By early fall, I was ready. My colleagues in the National Association of Theatre Owners joined with me in affirming our objective of creating a new and, at the time, revolutionary approach to how we would fulfill our obligation to the parents of America.
My first move was to abolish the old and decaying Hays Production Code. I did that immediately. Then on November 1, 1968, we announced the birth of the new voluntary film rating system of the motion picture industry, with three organizations, NATO, MPAA, and IFIDA, as its monitoring and guiding groups.
The initial design called for four rating categories:
G for General Audiences, all ages admitted;
M for mature audiences - parental guidance suggested, but all ages admitted;
R for Restricted, children under 16 would not be admitted without an accompanying parent or adult guardian; (later raised to under 17 years of age, (and varies in some jurisdictions));
X for no one under 17 admitted.
The rating system trademarked all the category symbols, except the X. Under the plan, anyone not submitting his or her film for rating could self apply the X or any other symbol or description, except those trademarked by the rating program.
Our original plan had been to use only three rating categories, ending with R. It was my view that parents ought to be able to accompany their children to any movie the parents choose, without the movie industry or the government or self-appointed groups interfering with their rights. But NATO urged the creation of an adults only category, fearful of possible legal redress under state or local law. I acquiesced in NATO's reasoning and the four category system, including the X rating, was installed.
So, the emergence of the voluntary rating system filled the vacuum provided by my dismantling of the Hays Production Code.
CHANGES IN THE RATING SYSTEM
We found early on that the M category (M meaning "Mature") was regarded by most parents as a sterner rating than the R category. To remedy this misconception, we changed the name from M to GP (meaning General audiences, Parental guidance suggested). A year later we revised the name to its current label, "PG: Parental Guidance Suggested."
On July 1, 1984, we made another adjustment. We split the PG category into two groupings, PG and PG-13. PG-13 meant a higher level of intensity than was to be found in a film rated PG. Over the past years, parents have approved of this amplifying revision in the rating system.
On September 27, 1990, we announced two more revisions.
First, we introduced brief explanations of why a particular film received its R rating. Since, in the opinion of the Ratings Board, R rated films contain adult material, we believed it would be useful to parents to know a little more about that film's content before they allowed their children to accompany them. Sometime later we began applying the explanations in the PG, PG-13 and NC-17 categories as well. These explanations are available to parents at the theater (by telephone or at the box office), in certain media reviews and listings, and also made available on the MPAA's World Wide Web Home Page on the Internet. This internet address is http://www.mpaa.org.
Second, we changed the name of the X category to NC-17:NO ONE 17 AND UNDER ADMITTED. The X rating over the years appeared to have taken on a surly meaning in the minds of many people, a meaning that was never intended when we created the system. Therefore, we chose to reaffirm the original intent of the design we installed on November 1, 1968, in which this "adults only" category explicitly describes a movie that most parents would want to have barred to viewing by their children. That was and is our goal, nothing more, nothing less.
We have now trademarked "NC-17:NO ONE 17 AND UNDER ADMITTED" so that this rating symbol and the legend can be used only by those who submit their films for rating.
Page Number:
1 (2) 3 4 5 6