The Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) of the Philippines has a similar system to this for SPG (Strong Parental Guidance) TV shows, with TLKSHD for Themes, Language, Karahasan (Tagalog for "violence"), Sex, Horror, and Drugs.
However, I think the MTRCB needs to stop existing and go pound sand. Their decisions have been.. questionable.
Blasphemy?
The reason is that the MPAA is a private industry org created to prevent movies from being regulated in the US in such a way that they'd have to create an informative content system.
What would blasphemy include? There are a lot of religions, and if you include even the smaller ones, I expect a lot of blasphemy to pass trough unrated.
For example, if I remember correctly, some teachings consider things like reanimated skeletons to be blasphemous.
Also, aren't you going to add "(H) horror" to your list?
It’s the California cancer warning for everyone with a religious twist in their pantys.
"Telly Tubbies"? lol it's Teletubbies
LOL at blasphemy.
I feel the same, but the US literally outlaws it on TV.
Take a look at 31: https://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-68-words-you-cant-say-on-tv
Jesus Christ what a Goddamn backward shithole.
39 what a 31 backwards 53hole.
There's a good documentary called This Film Is Not Yet Rated and issues with the existing rating system. For example a gay sex scene gets an NC-17 but straight one would get an R rating. If memory serves, they exist to rate the movies to prevent government regulation and to protect the studios which they're rating.
"Midnight Cowboy" is still X-rated, even though there's nothing in it that you don't see in a show like 'Game Of Thrones.'
What a difference a few decades make.
Woah, TIL:
Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated film (equivalent of the current NC-17 rating) to win Best Picture and the only X-rated film ever to win an Academy Award.
In my opinion it's a great movie.
People still quote Hoffman's line "I'm walkin' here!"
yeah, that line is infamous, i even hear kids saying it. I guess it's good it got the recognition it deserved despite the rating.
Different times.
My opinion is that getting the X rating helped the movie. It came out after The Summer Of Love and just before Deep Throat and Behind The Green Door rolled into local theaters.
I can't think of any other mainstream movie of the time that got an X rating, so it really stood out.
Surely A Clockwork Orange released two years later is also rated X? But looks like nope, that was rated R which is pretty wild all things considered.
The movie was rated Xin the UK and Kubrick himself had it pulled after he found out that young hooligans were imitating the violence.
Iirc this was the one that showed the sexism of the MPAA too, like how a fully visible penis gets rated R (I think American Psycho was the example), but in another film where some of the top of a woman's pubic hair was showing in a scene, they were going to rate it NC-17 unless they removed it.
IIRC, they also rate women shown enjoying sex more strictly than they rate men shown enjoying sex. The whole thing is obviously made up of the totally subjective opinions of a small group of blatantly biased old dudes.
TV content ratings do this
That's where I got it. It's a lot more direct. But the categories make absolutely no sense.
D, for example, is sexually suggestive speech. L is language. Why are they separate? Kids who can hear shit, hell, fuck, and damn, should be able to hear about Daddy opening Mom's bra.
Or, sexual symbolism. You've got about 3 letters, in one rating that indicate varying degrees of sex, and no other objectionable content.
These systems vary by country and you'll find fault with most of them. They are more often than not rating systems that were introduced to appease a loud group in society, possibly the pious folks were one of those. Society's natural inclination "to think of the children!" makes these rating systems more about age appropriateness than about clearly labelled content. I can see the logic in your approach to the subject. Logic probably wasn't the driving force behind introducing labels such as "parental guidance" or "restricted."
I think it might be easier as a committee to be compelled to come up with an age of people, for whom the content is appropriate, and not argue over labels until they're blue in the face. Is vaping drug use? How much blood (if any) is required to be labelled violent? Etc. Can this committee agree with a majority vote that 12 year olds probably shouldn't see this? That's probably easier.
Alcohol, tobacco, smoking, street, and vaping are all legally regulated recreational drugs.
