What is "My Two Bits?"

My Two Bits is the official editorial page for the "editor" of Techtite.com. We also accept reader submissions, and will publish any editorials deemed well written and pertaining to a worthy current topic of interest.

---Is that Your SECOND Answer...?

---Phantom Menace : How Childish is CHILDISH?

---The Current State of Adventure Games, Part 1

---The Current State of Adventure Games, Part 2

---When Does Bending Rules Become Cheating?

---When I Was Your Age...

---2001: A DUH Odyssey!

---DEATH to pop-up window commercials!

---Off the "Daily Radar"...

Trivia : The first movie to ever use the "PG-13" rating was Red Dawn in 1984.

In case you wondered; yes, you can say the worst of one-syllable swear words in a PG-13 film...though only twice.

To date, many film patrons see no rhyme nor reason to the PG-13 rating, and parents are often left asking for clarifications as to the reason the movie is rated that way.

The most famous --and therefore most controversially rated-- PG-13 film would undoubtedly be "Titanic," which, regardless of it being watched by millions of junior high school girls, is a film containing strong language, strong subject matter, brief nudity, and sexual content. However, try telling that to your teenage daughter.

Next to Titanic, the biggest box office for a PG-13 film is Jurassic Park, which made 357 million in 1993.

Of the top 100 Box Office films of all time, 39 of them are rated PG-13. Only 22 are rated R, perhaps due to their more restrictive audiences.

Conversely, since the conception of the PG-13 rating in the mid-1980's, The Academy Awards have had only 4 PG-13 films win the coveted Best Picture Oscar.  10 R-rated films have won the same award in that time.

June/July, 2001's "Two Bits" are titled :

PG-13: an asset, or a curse?

Let me be honest: the PG-13 rating is starting to make less and less sense. While it was used intelligently at first, it seems to be used more and more as a mere marketing ploy. After all, how much different is PG ("Parental Guidance suggested") from PG-13 ("Parents Strongly Cautioned")...? At this point, I doubt anyone knows what the difference is between being cautioned and being "strongly" cautioned. Unfortunately, Hollywood seems equally clueless.

How did such a rating get started in the first place? Well, I'd say it started with a little 1980's film called Sheena. It raised a few eyebrows because of its excessive nudity, though even more so because it was rated PG! Tanya Roberts was probably as nude in this film as she ever was, in a number of R-rated films afterwards. However, because the nudity in Sheena was not deemed explicit or sleazy in any way (actually, all she was doing was bathing in an outdoors pond) --as well as the fact that the film was practically without any major violence, nor harsh language-- the film was given PG, not R. Mistake...? Some people wonder this to this very day.

Of course, there were ratings faux pas far worse than this. Take, for example, the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Some might say this film was scarier than most supposed R-rated "thrillers" at the time. Yet all the film's violence and nudity was deemed PG-rated by the MPAA. Apparently, even though there was explicit female nudity, it is shown briefly and not in a sensual way. Furthermore, the violence --including a scene when Donald Sutherland kills his very human-looking alien "clone" with a garden hoe-- was apparently deemed acceptable for PG audiences, just because the people injured are actually a sort of "alien plant," and not another human being per se. This is a highly controversial perspective, that allowed a lot of young kids to go to this "PG" thriller, with many nightmares as a result. I should know; I'm one of those kids, who saw this film at 10 years of age yet was still totally freaked out by it (the fact that its ending was just plain, hideously BAD, only makes the memory worse).

Somewhere along the way, it was deemed by one and all that a new movie rating would be developed. As a result, the PG-13 rating was formed. I know what you're asking, regardless of the aforementioned ratings blunders: Was this rating necessary? That depends on who you ask. PG rated movies were becoming harder and harder to discern exactly what was meant by "Parental Guidance." A simple movie like Bad News Bears was only rated PG for language. Meanwhile, a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark has moments of melting heads (or whatever) which might be a bit too graphic for some kids under 13. So, yes, "parents strongly cautioned" makes sense.

