What exactly are we trying to achieve with movie ratings?

What exactly is the meaning of G, PG-13, R and NC-17? What are the main factors that make a movie any of the above? Based on what guidelines are movies given these ratings? And most importantly, who makes these decisions after all? Most of these questions were answered in Oscar nominated Director, Kirby Dick’s 2006 documentary called This Film Is Not Yet Rated. He went undercover to dig deep into this long-lost Hollywood secret. The shockingly ridiculous result – for decades, these films have been rated by a randomly selected group of parents (from LA), without any professional assistance or any set guidelines as to what sets a rated R movie apart from an NC-17 movie. Is this fair?

In the great article of The Dame in Komono, Leonard Leff has said, “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 (274)." Is that still true? Today ratings are given to restrict a certain body of audience from watching certain movies, forbidding our freedom of choice. Not only does this effect the producers marketability, but it also effects the true form of the movie it was supposed to be presented as - “movie critics argue more specifically that the system causes producers to choose less censor-prone stories or, when they do attempt them, to alter or cut scenes, shots, or frames, thus compromising not only the films in question but also the purpose of art,” (Leff, 282).

In the Aaron Harber show, the MPAA CEO, Dan Glickmen was asked questions to justify their whole process of “rating movies” but his answers weren’t very satisfactory. When asked, how they actually pick these “13-15 parents” to rate the movie, he responded that they make sure that these are parents, who know what they want their children to see and what they don’t. But in this advanced technology days is that possible? “The argument I often hear from MPAA-bashers is that it's silly to work so hard to keep teenagers from seeing nudity and non-explicit sex in a movie when they can get porn on the Internet,” said Scott in the article, Crosstalk: Does The MPAA Ratings Board Get A Bad Rap. How much of these ratings are going to stop these children from discovering the constant violence in the world and even the sexual aspects?

These film ratings have been considered to be immensely inconsistent. What are we trying to restrict our children from? And how do we know if the rating will stop them? “Hostel II is a good example of the frequent anti-MPAA argument that if you cut off a breast, it's rated R, but if you a kiss a breast, it's NC-17,” said Scott in Crosstalk: Does The MPAA Ratings Board Get A Bad Rap. If this is the difference between a rated R and NC-17 movie, then all they are trying to say is what famous director John Waters once said – Violence is fine, sex isn’t! Now the question is what are we worried about exposing our children to – violence or sex? Because clearly the ratings aren’t going to cut it!