A guy at work was just talking about “x-rated films”. It occurred to me that the Motion Picture Association eliminated the ‘X’ rating and replaced it with ‘NC-17’ nearly 30 years ago. Yet the term ‘x-rated’ is still synonymous with pornography. That’s almost like my grandparents saying ‘oly’ in the 1980’s when they were referring to margarine.
Oleo. When I was a little kid, my mother referred to it as oleo. I don’t think it was ever called “margarine” in my parents’ home. It gradually morphed into “butter,” which was the generic term for any spreadable fat placed on bread, pancakes, and corn on the cob.
I was a kid in grade school when I tasted “real” butter for the first time. I wanted to know why that wasn’t in our home permanently!
Several years ago, The Powers That Be determined that all margarine and their ilk were NOT healthy. I have never bought or used “oleo” since.
~VOW
The NC-17 rating isn’t exclusively for hardcore sex. In Kill Bill Volume I, which had virtually no sex in it at all, they had to monochrome the bloody massacre scene in the House of Blue Leaves in order to avoid that rating. So, even though “X-rated” is no longer an official designation, its use clearly indicates hard core sex, whereas NC-17 doesn’t necessarily mean that at all.
Same here. ‘Butter’ is still the term used in my household interchangeably when referring to any spreadable fat products while at the table. When discussing specific baking ingredients one might make a butter-margarine distinction, but otherwise it’s all ‘butter.’
Wanna give everyone a clue to your age?
Who remembers “M” rating? How about “GP”?
It’s all thanks to that little talking container! Get 'im! 
You can’t catch the container, it’s an expert in parkayour.
Outstanding!
I don’t remember “M” but I do remember “GP”. I remember when it changed to “PG” and I wondered why?
Wasn’t there an X-rated movie that won an Oscar? It wasn’t just for pornos.
I’m mid-50’s. I believe it was ‘Midnight Cowboy’ that got best picture and had an X rating. I suspect it’s in the porn industry’s interests to continue to voluntarily assume the ‘X’ rating mantle as a form of advertisement to set their product apart from other NC-17 (non-pornographic) films, even though both have the same official rating per the Motion Picture Association.
I don’t remember GP from when it was still used, but I know what it is because it was mentioned in a old (Jack Lord era) episode of Hawaii Five-O that I saw 20 years ago in re-runs. I remember that but I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.
Best Picture winner Midnight Cowboy was rated X during its initial run for (gasp!) homosexual themes. This was at a time when the DSM still listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. The movie’s rating was later changed to R for its subsequent theatrical re-releases and home video.
As I recall, Henry and June was the first NC-17 film. The rating was created to distinguish art films for mature audiences from porn, since the X rating had been used for both. The porn industry continues to revel in the X label (or XXX) even though it is not an official rating. In fact, most porn movies were probably not rated by the board and just advertised as X films as a marketing gimmick. (Deep Throat was the rare mainstream porn flick.)
Same here. We were strictly a margarine family but my mom always called it butter. I didn’t know there was a difference until I was much older.
You couldn’t believe it was not butter?
The MPAA added the NC-17 rating (as it had earlier added the PG-13 rating) but it did not eliminate the X rating.
G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 are ratings that the MPAA gives films after it has reviewed them. But films are allowed to rate themselves X without an MPAA review.
The references cited by Wikipedia appear to be correct; my cite was the data provided by MPAA’s own site, so I thought that would be authoritative.
I’ve never known any person who used the term “oleo”. Not my grandparents or anyone. It was only mentioned once in a while on TV or some such.
OTOH, it gets used to annoying degree in crossword puzzles. Esp. with trite clues like “Bread Spread”.
So I associate it more with bad crossword puzzle constructors rather than old folk.
GP and M I remember being in use at theaters I went to. So those are “old” things.
I remember M and GP (my dad used to joke that GP meant “good picture!”) I also remember G – does that ever get used anymore? Seems like even kids/family movies are all PG these days.