A PG-15 rating would serve the older-teen market

Here we go again: Another controversy over a movie’s rating, in this case “Mean Creek,” whose producers are protesting that the R rating is making it difficult to market the film to the teenagers who are most likely to be interested in its story of high school students on a river trip (“Profanity, Booze and It’s Good for You,” by Chris Lee, Aug. 23). It surprises me that after 36 years, filmmakers still have not challenged the flaw in the ratings system that has been the cause of most of the controversies surrounding it: the R rating’s requirement that people under 17 be accompanied by a parent or adult guardian for attendance.

In the 65 years before the establishment of the Motion Picture Assn. of America ratings system, the only time most people over 12 went to the movies with their parents was to go to drive-ins in the ‘50s and ‘60s, and during that period not only were 16- and 17-year-olds admitted to controversial foreign films in major cities, but the industry’s previous Production Code allowed them into “adult” films such as “Lolita” (1962), “The Balcony” (1963) and “The Pawnbroker” (1965).

Most R-rated films are perfectly acceptable for older teenagers, especially when the rating is applied because of the use of a word that is common in most teenagers’ vocabulary. So why this strange flaw in a system that initially worked quite well? It was an overreaction to the time of its implementation, the turbulent year of 1968.

Through the mid-’60s, conservatives had been shocked by what they perceived as the increasing excesses of youth culture -- the “Free Speech” and antiwar movements as well as “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.” The riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago were the last straw, undermining liberal support for the youth movement and fueling the Republican “revolution.” Though most of the young people involved were in their 20s, conservatives feared their actions would negatively influence younger kids, and suddenly the definition of “children” was unofficially extended to college undergraduates.

For the previous decade, filmmakers had been lobbying the Motion Picture Assn. of America for a ratings system like those in England and Scandinavia so they could make “adult” films of the type being done in those and other countries.

MPAA President Jack Valenti saw the idea as a way of putting his stamp on the industry, but though he has always trotted out his Democratic Party credentials when it was to his benefit, overlooked was the fact that he was a Southern Democrat, a group further to the right of most Republicans of the time; indeed, party defectors would become the nucleus of the Republican religious right.

Thus, while the rest of the ratings system was fairly reflective of the attitudes of the general American public of 1968, Valenti shortsightedly refused to differentiate between older and younger teenagers, and has continued to do so.

And yet, as with “Mean Creek,” many films that might be debatable for 12- to 14-year-olds are even more acceptable for today’s more mature 15- to 17-year-olds. Indeed, the MPAA ratings board acknowledged this problem in 1976 when it gave a qualified PG to “The Front.”

Though the film used the “F” word at a key moment, the board felt that in the context of the subject matter, the blacklist, the use was justified and the film should be seen by older teenagers because of its historical significance.

As Lee’s article points out, under the present system you cannot do a credible film aimed at older teenagers that they can easily, legitimately see in theaters -- though, ironically, there’s really nothing to prevent their seeing it later on cable or video. The PG-13, added in 1984 primarily to deal with liberals’ objections to violence, did nothing to resolve the restriction imposed by the R rating.

There should be a category acknowledging that 15- to 17-year-olds are more mature than younger teens. With Valenti retiring, maybe this issue will finally be seriously dealt with.

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Rick Mitchell is an editor, director and film historian. He lives in Los Angeles.