Why have movies and TV gone in opposite directions vis-a-vis prudery vs. permissiveness?

[Sam_Lowry]

@Evil_Captor

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 the big reason, it’s that TV shows can be made for adults, but big movies have to be made for all audiences to make big money.

There used to be mid-budget movies made for adults. They’d have a smaller budget than the huge blockbusters, but they didn’t need to make as much money either, so they could be riskier and edgier in their material. But Hollywood figured it’s a better investment to just make the huge budget movies, so you don’t see those adult marketed movies as much anymore. Here’s a good (and depressing) article about it:

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, when Waters and Lynch were doing their most commercially successful work, it was possible to finance — either independently or via or the studio system — mid-budget films (anywhere from $5 million to $60 million) with an adult sensibility. But slowly, quietly, over roughly the decade and a half since the turn of the century, the paradigm shifted. Studios began to make fewer films, betting big on would-be blockbusters, operating under the assumption that large investments equal large returns. Movies that don’t fit into that box (thoughtful dramas, dark comedies, oddball thrillers, experimental efforts) were relegated to the indies, where freedom is greater, but resources are far more limited. As Mad Men’s Matthew Weiner put it, “Something happened that nobody can make a movie between $500,000 and $80 million. That can’t be possible.”

“You could make movies in the ten-to-20-million-dollar budget range,” she tells me, almost wistfully. “They didn’t have to be huge blockbusters. They could be more adult-oriented, they didn’t have to appeal to absolutely everyone in the world, and if it’s good work then the studio was happy with making a good profit, but it was a different model… And I think over the years, what happened is that things have gotten really polarized. To studios now, to make a million dollars isn’t a big deal — you have to make a billion dollars, right?” She laughs. “They have to appeal to every demographic in every part of the world, so to make a $20 million movie that makes $60 million, why put their money there?”

So even if, by some miracle, the film is produced, it still has to make its way in an increasingly competitive marketplace, often in the hands of independent distributors and art-house exhibitors who are nearly as risk-averse as their mainstream counterparts. Spend a bit of time considering the hoops they’d have to jump through, and it’s no wonder so many iconic filmmakers are bowing out; they’ve already got a legacy, so why bother with the extra aggravation?

There aren’t adult oriented movies being made by Hollywood, because Hollywood would rather make big budget movies now. This could change, like if there are a bunch of high profile flops, and tastes change regarding superhero movies, and something changes so people overseas stop going to Hollywood movies. But for right now, this is why there aren’t movies made just for adults.

@SlackerInc

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?

Parents were freaking out about Miley. Maybe not as much, but there were still complaints. Also it might make a difference since Janet Jackson was at the Super Bowl, which had 143 million worldwide viewers, while the 2013 Video Music Awards where Miley Cyrus twerked on Robin Thicke had 10.1 million viewers.

[Bill_Door]

I think some of it is that movie actors are more aware that the internet is forever. A brief flash of nudity in the 1980’s was over in moments in the theater, and most likely excised out of TV reruns, but now is around forever. Movie actors, both male and female, were probably more willing to work nude in the days when it was once and done, as opposed to now when it’s available to children and grandchildren not yet born. Do you think that Julie Andrews would have gone topless in SOB if she knew that stills of that will be in her obituary?

[bump]

@Exapno_Mapcase

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.

The Peanuts movie will be rated G, though.

That’s the thing- back in the day, you had a 3 rating system - G for children’s movies, R for grownup movies, and PG for everything in the middle.

So if your movie wasn’t a G, and wasn’t quite profane, violent or naked enough for an R, it got PG, even if that meant a small amount of shits or bare boobs made it through.

Once PG-13 came around, most of the movies with any profanity, nudity or violence at all rolled into that category, and you had a sort of identity crisis in the G/PG ranks.

So PG effectively became what had been G, and G got reduced to absolutely innocuous small children fare. Even the freaking Muppets movie with Jason Segel and Amy Adams was PG rated! So was “Frozen”!

I’d bet that PG-13 has encompassed a lot of what used to be PG, and a fair amount of what used to be the more timid R movies. I bet a LOT of older PG movies would be PG-13 if made today- stuff like Sixteen Candles, Spies Like Us, Fletch, etc…