Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Eighth Grade’s R rating deters actual 8th-graders from seeing it. What a shame.

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Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 07-19-2018, 10:07 AM:

https://www.vox.com/summer-movies/2018/7/18/17574516/eighth-grade-r-rating-mpaa-teen-movies

The MPAA ratings system and its very specific hang-ups are keeping teens away from the movies they need most.

By Charles Bramesco Jul 18, 2018, 9:00am EDT

Bo Burnham’s new coming-of-age comedy Eighth Grade, starring Elsie Fisher, is a frank account of being 13 years old — and 13-year-olds can’t see it without a parent’s permission.

You’ve got to be in at least 11th grade if you want to buy a ticket to Eighth Grade.

Bo Burnham’s new coming-of-age comedy began its theatrical run this past weekend, but prospective moviegoers in the same age bracket as lovably awkward protagonist Kayla (Elsie Fisher) were plum out of luck: In their infinite and highly arbitrary wisdom, the Motion Picture Association of America saw fit to brand the film with an R rating, barring all viewers under 17 years old unaccompanied by a parent or an adult guardian.

Their rationale: a bit of salty language involving four-letter words and coarse slang terms, a situation more accurately described as sexually charged than sexual, and one painful, hilarious scene in which our hero does some intrepid YouTube searching on blow job technique. Even Common Sense Media, the organization whose entire mission is sniffing out objectionable content in family-geared entertainment, called the film “a good (if slightly cringeworthy) movie to watch with your teen.” Regardless, for this, the scarlet R.

With Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham gives the selfie generation the portrait it deserves

The frustrating, paradoxical notion that the average teen cannot handle a frank account of being 13 years old until four years after the fact is nothing new, however. It’s just the latest reminder of how the MPAA’s highly specific hang-ups can restrict some spheres of film while taking a laissez-faire attitude to others. And it’s the youngest class of ticket-buyers who are paying for it — or, rather, being forbidden from paying for it.

The MPAA has a tendency to get skittish around adolescent subject matter

The sweet 2016 teen comedy The Edge of Seventeen received an R rating for its handful of F-bombs and scenes of underage drinking.

Eighth Grade is far from the first high school-set film slapped with a prohibitive rating on questionable grounds, despite being leagues removed from the full-bore raunch of a Superbad or a Blockers. There was nary a boob to be seen in 2016’s Hailee Steinfeld vehicle The Edge of Seventeen, but a handful of F-bombs, some scenes of underage drinking, and a recitation of one particularly frank sext were enough to earn the dreaded R rating. The same fate awaited 2014’s Boyhood, an even tamer film dinged for a bit of sailor talk, some mild birds-and-bees conversations, and scattered underage drinking and cannabis smoking.

Then there’s the curious case of the 2012 screen adaptation of Stephen Chbosky’s bildungsroman novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower: The MPAA initially went for the R, for language as well as a nonjudgmental depiction of acid use and the scandalizing sight of Emma Watson clad in a white bra for a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The producers appealed the rating, and ultimately got it bumped down to a PG-13 for “mature thematic material, drug and alcohol use, sexual content including references, and a fight — all involving teens.”

In all these instances, the material in question is handled with sensitivity and delicacy befitting films unabashed about their intent to speak directly to youth audiences. Aside from a bit of uncomfortable shifting in their seat, any high school sophomore could safely watch them alongside Mom and Dad.

This raises the question of following the law’s letter versus its spirit, whether the undefinable quality of a film supersedes the superficial criteria placed on it. Pursuing that line of inquiry leads to some sticky deliberations in the Escher-style labyrinth that is the MPAA’s standard operating practice.

Teen movies’ R problem is symptomatic of deeper issues with the film rating system

The MPAA adheres to an arcane, not fully known set of rules occasionally verging on the ridiculous. The classic example: One utterance of “fuck” will slide in a PG-13 release, but a second places it firmly in R territory. (Though the MPAA’s official Classification and Rating Rules allow for extenuating circumstances based on the context of the dialogue, pending a two-thirds majority vote. One such beneficiary of this policy: Adventures in Babysitting.)

In a recent interview with Julie Taymor and Evan Rachel Wood about their time working on 2007’s Across the Universe, they mentioned that they could get away with one exposed breast and manage a PG-13, but revealing a complete pair is apparently grown-up business and accordingly would’ve gotten them an R. Because the MPAA is not required to specify for the public precisely how it arrives at its conclusions, viewers are often left wondering how Boyhood ends up with the same classification as Natural Born Killers.

