I was pondering this as I listened to a recent episode of the Scriptnotes podcast, hosted by two Hollywood screenwriters.
The discussion, which focused particular attention on the PG-13 rating, was fascinating but also depressing. I’m not against movie ratings at all, but I’m also an idealist in that I wish filmmakers could just make the movie they want to make, let the MPAA put whatever rating they choose on it, and leave it at that with no bargaining or cuts (I know, dream on).
Anyway, one of the hosts said that the standards on protecting children from sex and cursing have gotten stricter in the past thirty years. They said that although it was counterintuitive to our impression that the culture has gotten more liberal, this impression is actually wrong. As examples, they noted the jiggling topless boobs in the movie Airplane, which only garnered it a PG (and given that this was barely over a decade after they scrapped the old Hays Code, that *is *kind of crazy when you think about it).
But I think their analysis is only partly correct. I would say it’s hard to dispute that TV *has *definitely gotten more liberal over the same time period. Never mind the HBO shows that are pretty much all “hard R”: what’s shown on regular network TV now is much racier than what was allowed in the 1980s. (Even the commercials, selling condoms and talking about six-hour erections in Viagra ads, would have been unthinkable back then.)
So what gives with that? Why aren’t the same forces who are getting stricter with movies doing so with TV, or at least holding the line? I suppose it’s more consistent in a way now: outside of pay cable, TV is more or less at a modern day PG-13 level now. So maybe the real question is: why back then did people think it was okay for kids to walk up to a movie theatre window and buy a ticket for a movie with nudity, F-bombs, etc., but at home the whole family (or even single adults for that matter) had to settle for TV that was very sanitized?
There is little difference in pay vs. basic cable except that the latter is funded by advertisers. I think part of it is that more companies don’t mind being associated with more adult programs. Certain stations like AMC and FX specialize in edgy.
The standards for giving movies ratings have shifted (and are also rather arbitrary). Some older movies if released today may rank a higher or lower rating. For a film like Airplane!, the PG-13 rating did not exist at that time (1984 it appears to have appeared), but it obviously wasn’t in the same category as current R films, so into PG it goes. That’s not the whole reason of course, but is probably a factor.
Maybe the Internet has something to do with it, in more ways than one. Parents and moral prudes have an easier time to find out what movies contain sexual material, and have a wider audience to complain to. Studios and ratings boards are more strict on nudity in fear of otherwise being labeled sexists, maybe.
The Internet also gives you access to all the boobs you’ll ever need. Nudity in movies just isn’t the draw it once was.
I would guess it’s the audience. The movie audience has skewed younger and the TV audience has skewed older. Adults stay home and watch cable, kids and teens go to the movies, as a general rule. So the censors put the heavy-duty blinders on the movies “to protect the kids” donchaknow, and the adults get their premium cable TV series with all the bloodshed and sex that adults like. Well, some adults.
This is something I hadn’t thought of, but it makes a lot of sense.
But there are still a couple elements of this, on each side, that puzzle me. One is language, which would seem like the thing one would have been least likely to predict thirty years ago would become stricter. Back then, PG movies could have plenty of cursing, if it wasn’t used in a really vulgar/sexual way. Now, a PG-13 movie gets *one *“fuck”, and it can’t be used to actually refer to sex. Screenwriters actually game out in their scripts where to use that one F-bomb! No joke. Therefore this also means you will almost never, outside of a few indie movies, get a movie with two or three “fucks” in it. It’s generally going to be one, or dozens.
But so then on the other side, I just think it’s weird that people like Miley Cyrus are upping the ante on how naked and sexual they can get (which is what we would have predicted decades ago the 21st century would be like; it’s the prudishness about movies that seems a surprise). The Janet Jackson “nipplegate” spurred millions of complaints to the FCC; why aren’t parents freaking out over Miley et al?
Also, unlike Janet, Miley Cyrus isn’t that well-endowed. She’s just barely larger than mosquito bite bumps. The smaller the breasts are, the less outrage there is.
Anyway, now that I’ve probably pissed nearly everybody off with those last two comments, I will say that it’s been over ten years since “nipplegate” and a lot’s happened since then. In terms of boundary-pushing nudity and outrageousness, Miley Cyrus is just doing the same stuff Lady Gaga was doing five years ago (in fact, you could even argue that Miley is only one step removed from becoming a Lady Gaga cover act). It’s basically a case of “been there, seen that.”
Hollywood is more business minded and less creative. They’ve discovered that you generally make more money by making something accessible to everyone than by making something titillating for the few.
TV is still experimenting with their new-found ability to produce quality programming. Potentially, they’ll discover the same thing as Hollywood. But I think TV shows better lend themselves to the idea of finding an audience and making stuff for that audience. And if a particular audience is very big, then you make lots of clone shows for it (e.g., CSI).
I think that’s basically it. Big tent pole pics cost hundreds of millions of dollars, so studios need them to appeal to as huge an audience as possible, They can’t afford to have Ma and Pa leave the kids at home, so they try and keep content unobjectable to as broad a segment of the population as they can.
Of course, smaller horror and comedy films don’t have this problem, they cost a fraction of big action sci-fi movies, and of course the gore and sex are as much a part of those genres appeal as they ever were.
