Dream Tropes Wiki/Avoid The Dreaded G Rating

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Movies may be art and intended by writers and directors to tell stories, but as far as the funders and distributors are concerned, films need to make money and get the biggest possible audience. Achieving this may involve lying about a movie's content, showing all the best parts, or, with family movies, changing the rating.

Perception means a lot – R ratings tend to indicate something for adults (but not always). G ratings often indicate something for kids. In between are PG and PG-13 movies. So with a lot of otherwise perfectly clean, family-friendly movies, the word "damn" or "hell" (or both) might be added to the script, just to drop that dreaded G rating. The phrase "brief mild language" appearing as a content warning is a giveaway. At PG, the movie has a better shot at avoiding the "kid stuff" stigma that keeps teen or adult viewers away.

Adding a little swearing makes the film easy to edit for TV or airplane viewings without it interrupting the story. Sometimes stronger profanity is unnecessarily added, or the characters pay an irrelevant and fleeting visit to a strip club, or scenes are made more violent. Content is sometimes added to get an intentional PG-13 rating, or removed from a potential R-rated movie for the same reason. It's all about trying to get a certain audience to watch the film.

Ironically, the average G-rated film makes more money than the average R-rated film, but maybe only because G-ratings are rarer. In the United Kingdom, the practice is sometimes known as "fifteening" since the target was the BBFC 15 rating, though this faded with the advent of the 12 and 12A ratings.

Today in the United States, it's nearly impossible to get a G rating on any live-action or even All-CGI Cartoon movie without some serious negotiation. It apparently is to reinforce the Animation Age Ghetto; the MPAA is more than happy to rate something as PG for "nothing offensive" because it's live action. Almost no live-action or CG-animated movies make it to theaters with a G rating anymore.note

It wasn't always this way. Since 1968, when modern MPAA ratings began, the G rating has shifted and been significantly Flanderized. Originally, "G" ratings were for movies for a "General" audience, not for "Grandmas and Goo-goo-babies." The earliest G-rated films not only included violence, but sometimes even showed blood. Planet of the Apes (1968), released the same year the MPAA ratings started, was rated G, but you saw Charlton Heston's bare butt and violence, and heard "damned dirty ape" and "God damn you all to hell!" A few years later in 1971, Gone with the Wind was re-released with a G rating despite the racism, barely-off-screen sex, open bloodshed, and a sea of dead bodies — not to mention the most famous use of the word "damn" in cinematic history. As late as 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was rated G despite a couple of horrific deaths by Teleporter Accident, as well as references to sexuality.

The change happened in the early 1980s, about after complaints from Moral Guardians about movies like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins and Poltergeist, all of which received PG ratings, and thus were seen by many young children who really shouldn't have. After this, the MPAA introduced the PG-13 rating, so movies that would've been PG under the old standard became PG-13, with the more "mature" G movies now becoming PG. Thus, the demographic for films that remained G became very young.note

Later attempts to content-rate other media in the United States used the by-now-obvious shortcomings of the MPAA system as an object lesson. When U.S. television created its "parental guideline" ratings in the late 1990s, the "G is for Grandma" effect was mentioned specifically, and is almost certainly the motivation for the U.S. TV rating system having both a TV-Y rating and a TV-G rating: TV-Y is "specifically for kids", and TV-G means "nothing offensive." Similarly, the ESRB ratings for video games, needing to account for both content and playability, have both the "E for Everyone" rating and others for younger age groups (some lower-end E10+ games suffer as well, albeit to a lesser extent). Even though the video game industry is no stranger to edginess for marketing's sake, this trope is probably least common in video games. That said, "E for Everyone" changed from its original name, "K-A for Kids to Adults", specifically because games sold better among older gamers when the rating didn't have "kid" in it.

See Rated M for Money, and for more information on the rating systems, see Media Classifications.

This is NOT about movies that just happen to have a high rating. It is only about when something clearly unnecessary and unneeded is added to bump the rating higher, because without it the rating would be lower than what the company wants. Also note that it's not always certain what caused a movie to get (or not get) a certain rating, as outside a few guidelines, the MPAA ratings are a black box.

## Examples

### Film

* PBS Kids Movies can make use of the trope.
* The Maddox Movie 2002 had a few d\*\*ns to get a PG.
* The Aria Movie is more inappropriate than the previous episodes of the show altogether! Lots of swearing, drunk from ice cream (again??) and you know...... Actually, in fact, some scenes were cut out to avoid the Worst NC-17 Rating.

### Live-Action TV

* Subverted by *Sabrina, the Teenage Witch* when Banushen Television originally aired in El Kadsre. Most episodes classified with a "G" rating, but there are some episodes with either "PG" or "M" ratings.
* *The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer* was going to be rated "M", but Darren Cody bumped the ratings up to "AV" (unlike any show that was in the Comedy Night in El Kadsre block).

### Western Animation

Kantasy shows will need their own subpage.

* Most Chronostorm Adventure episodes classified with a "SU" rating, but there are some episodes with either "A", "A-BO", "R" or "R-BO" ratings.
* The Maddox Show Online does this alot, by adding references to Trump, one episode references "Fuhrer A.H.", and parodying the Matrix.