Movie Ratings

Movie ratings in my opinion are not very useful. These days’ children can sneak into movies without a hitch. When it comes to biases I see how many could develop during this process. Even though it sounds to be very unprofessional and unorganized the “parents” that make these decisions could be biased. It was said that there are only 8 to 10 adults watching each movie and making the rating for the rest of us. To me that is not enough people to make a decision that big. Of course parents are going to make the ratings harder. It would be a lot more effective if you mix up the ages, not having all parents could help make things a bit fairer. Of course these biases are understandable because they are parents of the children who are watching these movies. Talking to some parents; they say they rely heavily on these ratings to see if they are ok for their children to watch.

Also, it is important to note that this was made to “The ratings system had two goals: to "encourage artistic expression by expanding creative freedom" and to insure that the freedom which encourages the artist remains responsible and sensitive to the standards of the larger society” but those are two conflicting ideas. You say you want to promote the artistic freedom but keep tabs on the directors who use that freedom. The rating system started out as an option not a law or a necessary thing but today it is almost always necessary to get a rating in order to make a profit at the box office. So in turn the ratings that the panels of parents give affect the makings of that movie. The higher the rating the less of an audience you will have due to age restrictions.

Another point I would like to make has to do with the strict ratings. They put a harsher rating on a movie with sex in it, but when violence is used over and over again it put at a lower rating. To me it is ridiculous, if you think one is damaging to children then why isn’t the other one as damaging. For example, at the end of the reading by Loff he explains that if you say, “I am going to screw you over” it makes it a PG-13 rating but if you say “I am going to screw you over the desk” it is R. By only adding two words it makes it a higher rating. Although I do see perhaps how they came to that conclusion, they both use the fowl language therefore should both be rated R. There are many biases and unclear rules to these ratings, and I believe that this moving rating process should be looked over again and some modifications should be made to make the rating as true as possible.