That Oliver Stone’s hallucinogenic bloodbath got downgraded from an initial rating of NC-17 with the excising of four minutes of footage is a testament to the MPAA’s amenability where violence is concerned. The American fetish for barbarism has seeped into the national film culture with a quiet insidiousness, creating a governing body that writes off mass destruction as no biggie while going for the fainting couch at the sight of a second nipple.

A recent review of the PG-13 blockbuster Skyscraper pointed out that it contains exponentially more death and destruction than its clear antecedent Die Hard, but the Christmastime classic landed an R rating due to its bloodshed. The new Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson tentpole includes suicide bombings, civilians mowed down by gunfire, and weeping children facing down the business end of a firearm — but hide the hemoglobin, keep the tone light, and you’re a PG-13 film in good standing.

Contrast that with the MPAA’s positively puritanical attitudes toward sexuality at the movies, a subject thoroughly explored in the 2006 investigative documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Sex scenes are picked through with a fine-toothed comb, any detail — a wiping of the chin, a moan too emphatically acted, any maneuver beyond the most vanilla standards — sufficient to bump a film up to the R zone and limit its reach.

The deliberators at the MPAA have also demonstrated clear biases with regard to female and queer pleasure. The Michelle Williams-Ryan Gosling romance Blue Valentine ended up the topic of controversy back in 2010 when the MPAA broke out the seldom-used pornographic NC-17 rating on account of one cunnilingus scene. A strong counterargument from Gosling and, uh, another guy proved that the board rules more punitively when women seem to be enjoying themselves, and the rating was overturned.

All the same, it was a small win, and the underlying issue persists today. A little sexual curiosity and experimentation is a perfectly normal part of the adolescent experience. Grievous bodily harm, one hopes, is not.

It’s time for a commonsense movie classification policy

Kayla and her dad (Josh Hamilton) share a tender, awkward moment in Eighth Grade.

All things said, we’ve come pretty far. Our current ratings system is a vast improvement over the blanket censorship of the Hays Code that the MPAA’s ratings were created to replace. Long gone are the days when married couples were mandated to sleep in separate beds, left in the past along with the pre-PG-13 era in which the glue-huffing, dummy-blowing Airplane! squeaked through with a PG.

How the Catholic Church censored the Golden Age of Hollywood
But the MPAA is still a highly imperfect organization, and because it’s not a governmental agency, it’s difficult for regular folks to lobby for improvements. (Though that much is probably for the best; a state-operated body of cultural censorship, under this or any administration, would be a step or five backward.)

So let this be a call for commonsense policy on the hot-button issue of what sophomores are permitted to watch after school. In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of hardcore pornography, “I know it when I see it.” The instantly immortal quote was his shorthand argument that though he may not be able to explain why, it’s clear to anyone who watches Louis Malle’s The Lovers that it’s more than common smut.

Likewise, though films like Eighth Grade may contain mature elements, their execution renders them more palatable for a younger class of viewers than an R rating would suggest. Intangible qualities like a sense of gentle empathy, candid humor, and tasteful camerawork mark the invisible line between trauma fuel and a safe vicarious taste of early adulthood. The elastic clause that safely cleared a way to theaters for Adventures in Babysitting needs a workout.

A bit of cussing and sex chatter is a standard, arguably even essential component of most people’s teenage years, and many kids first start to wrap their heads around the concept via the remove of movies and TV. In no small way, that’s the moral of such stories erring on the side of the developmentally instructive: It’s cool that you can’t stop thinking about sex, don’t worry that you’re so awkward and sweaty, the instinct to test your limits is healthy.

Barring Eighth Grade’s Kayla from her contemporary real-world works-in-progress cuts them off from an emotional resource that, for some, can be truly precious. When she gets an eyeful of a smiley-faced instructor demonstrating her methods on a dildo, she reacts with horror, just as one of her fellow 13-year-olds might. It’s what the film does with that reaction that sets it apart from the glut of R-rated releases. Both the script and the camera treat Kayla’s discomfort as completely reasonable, and she almost comes off a little brave for asserting herself and growing at her own pace.

It doesn’t take a lot of emotional intelligence to see that this would be a positive example for anyone at the same juncture in life. Those hindered from joining Kayla on her stumbling journey through puberty are precisely the viewers who would benefit the most. In other words, won’t somebody please think of the children?