TV shows only cost a fraction as much, and generally want to draw a smaller, but more devoted audience, especially cable TV shows.
Both T.V. and movies want to reach as wide an audience as possible.
Perhaps it’s because with T.V. there is no bouncer. Sure, the movie ratings system is a self-policing matter, but theaters are to varying degrees expected to enforce it. So, there actually is an obstacle to a 14 year old getting into a R-Rated movie. Thus, there is real potential for shrinking the audience.
With T.V., there’s a content warning before the program but there’s really nothing to stop anyone from watching. So, the harder material doesn’t actually reduce the viewership.
Blues Clues isn’t trying to appeal to senior citizens, the O’Reilly Factor isn’t trying to appeal to liberals, Games of Thrones isn’t trying to appeal to six year olds, Mysteries of Laura isn’t trying to appeal to frat guys, etc. The big networks occasionally try (and usually fail) and develop shows that will appeal to everyone, but generally, TV execs are OK developing shows that target one or two particular demographics. TV shows cost less and there are more of them, so they don’t need to pull in huge audiences to give good return on investment. They do require a relatively devoted audience, to tune in each week and keep the ratings up.
Movie studios, on the other hand, have made something of a science of making big blockbusters appeal to large swaths of the public. If you’re going to sink hundreds of millions into a single one-off product, you really need to pull in big crowds.
It’s more true of movies than in the recent past, so there’s a higher percentage of tentpoles getting made to maximize returns, but less true of TV, except the broadcast networks.
The pay tv channels always had the advantage on permissiveness of content, but as the channel count went up, some basic cable channels finally decided to risk the pushback and horn in on that action a few years ago in order to differentiate. The pushback never really materialized in any meaningful way.
Broadcast networks have edged things up a little, but that’s just a reflection of society as a whole. They still want to be the place advertisers go for a mass audience.
Basic cable channels aren’t subject to any more restrictions than pay cable, they’re really only subject to what the cable operators are willing to carry in a fat bundle.
Broadcast networks are constrained by FCC rules between 6:00am and 10:00pm, but also by what affiliates are willing to carry.
Numbers have been mentioned, but they need to be emphasized.
Pay cable audiences for any but a tiny handful of shows are minuscule. Most never top 5 million. Girls, notable for nudity, didn’t hit 1 million for its last finale.
These are niche shows, or niches within niches. Niche entertainment can always get away with more than mass entertainment no matter what the field.
The larger the audience, the more controversy. Game of Thrones is HBOs highest rated show and its last season finale got all of 8.1 million viewers. It’s also started to get far more criticism for nudity and rapes and violence than in earlier years.
As its ads used to say, it’s not TV, it’s HBO. Pay cable audience is pre-selected for wanting more adult fare. Very few basic cable shows have actually nudity and virtually no network shows ever do. They may be racier, i.e. more suggestive or freer to talk about once taboo subjects, but so is our entire society. Though their audiences have gotten smaller, often smaller than the top cable shows, they still are essentially free and open to everyone with a television.
By size, therefore, you have television > basic cable > movies > pay cable. Not surprisingly, the amount of nudity increases in that exact order.
Edgier than most? Most huge studio releases maybe, but not horror movies, independent films, straight to video/DVD releases, and the huge bulk of exploitation flicks that outnumber the blockbusters by multiple times.
Sites like Mr. Skin exist to show off movie nudity, with a never-ending mountain of examples, mainly from movies I’ve never heard of. I see there an article from the first week at the Toronto Film Festival about nudity in nine of the entries.
Maybe that’s your problem. You’re extrapolating from a tiny subset of all movies.
It may have something to do with the importance of the international market in Hollywood today. Some Hollywood movies make far more money overseas than they do in the US. While there are countries with a more relaxed attitude about sex and nudity in movies than the US, there are also countries where even showing a couple kissing is a pretty big deal. So if you’re going for a major international blockbuster, it may be good business to keep it pretty tame with regard to sexual content. (If you’re making a different kind of movie – ranging from prestigious Oscar-bait to cheap indie horror flicks – different considerations would apply.)
Although American shows are broadcast in other countries and some become very popular, it’s my impression that appealing to the foreign market is not a major consideration for most American TV shows. There have been shows that were big hits in the US that didn’t do well even in other English-speaking countries. I’ve heard that Seinfeld for instance was not especially popular in the UK.
If general ratings were correlated to box office, everything would be G. In fact G means kids movie, and is poison to the box office. The studios are very good at adding content to get the rating they want. I was watching Immortal Beloved about Beethoven, and was surprised by a totally gratuitous boob shot. The only reason for it was to get it an R rating to signal it was a movie for adults.
I remember reading that the 1996 version of Emma starring Gwyneth Paltrow came close to getting a G rating, which the producers did not want since their target audience wasn’t children. It was presumably too late to throw in some gratuitous boobage, which probably wouldn’t have gone over well with Jane Austen fans anyway, so the mildest possible expletive (“damn”) was dubbed into the scene where Harriet Smith is briefly menaced by vagabonds. This was apparently enough to push the movie into PG territory.
Only two movies have been rated G this year. A Disney animal documentary and a documentary about Legos. All Creatures Big And Small, a German cartoon, was in limited release but doesn’t show up on boxofficemojo.com.
