A Perspective Of Movie Ratings

Movie Ratings are never perfect and are never going to be; the MPAA tries its best to make everyone satisfied. If movies did not have ratings, they would be viewed very differently. People would not know what to expect when watching the movie and many people do not like that. A rating system was created by Valenti so that movies would be able to still play and the movie industry would not have to stop. Valenti was considered "the hero who saved the film industry and its artists from a terrible fate." (Aftermath 274) Without Valenti the directors/producers of movies would not be this successful as they are today; also the movie industry would be very poor. "The ratings system had to goals: '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.'" (274) This allowed producers to make a wide variety of films and also made writers think of a new variety of ideas. Valenti told a congressional committee that he did not want psychologists, psychiatrists, Ph. D's and novelists; he just wanted parents. (280) This might cause a bias on the ratings because some parents view things very differently and most professional people are more experienced with this (how to rate a movie) than just average parents. This bias could be undertandable by most people because they are parents ratings these movies so they have kids, and they should know what they are going to allow their kid to watch. So most people would be fine with parents rating these movies.

In the interview with Kirby Dick, Dick says that "the ratings are just based on ten random parents." This could cause a lot of bias as I explained before and this was also mentioned in the video with Dan Glickman. The interview in the video with Kirby Dick says that "violence is rated harsher than sex many movies." Dick says that "these are the kinds of movies that the studios like to make; it analyzes the audience and the studios want their films to get the least ratings." This could cause somewhat of a bias, because the studio can just remove some scenes to make the rating of the movie to be the lowest, so that more people can watch it. Dick also mentions the "homophobic bias" in movies. Just because a movie has gay scenes should not make it any more less valuable then a movie with a scene with a woman and man. In the interview with Dan Glickman, Aaron Harber says that "the critics and the parents have seen so many movies there reactions to movies is often are very different then the general public." This I think can cause a bias, because the people who have seen so many movies will not feel the effect of some action, crude language, and etc.; on the other hand people who have seen only 5-10 movies a year will be effected of the action, and language. Glickman says that "we also have senior raters, and other people that don't watch movies quite as often as the parents."

In conclusion I think that it is surprising how the MPAA rates movies. But I can also see that most people don't have problems with the ratings of movies; Glickman mentions that they send out a survey every year of the ratings of movies, and most of the people are satisfied.