Posted by Mike Croaro (Member # 3123) on 07-19-2018, 10:27 AM:

I notice from time to time, there are art house films that star kids or teenagers, but the films themselves are actually aimed at an older audience. This might be another one of those cases. I do look forward to seeing it when it opens.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-19-2018, 11:15 AM:

Even if it is meant for 8th grade age kids to see there's little reason to worry. While they might have a difficult time watching the movie in theaters those kids can be thankful they weren't that age 30 years ago back when it took a year or more for a movie to show up on home video (to rent in low-res VHS). The Internet wasn't widely available then, nor was pirated content of movies playing in theaters. Today eighth grade kids can fire up their parents' Kodi Boxes, Fire Sticks or whatever form of piracy streaming they're using. Even if the middle school kids are going to watch the show at home using a more legit/legal outlet like Netflix, Amazon, etc they'll only have to wait just a couple or so months. The only hazard really is forgetting the movie existed, losing track of it in the tide of other videos and TV shows in the queue.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-19-2018, 02:47 PM:

A couple of thoughts:

Any eighth grader who wants to see the movie will be able to see it, thanks to parents giving permission...we had scads of eighth graders dropped off (or brought to) "Deadpool 2."

Secondly, whether the rating system rules are "arcane" or not, the film-makers know the rules. There are ways to make a movie without getting an R rating. You can get away with all kinds of cursing and still get a PG-13 -- just avoid too many "F" bombs. The "blow job instructional videos" mentioned in the article could have been softened enough to get a PG-13 too, I'd bet.

I suppose in a few years you'll be able to get away with more than one "F" bomb and get a PG-13, since that word is getting more and more mainstreamed these days. It's becoming the new "like." Instead of somebody saying "I was like really drunk!" now they're saying "I was fucking bombed out of my skull!"

Even TBS, the TV channel, is starting to allow PG-13 type cursing on their original shows these days.

Civil language is doomed, unfortunately. And so is responsible parenting, when it comes to articles like this one.

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 07-19-2018, 03:04 PM:

You are able to use F bomb in PG13 films once and only once. There was a joke about it in the feature Get Shorty. They made a point to point out they used it once.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 07-19-2018, 04:46 PM:

Well, there aren't really "rules" as the ratings board is made up of parents who can do what they want. There was the infamous "3 breast" rule for years.
There is guidance given to the CRA from the MPAA, but they apparently operate more from tradition than actual rules. It's all fluid.
Here's what the ratings are, as taken from their own web page:

quote:
Today’s voluntary movie rating system is aimed at giving parents the information they need to decide whether a film is appropriate for their family.

The current rating system emerged in 1968, when MPAA chairman Jack Valenti replaced the earlier moral censorship guidelines, known as the Hays Code, with a revolutionary new parent-focused rating system. While the Hays Code authorized a movie for distribution based on whether it was deemed “moral” according to an exhaustive list of rules, the current movie rating system was born out of the simple notion that the movie industry wouldn’t approve or disapprove what audiences should see, but instead would focus on “freeing the screen” and educating parents to help them make movie-going decisions for their family. The current Classification & Ratings Administration (CARA), with a rating board made up of an independent group of parents, gives advance cautionary warnings to families about a movie’s content. CARA’s mission is to afford parents the tools they need to make informed decisions about what their children watch.

Film Ratings Website

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-19-2018, 05:38 PM:

You can often get away with more than one F bomb too -- my favorite example is "Tootsie" where Bill Murray says "Fuck you" to Dustin Hoffman at least twice and maybe 3 times, and that is a PG movie.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 07-19-2018, 05:39 PM:

The fact that the 17-and-under crowd can view this film "accompanied by a parent or an adult guardian" tells me the ratings system is working adequately. Wouldn't it be a lot healthier if more parents would do just this, and actually like converse with their kids about what they see? What would be so weird about that? Vox: thumbs down.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-19-2018, 06:03 PM:

I think it is the age of 17 that's outdated. I think it should be 15. That way, when most kids enter high school they could attend R-rated movies.

Since each theater is free to apply the rating system the way they see fit, for many years we've allowed people who are "in high school" into R-rated movies. Most of them are 15 or 16 anyway when they are freshmen, so it's pretty close -- and that way, a whole group of kids is eligible to get in at one time, vs. a bunch of kids deciding not to go because so-and-so isn't old enough yet. This works for us, and would be easy for any size theater to implement -- just require a high-school ID card and/or a drivers license.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 07-19-2018, 06:28 PM:

In the modern world the question has to be asked if the MPAA ratings are actually doing anything to protect children. In fact, I question whether they are doing anything but creating an adversarial relationship between theatres and patrons.

The reality is blocking a teen from watching an R rated movie at the theatre doesn't really do anything when the kid can literally whip out their phone and watch something worse at a moment's notice. I'm not opposed to continuing to have movie be rated, I'm just not sure strict enforcement in theatres does much good in the modern world.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 07-19-2018, 06:35 PM:

On the Vox thumbs down, I thought it was interesting that the article says "Even Common Sense Media, the organization whose entire mission is sniffing out objectionable content in family-geared entertainment, called the film “a good (if slightly cringeworthy) movie to watch with your teen.”". This, of course, is exactly what the R rating does, it encourages parents to watch the film with their teenagers.

