When Deadpool came out, audiences were thrilled to finally see the self-proclaimed ‘merc with a mouth’ hit the silver screen in a faithful adaptation. Well, most audiences were. With the huge superhero movie boom being aimed mostly at kids and teenagers (i.e. the ones who can beg their parents to buy merchandise), it’s no surprise that some parents mistook Deadpool for being the latest addition to that family of family-friendly content.
There was tons of outrage online, and petitions calling for the movie to be pulled from theaters or given a substantial trimming to take out the violence and cussing – you know, the things that make Deadpool, well, Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds himself weighed in on the situation on his Twitter account when a mom asked if the movie was appropriate to show to her four-year-old who ‘loves Marvel’.
Deadpool’s R-rating comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the character. Had any of those significant changes been made, it wouldn’t be the Deadpool character that people know and love, and we already had to suffer through that in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. But what does it mean to be ‘R-rated’? That it’s really violent and people say ‘bad’ words? Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
The MPA and CARA
Formerly known as the Motion Picture Association of America, MPAA for short, it dropped an -A in 2019 and simply became the Motion Picture Association. It established the original movie rating system used, the Motion Picture Production Code, though you might have heard of it as the Hays Code. It worked well enough for a few decades, but it was harder to adhere to in the late 50 and early 60s for three main reasons- a new interest in foreign films from countries with very different standards on what was considered ‘appropriate’, the introduction of the home television reducing ticket sales and hurting the film industry as a whole, and many producers and directors trying to push boundaries and create experimental content.
In 1968 a new rating system was introduced. It’s overseen by the Classifications and Ratings Administration, or CARA, which is an independent division of the MPA. This new system was a voluntary one; creators no longer had to worry about their content being watered down to fit someone else’s standards, they could do as they pleased so long as they gave the final product the appropriate rating. Unlike the Hays Code there’s no legal enforcement behind it, and movies can be screened without a rating. It’s up to theaters to decide which movies they show, and most refuse to show anything that’s NC-17 or unrated.
The Ratings (G, PG, PG-13)
This voluntary system is the same system we use today. Most know that G stands for ‘general audiences’, PG stands for ‘parental guidance suggested’, PG-13 means ‘parents strongly cautioned, not appropriate for children under 13’, R stands for ‘restricted’, and NC-17 means ‘no one under 17’. What isn’t always clear is the criteria for film ratings. How far can a PG film go before it teeter-totters on being rated PG-13? What word can only be used once before a PG-13 film has to be rated R? Let’s do a deep dive into each movie rating criteria.
G- General Audience
G is another way of saying ‘all ages admitted’ but because the content is so tame it’s often used interchangeably with ‘made for kids’. That’s not always the case; there are plenty of kids who were freaked out by that scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (you know the one), which is G-rated. The 2005 adaptation was more faithful to the book, a children’s book mind you, and it earned a PG rating.
Ultimately G means there’s no drugs, sex, obscene language, violence, or mature themes that parents need to be mindful of.
PG- Parental Guidance
‘Some material may not be suitable for children’ is written on the horizontal bar at the very bottom of the rating label to explain what it means…and it’s doing a very poor job. It’s pretty vague, but the main determining factor between what makes a movie G or PG is that brief nudity, mild profanity, and some depictions of violence are acceptable. Neither can contain any drug use though.
PG-13- Parents Strongly Cautioned
I spoke too soon earlier when I said that the voluntary system is the same we use today. While the system itself is the same, the ratings are a little different. They originally consisted of G (general), M (mature), R (no one under 16 unless accompanied by an adult), and X (16+ only). In the 1970s, 16 was raised to 17. The M caused some confusion since it was technically kid-friendly content so it was changed to GP and later PG. From ‘72 to ‘84 the ratings were G, PG, R, and X.
PG-13 came to be when Steven Spielberg suggested something should exist between PG and R. His movies Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins both received PG ratings since they weren’t intense enough to be R-rated. There was no rating that reflected the things that pre-teens and teenagers could understand and be exposed to without (much) issue, so this addition to the rating family was introduced in 1984 to satisfy that need. Any drug use or nudity that’s not brief but isn’t sexual automatically bumps a rating up to PG-13. Violence can be present, so long as it’s not excessive or too realistic.
Further, obscene language can be used only once and not in a sexual manner. Juno is a great case study for satisfying both of these requirements. It originally had more than one f-bomb in the script, but the script was altered so it could receive the much more thematically-appropriate PG-13 rating it has now. There’s also a scene where the titular character calls her stepmom a ‘d*ck’ but it’s a comment on her personality using slang, not a literal reference to genitalia. This is where the ‘not in a sexual manner’ comes into play, and how they got away with saying things like ‘pork swords’ instead.
Stay tuned for part two where we look at the criteria for R and NC-17 ratings!
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