When adapting the 2019 LGBTQ romantic novel Red, White & Royal Blue for the screen, Matthew Lopez was careful to circumvent an R-rating. The film has a handful of sex scenes that stop short of full-frontal nudity — there’s some bare butts and, naturally, shirtless men.
But it wasn’t enough. Red, White & Royal Blue was rated R, meaning people under 17 would need to be accompanied by a parent or guardian to see it.
Another recent film with LGBTQ leads, the French romantic drama Passages, received an even harsher NC-17 rating, which would restrict people under 18 from seeing the film at all, and also keep it from playing in certain theatres.
A system that discloses what’s in the movie would be better. You see an R-rated movie and that doesn’t really tell you anything about it. Is it R-rated because you see boobs one too many times? Or because someone says “Fuck” a few more times than is ‘acceptable’? Or is it because two men kiss? Or is it because 3/4 of the movie is graphic torture?
If there were (for example) icons for each category of “objectionable” thing, that were color coded green / yellow / red based on how many instances of that there are / how severe it is, it would let parents make actual informed decisions about what they want their kids watching (and additionally, let adults make informed decisions about what they want to watch).
If they exposed the specific reasons for each rating, that would expose how arbitrary it all is.
At a point, it is going to be arbitrary regardless.
How long do they pan over the boob? Do you see nipple? Is man chest worse? Is military violence different from gang violence? Are drugs used or glorified?
Every question you’d ask in regards to rating a new film is entirely subjective, depending on what you view as acceptable.
Honestly this is a big one that isn’t brought up enough. There’s a huge difference between the drug use in, say, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Requiem for a Dream.
They do that for TV shows and I think it works out pretty well. Knowing that it’s TV-MA because of language vs. TV-MA because of nudity or TV-MA because of violence is a big game changer for many parents.
They do expose it, they used to even show a green slide at the start of every movie with the specifics for the rating:
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/2018-10-10-rated-r-trailer-warning-edited-500x333.jpg
Even switching to the same rating system as US TV would be a big step up.
We have something like that in the Netherlands. It’s called “Kijkwijzer” (loosely translated as viewing guide) and has icons for sexual content, violence, drug/alcohol use, scary content, bullying/intimidation, etc. and age advisories.
PEGI already seems to do the system with showing what content there is