I also love this line: "The American fetish for barbarism has seeped into the national film culture with a quiet insidiousness, creating a governing body that writes off mass destruction as no biggie while going for the fainting couch at the sight of a second nipple." Haven't heard "fainting couch" in a while!

Harold

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 07-19-2018, 07:06 PM:

Good points, Harold. Mindlessly enjoying countless deaths is no virtue, and I challenge my kids on the games they play for this reason as well.

I'm not saying the MPAA is amazing. They're not. But, as a parent, R-rated content gets my attention and sure scrutiny, which is helpful on some level.

By the way, Vox's writer completely missed the F-bombs in Die Hard. That's R for more than violence, which is precisely why I haven't shown it to my family.

From Junior High on, my kids have been subjected to "R-rated content" every day at public school. Civil discourse? No, many kids in this generation are too barbaric to know what that is.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-19-2018, 10:44 PM:

Is the audience for this really eighth-grade students? I saw it at a festival screening that was packed with people in their twenties and early thirties. I didn't particularly care for it, but it was well-received by most of the crowd.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 07-19-2018, 11:43 PM:

I don't think it's aimed at current 8th graders, more at former 8th graders. I saw prescreening in Denver. The crowd (including me) thought it was pretty good. I thought Kayla was great! She seemed very natural in the role. I've heard a few interviews with write/director Bo Burnham. I understand it's his first feature. Pretty impressive!

Harold

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 07-20-2018, 02:29 PM:

Wow! I had no idea about this. I wondered what happened to Bo Burnham. This makes me happy. I hope it's coming soon to a theater near me.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-20-2018, 06:19 PM:

The only reason there ARE ratings is to give parents an idea about the movie's content. It's not designed to "keep people out." It's designed to encourage parents to do actual parenting, which so many these days sadly don't.

The hard part of course is where to draw the line. Applying one yardstick to all parenting standards is pretty fraught with problems.

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 07-26-2018, 01:40 AM:

This reminds me of "Woodstock" where young people who attended couldn't see the movie. It was also rated "R" because of MF-bombs and a scene where a couple takes off their clothes and lays down in the grass. It was actually quite tame.

I think the ratings system works, but they do occasionally make mistakes. I haven't seen this film yet, but it seems like they made a mistake. I think it's ridiculous that superhero movies with thousands of violent deaths get a PG or PG-13, but throw in a few vulgarities or a sex reference and the Board panics, except for certain filmmakers.

Was it Ron Howard's Parenthood (PG-13) that had the scene in the car where Mary Steenburgen is talking about oral sex? I think they let that slide just because it was Ron Howard.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 07-26-2018, 10:51 AM:

It did have that scene, but it was so mild there is no way it would’ve ever warranted an R.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-26-2018, 04:28 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
The only reason there ARE ratings is to give parents an idea about the movie's content. It's not designed to "keep people out." It's designed to encourage parents to do actual parenting, which so many these days sadly don't.

Is this to assume people who were raising kids 20, 30 or more years ago were by and large being "responsible parents?" Times back then were not exactly idyllic. During the 1970's-80's (when I was growing up) crime rates in the United States were far worse than current rates today. There was no shortage of broken homes, absentee parents with "latch key kids" and hazardous living situations.

If there is one thing I can criticize about the parenting style of people now raising children it's that many of them are too involved with their kids. Growing up, my brother and I had lots of independence. So did our friends. Our parents weren't shadowing us at every baseball practice or Boy Scouts meeting. They weren't trying to micro-manage every little thing. We often walked or rode our bikes to school and after-school activities alone. Today that sort of practice is now being called "free range parenting." One couple (in Philadelphia I think) got arrested due to neighbors freaking out about kids walking to the park by themselves.

Our popular culture routinely insults the Millennials generation, as if people in the Generation X and Baby Boom age groups don't have their own share of disgraceful members. And if these Millennial-age parents are screwed up in the head it's people in my age group and older who raised them to be that way.

My sympathies go out to parents these days, and to people who want to be parents. It's a difficult job and it's expensive as hell. If I was currently raising a child the issue of R-rated movies wouldn't be at the top of my concerns. It's easy to not take a teen to see an R-rated movie at a commercial theater. It's far more difficult to control what kids are being exposed to elsewhere. Even if you're doing everything perfectly all sorts of external bad influences can undermine that work.

