Family Advocate: Ratings Offers Parents Poor Guide to Movie Content
by Mary Rettig
November 7, 2005
(AgapePress) - - A spokesman for a pro-family group warns that parents should not be convinced of a movie's propriety for family viewing based solely on its rating. He says more and more moms and dads are experiencing a growing sense of "ratings creep," where what was once unacceptable for a certain movie rating is increasingly seen under that rating, until it becomes commonplace. Ed Vitagliano, director of research for the American Family Association (AFA), says these parents are not imagining things -- ratings creep is real. "I think parents are getting increasingly concerned that they can't trust ratings, and they never know what's coming on the television -- they have to sit and watch with their families with their finger on the remote," he notes.
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Ed Vitagliano |
The fact is, the current Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings system is no longer accurate, Vitagliano asserts. He says that system, once seen as a useful guide for parents, no longer provides an accurate measure of the amount of sexuality, violence, and profanity in today's movies. "I think that just adds to the unease of parents in our culture," the pro-family spokesman explains. "There's a lot of concern about the power of the culture and its ability to change and nullify what values their trying to instill in their children."
What parents could once expect to find only in R-rated movies is now seen regularly in movies with a "PG" or "PG-13" rating, Vitagliano points out. He says the MPAA is going to have to overhaul its ratings system sometime soon, "because it's not working. It's not giving parents the information they need."
In fact, the MPAA's system for classifying films according to maturity of content is not only failing parents, AFA's head of research contends, but also failing anyone who wants to go to the movies without being blindsided by offensive language and images or inappropriate subject matter. For those viewers "interested in ratings and not wanting to see a movie with particular kinds of content," he insists, "they're not getting enough information from the ratings system. So somehow the ratings are going to have to change or just be disbanded altogether."
The best solution, Vitagliano concludes, is to give the consumers more detailed information on movies. However, he says he doubts the MPAA will do that, because it will hamper Hollywood's ability to market movies with inappropriate content to kids.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
