Sex, violence and cursing – Why movies need a new ratings system

In theaters Friday: Nebraska
New on Blu-ray: Frances Ha, Man of Steel, Prince Avalanche

Gun violence in the most popular Hollywood movies has tripled since 1985, and surprise, since last year, America’s blockbuster PG-13 films have contained more violence than their R-rated counterparts. This according to a study released in Pediatrics.

Wait, what? Well consider this:

The King’s Speech? Rated R because of a few words.

Iron Man 3? Terminator: Salvation? Packed with violence and mass carnage. Rated PG-13.

A PG-13 film can feature dozens, even hundreds of deaths. But show the wrong part of the human anatomy or even have two characters hold a candid discussion about sex, and the flick is slapped with an R faster than Jason Statham can blow away his next victim.

I’m not arguing that teens should be see a lot of nudity in films or hear a string of empty profanities for 90 minutes. But I am arguing that in all likelihood the normalization of gun violence is more dangerous than either of those two things, and the recent spate of mass shootings, and the overall increase in violent crime in the U.S. since 2012 is not contradicting that argument. The rise in violent PG-13 movies and the rise in actual violent crime may be a coincidence, and I’m not claiming to have all the answers, but the MPAA needs to change its ratings system to one that more accurately reflects a film’s content. If they do, they’ll be able to perform their mission of empowering parents more effectively, and also better movies will result.

Sure ratings are one thing and reality is another, and truthfully this would all be semantics—only parents should tell their children what to watch, not some ratings board, some would argue—except for one thing. This evolving ratings system is not merely some suggested window dressing. It’s actually shaping the modern cinematic experience for an entire generation. We can only watch the movies the industry makes, and Hollywood is making a lot of PG-13 movies engineered with very specific content. Violence sells.

But many PG-13 movies glamorize their violence by removing all the consequences—things like blood, guts and on-screen fatalities.

These inconvenient elements have to be erased in the editing room in order to avoid the dreaded R so that the all-powerful teen demographic can buy tickets and boost the studio’s bottom line. So American teens are spoon fed what amounts to a video game version of violence (see: Man of Steel) from heroes who are rewarded more the less they consider the consequences of their actions.

Some might argue that the perpetrators of such horrors as the Newtown or Aurora shootings knew full well the consequences of their actions and were carrying out their own evil wishes regardless. But that only serves to reveal the other massive problem with thoughtless movie violence. When a gun is seen only as a solution to a problem, not the cause of one, suddenly violence is not even violent anymore. It’s simply necessary. Or even worse, it becomes cool.

Look, I’m not a prude. I enjoy some violent movies: Casino Royal, Fight Club, The Dark Knight, Drive. But I happen to think those films handle their violence well, and some of them are R-rated anyway. Plus, I’m a grown-up, so there.

But what are the plots and images of some similar movies saying to our teenagers? And is it really a better message than having them witness a more realistic portrayal of death that a more mature R-rated movie might feature? Are these moral scissors creating fertile ground for content that is more healthy than actually feeling the weight of violence’s impact, and perhaps, discussing it? You know, thinking. I doubt that they are.

I’m not trying to turn Iron Man into MacBeth, but when fans defend a movie’s violence by trumpeting it as “just entertainment,” I have to cringe. No movies can be mindless entertainment. They were created by brains and they land in yours. They all have messages, and if you don’t believe that, you are willingly allowing yourself to become desensitized to whatever happens to be displayed in front of you.

And that’s the type of generation we are cultivating when violent acts are treated differently by the MPAA than the appearance of nudity or adult language, and when thoughtless gunplay is put on display as simply not that big of a deal. Not many filmmakers get that, and, when there is more violence in our PG-13 movies than in the R-rated ones, the MPAA obviously doesn’t either. It should.