Violence would use the legal definition. Using physical force with the intent of harm towards someone else.
Family Guy would be rated LVNDB.
Looney Toons VD
Dexter's Lab V
Telly Tubbies ...
I think there are more grey areas in the classification. Just take recreational weed use, which is as legal as smoking cigarettes in some regions but illegal in others. Where does the drug classification start? It's not as clear to me as you seem to indicate.
Also, the content label doesn't tell the proprietor of a cinema who can come and see a movie. Do they have to look up a combination of letters to see if a 14yo can go see It? How about something like Trainspotting where there is violence, foul language, and lots of hard drug use. A VLD rating doesn't indicate anything. But for me the movie isn't R because for all the pearl clutching it may cause for some people it's a good promotional film to stay away from heroin.
You can run your system parallel to the existing one. And some of the streamers do that, I think. But for legal reasons, in the US as well as most of Europe, you cannot not give an age limit as well.
And an "A" for animal abuse.
But seriously, movie ratings are a joke and basically no one pays attention to them that I know.
I pay some attention to them. A movie called "Dirty Grandpa" I want to be R rated. Because, a PG rated "Dirty Grandpa" isn't going to be very dirty, I think.
But, Hail Mary Project can be rated anything.
I mean people are vaguely aware of them for that reason, I remember the first Deadpool being rated R was part of the marketing, but that's about it.
Most parents I know ignore them and get more detailed info to help them decide, and non parents just already watch whatever.
Unfortunately, making the animal distinction creates a lot of problems.
What if the show is focused on animal characters, like Looney Toons? Or, if someone shoots a bird for food?
The V label would apply to both situations.
Not really creating problems. It would mean people who forget to check https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ can have a heads up. Having more info is not a bad thing. People can then figure out if it's looney tunes or if it's pet abuse. I didn't see how you can on one hand argue for more clear info in ratings and then argue against it.
Because this could balloon quickly into including all letters of the alphabet. Does it pass the Bechtel Test?Does it include blood, but not violence? I'm not arguing for more information, but enough information to know what's included.
Physical force against people, or animals, with the intent of harm, is the legal definition of violence.
If someone purposefully kills a dog, they've committed violence.
Can you make a case that animal and human violence should be separate categories?
Yes I can make the case. My case: doesthedogdie exists. I know a lot of people who get more upset about seeing an animal hurt than human on human violence.
Who gets to arbitrarily decide which is important? So what if it balloons? Again, the more info the better imo.
Doesthedogdie literally has about 100 different categories (more than even the letters of the alphabet). Analysis Paralysis is a thing. That's why we don't want to balloon it. It's also why movies don't target specific ages on their ratings already, but a range of ages. Too many options means less familiarity with the system and information overload.
I know a lot of people who are more upset by knives than guns. You can't describe every little detail in a film, because someone could get upset about it. The ratings are a guide for parents on what's appropriate for their kids.
Depends what ratings are intended to do - if they are just to be informative for potential viewers then the kind of system you propose sounds good.
But, if the main purpose is to legally restrict access based on age, such ratings wouldn't really do the job.
Plus, of course, there's quite a range within each category - language could mean something as innocuous as "bum", or something as deeply offensive as "Belgium" or "Barbara Streisand".
I suppose you could have age ratings for each subcategory - L18, V12, N0, S0, D15, but it'd start to get complicated pretty fast. Plus, presumably, whatever the highest of those ratings was would still be the overall rating. At which point we're back where we started.
VNS-17
Descrbes what the film contains and a recommended age.
Yeah, true. I think I maybe misunderstood your OP - I thought you were looking to replace ages ratings entirely, as opposed to combining them with something more informative. Something like that could be useful, for sure.
I'd guess the idea is that as an adult you can handle anything you see in a movie.
For instance, I saw the movie where 99% of humanity has died, and people are losing their minds when the hero has to put down a doggie.
Legend?
spoiler
___I didn't want to use the spoiler option
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