Vice, violence, and profanity—for children?

It’s been more than three decades since Kevin McCallister first defended his home against two bumbling robbers in Home Alone. I went to see the Christmas classic with my little brother when it opened in theaters. He was just two years younger than 8-year-old Kevin. It was fun viewing, but I cringed at all the curse words, crude humor, and suggestive material tucked into this PG film.

In the opening scene Kevin complains that his Uncle Frank won’t let him watch a movie with the family “even though the big kids can.” “Why can’t I?” he asks his mom, “It’s not even rated R. He’s just being a jerk.” She sighs, “Kevin, if Uncle Frank says no … then it must be really bad.”

In real life, the board that determines if a movie is really bad has released an online Ratings Guide to show parents what’s allowed at each level. That’s new for them. Ever since the Motion Picture Association (MPA) started rating movies in 1968, the ratings board, made up of anonymous parents, has been criticized for being secretive about its process. In “How Much Sex, Drugs and Violence Can Be in a PG-13 Movie?” Julia Jacobs says the people who rate movies “must often get into the gory details.” Now parents can, too.

It isn’t easy reading, but it’s necessary. PG-13 doesn’t mean a movie is safe for kids 13 and up. It means it won’t contain things too bad to warrant an R. But an MPA report says the standards are “designed to evolve with the times.” The ratings board is committed to “shifting its positions along with the sensitivities of American parents,” Jacobs reports. They do that by commissioning surveys “to take the country’s temperature on a range of issues.”

In 2009, a movie showing two characters smoking marijuana earned an R rating, but now “infrequent marijuana use” is acceptable in a PG-13 movie. The board’s decisions purportedly represent what most American parents would agree with. That’s debatable. The Guide says PG content is generally limited to mild profanity, innuendo, and reckless behavior, but also can show “a couple seen briefly in bed together under the sheets.”

The ratings board isn’t determining quality, but quantifying vice. And filmmakers are motivated to wedge in as much of that as they can get away with because ratings at the edges (G and NC-17) are bad for sales.

According to the guide, rape, incest, and drug abuse—depending on the level of realism—can fall anywhere from PG-13 to NC-17 (formerly X). But even these guidelines aren’t certain. Kelly McMahon, chair of the MPA’s rating administration, talks about the process being “nuanced and rooted in a movie’s context,” and cautions that “there will be exceptions” to the standards. “It’s not a perfect science,” she says, and that’s its “beauty” and “the frustrating part.”

Even if parents could agree about the standards, the film industry pushes against them. Jacobs cites a ratings consultant who says “filmmakers will inevitably use [the guidelines] to try to figure out what will pass muster—and to try to negotiate the rating they want.” Scott Young, a former member of the ratings board, now uses his knowledge of the standards to “help movies escape unwanted ratings.” In one example, a filmmaker successfully appealed to have his film downgraded from R to PG-13 without having to cut “brief graphic nudity.”

All of this is a problem because a movie’s story, songs, and visuals pull you in until, almost without realizing it, you’re overlooking sin and being entertained by it. That’s harder to do when you see those elements in writing. Objectionable is too mild a word for most of what’s in the Guide. The elements in the list are crude at best, but more often vile, profane, and deeply immoral.

The MPA holds that the board rates movies “the way a majority of American parents from across the country would rate it.” But if most parents are OK with their children seeing what’s contained in those movies, we’re in trouble.

This Christmas, kids aren’t clamoring for a PG movie about defending your home with cartoon violence. They’re begging to see the PG-rated Wicked: For Good. In a review of the film for PluggedIn, Emily Tsaio said she was shocked when she realized its rating. She described “magic that can feel very dark,” “pure unadulterated hatred,” “intense violence,” and “an unnecessarily long, sensual, romantic scene.”

We can’t honestly be surprised that an industry’s self-regulation is self-serving. But no longer can we claim we didn’t know what they were doing. The Ratings Guide tells us. We’re responsible for deciding what our kids watch. And one day, we’ll give an account for what we let them see.