Are you for or against lowering the age to seeing a rated "R" movie?

Changing the age requirement for admittance to “R” won’t help as much as more narrowly defining “PG-13”.

I think it’s mostly appropriate right where it is now. I wouldn’t lower it any further.

I’m for lowering to 16yrs old, the age when kids are seniors in high school. It’s boggling to me kids play horribly violent video games alongside their parents yet aren’t allowed to see less than that graphic action in movie theaters. An example is the teen daughter of my partner who regularly plays the latest gory battle video games and yet her mother threw a fit when I exposed her to “Sweeny Todd” (rated R).

I wouldn’t really care if they lowered it. Go ahead, let kids watch people getting beheaded, guts spilling out, and let them see a nice pair of tits. imo there’s worse shit in the news.

I like the rating system, but hate the way it is applied.
We need an R rating. We just need to use it only on movies that need it.

No, I think 17 is a good age

What theater/video store actually enforces these rating rules? I saw countless rated “R” movies in my younger days before I was old enough to “legally”.

Let the parents decide. They know better what their kids can and cannot handle better than any ratings board.

I worked at a movie theater for three years. I sold tickets and tore tickets for the first year. I never checked. I didn’t even know what the rating was on 95% of the movies.

I can’t even think of something less important to be for or against. Who cares.
Just because a film is rated R doesn’t mean kids don’t manage to sneak in or just rent it at a video store. That law doesn’t seem to really even be enforced.

Actually I’m neutral,but I prefer it should be more than 15 years old. Though in my country this can be banned to the end of its root(no “R” rated allowed for all ages).

I think it’s appropriate where it’s at.

The kids that want to sneak in will either continue to do so if they don’t fall into a new age category, some will begin to see R movies legally. Those that have no interest will still stay away. Consider that the internet has made information and media access increasingly easy. If a kid is determined, she’ll get her hands on that coveted material. Most parents have enough sense to distinguish whether or not the content of a movie is appropriate for their child and those parents will continue to forbid/advise against/permit/accompany in seeing movies as is appropriate.

I saw my first PG-13 movie at the ripe age of 4, and the first R-rated film (actually I saw several in the span of one week) less than a year later. I think such experiences helped me to be more discerning about my viewing choices in later years in addition to affording me a head-start in terms of lending insight into the “popular culture” mindset, understanding some realities, and being able to better discern between Fact and Fiction.

I say, go for it. If anything, I think it would discourage kids from watching terrible movies just for the thrill of breaking the rules, and let them mature a bit to where the can appreciate the content of the good R-rated films. I think I’d lower it to around 15.

I don’t think they should change it.. if anything I think theaters need to pay more attention to that.. it’s too easy for kids to just sneak in and watch whatever the hell they want.

I am against most types of censorship. However the idea of a movie like Bruno or Hostel being presented to an 8 year old is completely morally disturbing. (I really doubt that most 8 year olds would ever want to sit through either of them.)

16 years old (the age at which most of us begin to drive cars in america) is to me, a pretty reasonable age at which we can morally discern what we are comfortable with. And through my observation, it’s not as if a R rating stops anyone who really wants to see a movie from viewing it.

@Blondesjon there’s this old guy that’s worked at the theatre where i live for as long as i can remember. i’m almost thirty and the man still cards me for R movies every single time. it’s not just my baby face, he cards everyone (i think). effective for ticket sales, but the kids still sneak into whatever they want to see once their ticket’s torn, no security in the back..

I’d like to point out that since the age for admittance to “R” rated movies is dictated by state, previous users have been agreeing that “the” age is is now is fine, even though those will be different based on what state each user lives in, with most being 17 or 18 years. Maybe you guys are fine with both of those ages, I don’t know.

@hungryhungryhortence There are highschools where seniors are 16? That explains a fair deal of High School student generalizations… In California, there’s a bit of variation, but Seniors fall somewhere between 17.5 and young 19.

Kids are exposed to enough as it is. There’s no need to lower the required age to view an R-rated film.

I find it appalling that they can’t see a r-rated movie but a year later (in the case of 17 being the age of admittance) they can be drafted to fight in a war. Where is the sense in this?

If you can drive a car at 16, you can see a rated R movie. If you are permitted to menuever a giant chunk of metal that can be potentially fatal if not handled correctly, you can see someone in a movie having a gun fight.

@Reniljyx I never thought of it that way. I agree with you.

