A Movie Ratings Guide from a 14-year-old

Okay, I know I made another post earlier today but I read a little article of a new rating that's urking the shit out of me so I'll tell you why in a form that's also helpful for parents: a movie ratings guide.

G - General Audiences All ages admitted.
No nudity, no sex, and no drugs, violence must be minimal, and there may be language that goes beyond polite conversations.

If you're like me, you have'nt seen a G movie is years. I try to avoid them sometimes, because most of them are unbarable to watch (i.e. Pokemon: The First FUCKING Movie). If you're going to have a kid and you're reading this, lemmie tell you, you will be going through a lot of G rated movies but you don't need to be to strict on PG movies.

PG - Parental Guidance Suggested Some material may be inappropriate for younger children.
There maybe some profanity and brief nudity, mild violence, or very mild drug references

PG movies are hard to avoid. Not all are "bad" for a little kid to see. So if your kid wants to see a PG movie, look it up. I'll admit, I like some PG movies and a lot of people do. PG used to be called M for Mature. Due to confusion between M and R, it was changed to GP and then PG. PG used to have "material may not be appropriate for pre-teens" under the rating so don't be suprised when you pick up Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different and see the 1 second nudety scene.


PG-13 - Parents Strongly Cautioned Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13 years old.
May contain very strong language, nudity (non-explicit), strong, mildly, bloody violence or mild drug content.

Little kids like to ask me my age and when I say 14 they ask, "What's it like being able to see PG-13 movies?" It's kinda like having more freedom a tiny bit (being able to go with out my parents). But it's not as cool as people under 13 would think. Why? Because their parents are so restrictive on the movies that thier kids watch that when they see a movie that's rated PG-13 they try to keep their kids as FAR away from the movie as possible. What these parents MUST know is that, in English, PG-13 means "if your kid is under 13 you should watch the movie with them". PG means Parental Guidence so there you go.



R - Restricted No persons under 17 without parent or adult guardian admitted.
May contain very strong/sexual language, mild explicit nudity, strong/gore violence or strong drug content.

Okay, for me the R rating is fantastic. Taking a step to watching R-rated movies feels really good. For me, an R-rated film has less censorship, which is fantastic. For me an R rating is a simbol of (mostly) unlimited quality. Mostly the R-rated comedys and not much the violent ones. It's just great. R is like my favorite letter. But, most parents go overboard in different ways with kids and R-rated movies. One way is when parents keep their kids away from an R-rated movie without doing any reasearch. Another way is when parents DO take thier kids to see an R-rated movie without doing research. Another way comes with a story I herd (and can't say if it's fact or not). I herd a Mom took her son and her son's friend to see Silent Hill. Now, of corse, the kids were scared shitless but the Mom would'nt let the two leave. A few days later, the same Mom started a letter writing campagin to restrict R-rated movies for people 18 and over ONLY. Which brings me to why I'm writing this thing. I read that the MPAA wants to make a new rating: Hard R. Hard R-rated movies are restricted to only those 18 or older, loosing the teen audience. That's a lot of fuckin' people not coming to a theater this summer. So bassicaly, they are going to split the R-rating in half to soft-R and hard-R. This I suppose is the after effect of the story I told ya. There are parents that basically swear to the rating system because it's less work for the parent to deside if a movie is okay or not for their kid to see. A good parent would look up the movie the kid wants to see and find out what kind of content is in the movie. But the more ratings, the simpler it is to ship a kid to the movies and be lazy.