PG-13, at first, was even used quite intelligently. Hollywood began to realize that a film's best scene needn't be cut to get a PG rating; it would probably just get a PG-13 rating instead, without having to worry about the restrictive leap to "R." PG-13 films like Doc Hollywood could include a hilarious scene where the Doc meets his love interest coming nonchalantly out of a pool stark naked. It's a riotous scene --which wouldn't normally have been allowed in a mere PG film-- showing both the nonchalance of the female character, as well as the humorous speechlessness of the allegedly cool and collected "Doc." Other films similarly used the new rating to their advantage, in very sensible ways.

However, Hollywood is beginning to use PG-13 for all the wrong reasons. Films that were once obviously intended to be R-rated, mature films, are edited to appeal to the larger demographic of PG-13. The sales pitches seem aimed squarely at the junior high school pre-teens, who are given the illusion of being able to see a film that looks R-rated, under the guise of a PG-13 moniker. To make matters worse, most of these films would've made much more sense if they weren't watered down for a larger, younger theater audience. As a result, "Parents Strongly Cautioned" has been reduced to a mere marketing ploy; "Kids! If you're under 13, seeing this film might tick off your parents! Cool!"

In defense of Hollywood's current watering-down policies, all is not a bed of roses in the world of R-rated films. Even top-notch movies like Almost Famous and Enemy at the Gates did only so-so at the box office, regardless of high critical praise. On the other hand, a film intended to be R-rated, should not be cut just so the kids can see it. American Pie 2, an R-rated teen flick, did 87.6 million in just 2 weeks at the box office, showing an older audience's need for the occasional R-rated comedy, and not just a PG-13 snoozer. One can't help wonder how much of a bomb that film would have been, if the so-called American Pie had been made more "tasteful" --i.e., more boring-- just so the younger kiddies could see it.

Compare that R-rated film's success, to recent watered-down, PG-13 flops. Monkeybone had a 76 million budget, yet only made a little over 5 million in the U.S. theaters. Although Saving Silverman didn't do as poorly, it didn't quite break even, with a 22 million budget and 19 million U.S. gross. Schwarzenegger's latest action fest, The Sixth Day, cost 82 million to make, yet it's watered-down PG-13 simplicity led to a mere 34 million gross. Such PG-13 rating faux paus continue every month. 

PG-13 seems to be marketed as "the new R-rating, made just for kids!" However, as much as this adult is against his most-anticipated, upcoming movies being watered down, a good marketing strategy never hurt any film. Pearl Harbor --which should've been given the grittiness of an R-rated war film like Saving Private Ryan-- was watered down to PG-13 status, yet made roughly 153 million stateside. Similarly, the makers of the film Crazy/Beautiful hyped all across the internet about Kirsten Dunst's alleged "first nude scene," in what was originally intended as an R-rated teen drama. They cut that nude scene out for a PG-13 rating...yet teens still flocked to it in theaters, thinking (DUH!) that the nude scene wasn't truly cut. The result? A movie with a mere 10 million dollar budget, got an approximate gross of 68 million. So yes, marketing works.

Does that mean watering down R-rated films should still be practiced, provided you have a clever marketing campaign? Not really. Nobody can deny that these watered down films could have been far superior if offered in their more mature, less-childish, R-rated forms. After films like Saving Private Ryan showed WW2 in its true, violent form, how much of a slap in the face is it to see Pearl Harbor reduce one of the most historically significant air raids to bubble-gum simplicity? If upgraded to an R-rating, maybe so many critics (myself included) wouldn't have given the film a thumbs-down...regardless of how much a clever marketing campaign saved the film from becoming a possible disaster all its own.

Don't get me wrong; there's still a good market for PG-13 films, that always were intended to be "family fare." In other words, as long as the script was not watered down on purpose, a PG-rated film can still succeed, if the script was meant for a younger age bracket. Typical teenaged summer entertainment like Planet of the Apes and Jurassic Park III did very well at the box office. Likewise for poignant, PG-rated stories suitable for all ages, like Cast Away last year. With those pictures in mind, I guess I can make a closing argument by saying that, yes, Hollywood still can use the PG-13 rating to its advantage...provided that the rating is used intelligently, and not as some cheap sales gimmick. However, how often has Hollywood turned away from a cheap sales gimmick?

As always, I'm Techtite, and these are My Two Bits...