40 years ago it was easier for parents to shelter children from objectionable movies, music, etc. There was far fewer outlets of that material. Now there are more ways to access that content and do so immediately without driving to a store or theater. In the past parents could bury their heads in the sand, putting off having "the talk" with their kids. Today parents are forced more to confront the issue. Something good must be happening in that regard. The teen pregnancy rate in the US is a mere third of what it was in 1990.

Posted by William Kucharski (Member # 7246) on 08-10-2018, 09:47 PM:

If the film had really been intend for eighth graders, it would be trivial to edit it slightly to achieve a desired rating.

Instead, they prefer to go for the controversial as a generator of publicity such as the original article mentioned here. Then the filmmakers can tut-tut and wave their fingers and complain about the MPAA all while getting free publicity and, ironically, getting eighth graders to see a movie they probably had no real interest in seeing.

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 09-06-2018, 11:48 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
It's not designed to "keep people out." It's designed to encourage parents to do actual parenting, which so many these days sadly don't.

Unfortunately all the attention paid to the ratings following Columbine resulted in an environment where carding people and denying entry was really what ratings enforcement looked like. The threats of fines to theatre managers and cashiers did not help, nor did the regular "mystery shopper" reports on theatre compliance.

Although it might be different in some parts of the country, I feel like the pendulum has now swung the other way where providing information is the theatre's primary role. Aside from very young kids, I feel it's become more or less pointless to make ratings enforcement part of the ticket buying process.

That being said, I still bothers me to see people taking young kids to R rated movies, especially those with extreme violence or sexual violence. I wish I could deny tickets in those situations without having to worry about potential litigation. I wouldn't mind my company starting a policy of no children under 6 after 6 in R rated movies.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-07-2018, 11:10 AM:

Theater operators are in a catch-22 situation with ratings enforcement. I don't think the theater staff and management should have any more obligation or responsibility other than just checking the IDs of minors and ejecting them from the theater if they sneak from one movie to another. It's not the staff's job to function as baby-sitters or part-time parents.

It's also not the staff's job to prevent an adult from bringing their child into a theater to watch an R-rated slasher movie. If other parents have a problem with that then they need to confront the irresponsible parent, not bitch at theater staff for "allowing it." The theater only has the obligation to step in if a parent is trying to bring a kid into a NC-17 rated show.

Even if a theater did have a strict policy to stop parents from bringing their young kids into R-rated movies what good would that policy really do other than fuel arguments? The same R-rated movie will be available to watch at home in under 3 months. The same parents foolishly exposing their kids to adult content in a commercial movie theater will no doubt be doing the same thing far more often in the home. It's impossible to police that situation.

The very short window between theatrical and home releases of movies, along with the ease of access to R-rated content in the home, might be why Eighth Grade was made the way it was made. This wasn't the kind of movie that was going to be booked onto thousands of commercial screens. Most people will only be able to see this movie on a TV screen at home. The choice is a judgment call. To be honest a great deal of 8th grade-age kids don't exactly have G-rated vocabularies when the adults aren't around.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-07-2018, 08:46 PM:

quote:
If other parents have a problem with that then they need to confront the irresponsible parent,

Uh, no, they need to keep their mouth shut and mind their own f-ing business. No sense getting into a fistfight if some mom gets irritated at being told "how to parent" by some stranger.

The only time a person should get involved with someone else's kids is if the kids are being put in a dangerous or illegal situation, and in that case it's still better to shut up and call the appropriate authority rather than taking the law into one's own hands.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-08-2018, 01:17 AM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
Uh, no, they need to keep their mouth shut and mind their own f-ing business. No sense getting into a fistfight if some mom gets irritated at being told "how to parent" by some stranger.

Certainly anyone should mind their own business when it comes to what other parents are doing with their own children (within legal reason of course). But assholes don't operate like that. They'll see some adult bringing their 6-year old kid with them to see a slasher movie because the adult is too damned cheap to hire a babysitter. The asshole has to satisfy his feelings of anger on someone. But the asshole is too much of a cowardly bitch to confront the irresponsible parent directly. So what does he do? He takes his anger out on a young theater staffer who, by rule, has zero right to talk back to said asshole. The young staffers get an ass-chewing for something that was not remotely their fault.

Yeah, we don't want fist fights in the theater lobby. But I would have more respect for some jerk getting on to an irresponsible parent and a fist fight results from it. There's no way I could ever have any respect for someone taking it out on an undeserving third party, such as targeting a popcorn jockey who isn't getting paid nearly enough to put up with that kind of crap.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 09-08-2018, 08:06 AM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
The theater only has the obligation to step in if a parent is trying to bring a kid into a NC-17 rated show.

They may have a policy, they have no obligation.