the PG rating became the norm for "family" films. Most G-rated films from the system's early years are today perceived as having PG and PG-13 content, hence, G-rated movies from the 1960s and 1970s have often been re-rated PG in later years.
In retrospect, some ratings are culturally odd, though it must be remembered that the rating standards then were more liberal; violence, sexually suggestive speech and action, naked men, and mild cursing were acceptable in the lower ratings, while sexual intercourse (either implicit or explicit) and naked women were not. A movie's rating depended on the personal mores and opinion of the individual censors. For example, the G-rated Battle of Britain (1967) had mild British cursing and explicit killings of RAF and Luftwaffe aircrew. True Grit was G-rated after being edited-down in tone; however, it still contained American cursing and strong cowboy violence. Larry Cohen's cult horror film It's Alive (1974), about a killer mutant infant, re-released in 1977, was rated PG despite being bloody per the socio-cultural mores of its time. Its two sequels, It Lives Again (1978) and It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987) (released direct-to-video), were rated R, nevertheless, Finland banned all three films per its film rating system.
Moreover, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) was rated R instead of M (despite its violence being like that of a contemporary James Bond film of the 1960s), because of a chess-game-as-sexual-foreplay between the protagonist and antagonist. In 1975, the phrase May Be Too Intense For Younger Children was the rather unusually-worded PG rating featured in the television adverts for Jaws (1975).
In the late 1970s, the PG ratings were reworded, the word pre-teenagers replaced with children. An analysis of the proportion of films rated G and PG at that time (corresponding with a cultural shift to stricter rating standards) shows that fewer G ratings were issued, while more family films were rated PG with the less restrictive "children" label. By the early 1980s, the phrase "pre-teenagers" was almost unused, and, in 1984, the PG-13 rating (see below) was established, restoring the clear distinction (see GP and GP* above) between films of lighter and heavier content.
By the end of the 1970s, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) ended mainstream (heavily-marketed, live-action) big studio films rated G (though the director's cut is PG, for strong science fiction violence and mild cursing; the original G rating is questionable, as it features on-screen killings and mature thematic elements). Since then, such movies would be released minimally rated PG. That transition was when live-action Disney movies, such as The Black Hole, The Watcher in the Woods, and The Devil and Max Devlin routinely were rated PG.
[edit] The addition of the PG-13 rating
Before July 1, 1984, there was a minor trend of cinema straddling the PG and R ratings (per MPAA records of appeals to its decisions in the early 1980s), suggesting a needed middle ground. In summer of 1982, Poltergeist (1982) was re-rated PG on appeal, although originally rated R for strong supernatural violence and marijuana-smoking parents. Disney's PG-rated Dragonslayer (1982) alarmed parents with explicit fantasy violence and blood-letting.
Because of such successful appeals, based upon artistic intent, many mild, mainstream movies were rated PG instead of R because of some thematically necessary strong cursing, e.g. Tootsie, Terms of Endearment, Sixteen Candles, and Footloose. These censorship reversals were consequence, in large measure, of the 1970s precedent established by All the President's Men.[7] Had these movies been released after 1984, they likely would have been rated PG-13 because of their content.
In 1984, explicit violence in the PG-rated films Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins were "the straws that broke the parents' backs". Their complaints led Hollywood figure Steven Spielberg, director of Temple of Doom, to suggest a new rating, PG-14, to MPAA president Jack Valenti. Instead, on conferring with cinema owners, Mr Valenti and the MPAA on July 1, 1984, introduced the PG-13 rating, allowing in children older than 13 years of age without a parent or an adult guardian, but warning parents about potentially shocking violence, cursing, and mature subject matter; though weaker than an R rating, PG-13 is the strongest unrestricted rating. The first widely-distributed PG-13 movie was Red Dawn (1984), followed by Dreamscape (1984), and the The Flamingo Kid (1984), although The Flamingo Kid was the first film so rated by the board. [8][9]
It took a year for the PG-13 logotype to metamorphose to its current form. From 1984 to 1986, the initial rating, instead of using boldface text and a content advisory warning, bore the wording:
Rated PG-13: Parents are strongly cautioned to give special guidance for attendance of children under 13.
Today, it reads:
Rated PG-13: PARENTS STRONGLY CAUTIONED — Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
With the PG rating still being used unchanged, it remained unclear to some parents, at first, whether or not PG and PG-13 films were intended for adults. Until 1990, some of the same content that prompted the creation of the PG-13 rating was in some PG films. For example Big, Spies Like Us, and Nothing in Common were three late-1980s PG releases containing PG-13-level innuendo; the dialogue of two contained the word **** .
The socially and culturally conservative ratings board quickly reacted to protesting parents, and PG-13 films outnumbered PG films; content standards were narrowed for PG classification. At decade's turn, PG-13 rating standards also were narrowed, at least for violence, as the censors became more likely to issue R ratings to violent films showing explicit blood-letting and the killing of policemen. Except for a brief reversal in 1994, the number of PG-13 films outnumbered the PG films since, and the proportion of R-rated films (beginning with the boom of privately-viewed home video in the late 1980s) has generally increased at the expense of unrestricted films. Only within the last two years has there been an indication that the proportion of restricted films has slightly decreased as a cultural trend.
well the PG part stands for parental guidance and the 13 means u shouldn't watch it until you are 13. But those r all the best movies! lol
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom forced it, as the actions depicted were a bit too much for the standard PG rating.
A designation was now made for action and dialogue more than a standard PG, but less than an R
Some examples are "Red Dawn" and "Dreamscape", both from 1984, when the PG13 rating debuted. If you watch these 2 films you will see that there seems to be a very vague definition of what the rating allows, in terms of content. "Red Dawn" should not only be R rated but it should be a strongly-R-rated film, while "Dreamscape" comes across more like a PG rated film that pushes the limits of the PG rating.
In more recent times there have been countless examples of American films that would have definitely been R rated in the past but were rated PG-13. In one case (one of the "Scary Movie" films) a man complained that the film was too raunchy for an R rating yet it was PG-13.
The good thing about the PG-13 rating is that a lot of good films (3 star or higher on a 4 star scale) get to reach a wider audience. The bad thing from a cinema fan's point of view is that a lot of films that should have been R rated to begin with undergo heavy editing to obtain the PG-13 rating, which sometimes completely ruins the film.