I think that the MPAA ratings need to be revamped and focus less on profanity, which currently greatly influences how the rating is applied. I think it should be based primarily on thematic content, and that the identifying rating should focus less on age and more on maturity level, sort of like video games are rated.

I have frequently allowed my teenaged son to see rated R movies, whereas PG-13 rated movies have been questionable and/or not suitable due to the content. I know I’m dating myself here, but I have often thought how most rated PG-13 movies nowadays would have been definite R rated films when I was a kid.

As the father of 4 daughters of various ages, I find the current movie rating system to be a helpful guide in determining what my wife and I can allow them to see.

As @Facade previously stated, kids today are inundated with inappropriate media. I overheard a Disney Channel show today in which the entire episode was concerned with whether two principle characters should kiss or not. This is the only topic they could come up with to entertain preteens? So, you’re not really going to prevent children from being exposed to certain things, but you can do your best to prevent them from being overly exposed to things their young minds are not quite prepared for.

First off, my main belief is that ratings should be a “guideline”, not a strictly enforced rule, and it should be up to parents to police what they are comfortable letting their kids be exposed to.

Second thing, I am not a fan of the current ratings system, because the MPAA is made up of this group of people with no specialized training in child psychology, linguistics or anything which would apply to making this type of decision, people who by and large don’t even have kids but many of whom are quite religious in nature, and they apply standards in an extremely arbitrary way. A film gets made and they will count how many times you said certain “foul” words, and use that to base the rating, they will actually send back notes that if you cut 2 fucks and a shit, you can get a PG-13 instead of an R. The biggest problem is that they allow extremely violent scenes into PG or even G rated movies, but show one nipple and it’s an R, if it’s a penis, make it an NC-17. Point is, it’s arbitrary, and it’s backwards. They are taking things that are natural, like the language people use, or the human body, and putting restrictions up to keep kids from seeing that, yet they’re allowing these same kids to see a depiction of someone getting mowed down by machine gun fire.

To be honest, I’d have less trouble with my 8 year old son seeing a movie with some bad language and brief nudity, than I’d have with him seeing most Disney movies. Every fucking Disney movie, they kill off one or both parents in the first five minutes, if they even had the parent(s) in the movie to begin with. Case in point:

Characters Missing Both Parents

* Aladdin (Aladdin)
* Lilo (Lilo and Stitch)
* Snow White and all seven of the Dwarves (who adopt her as a mother-figure) (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves)
* Cinderella (Cinderella)
* Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
* Esmerelda (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
* Mowgli (The Jungle Book)
* Peter Pan and the Lost Boys (who adopt Wendy as a mother-figure) (Peter Pan)
* Tarzan (Tarzan)
* Arthur (The Sword in the Stone)
* Tod (The Fox and the Hound)

Characters Missing One Parent

* Jasmine (Aladdin)
* Ariel (The Little Mermaid)
* Belle (Beauty and the Beast)
* Pocahontas (Pocahontas)
* Pinocchio (counting Geppetto as a ‘father’) (Pinocchio)
* Jane (Tarzan)
* Bambi (Bambi)
* Simba (The Lion King)

I say do away with ratings altogether, find categories of things that parents might find objectionable (depending on their parenting styles), and publish a list of code letters to the right of the film listings so parents will know if the is nudity, profanity, sex, death, etc. and whether the amount is light, moderate or heavy. In fact, you could expand that to many factors…penis, breast, vagina, male posterior, female posterior, consentual sex, gay sex, lesbian sex, rape, statutory rape, murder, suicide, other death…whatever categories people might differentiate, and rate each one on a 1–10 scale. Integrate it as part of the movie poster, so the parent can look at it and see, OK, profanity -7 , sex – 0, nudity – 2, violence – 1. Something like that…not saying I’ve got it all figured out, but make it more descriptive of the potentially objectionable content and let the parents decide, no need for ushers to check IDs.

ok. hello im frum MA.
and in my opinion we should lower this to 16 because kids younger are watching worst things at a much younger age anyways.
Plus wouldn’t it b better if they the parents know what their kids r watching instead of having the kids sneaking to places to cause the parents to blow out in their face.

Agree with the above, and also: How is it decided what is bad/ offensive/ etc.? Railroading people (not just kids) into thinking they’ll only be acceptable if they’ve got the right things, wear the right clothes, look fuckably gorgeous at all times, etc. is pretty toxic. I don’t see any movies catching an R rating for that… in fact, it’s ten times worse in PG movies! But oh, don’t say “damn” or flash a boob… ‘cos that’s Bad.