How was this rated G?

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You should have seen the Saturday morning cartoons....
You weren't allowed to bloody kill unless you were swearing.

Scooby-Doo-Doo, Where the Frak Are You?
"I'm gonna reach down Farmer Brown's masked mouth and yank out a spleen, is that what you want, 'Mrs, Henchman?' Now, where's the Big Fat Idol with the Golden Head, bitch!?"

It wasn't until Velma got pregnant by the ghost of John Wilkes Booth in the "Case of Linclon's Left Lobe" that parents got riled up and the Networks intrduced non-violent cartoons like My Little Horsie's Golden Shower of Cartoon Power Hour, and Uncle Billy's Cartoon Candy Van; both shows testing highly amongst young children, and, oddly enough, high-income Middle Aged Republican males.

Net Execs had even 'cleaned-up' Scooby Doo by introducing 'Scrappy-poo', but after only a few weeks of viewing, over half of the highly prized Metropolitan Demographic of young children had thrown themselves from the highest buildings, killing themselves, several marijuana smoking dog-walkers, and many of the aforementioned High-Income Males (who were reportedly seeking Uncle Billy's Van).

The tragic loss of three disparate and unconnected group of our population, yet all, demographically spaeking, highly similar in their television viewing habits, has made taking accurate ratings of these early non-violent cartoons, a virtual impossibility.

Only further study of this, now controversial, move toward non-violent programming can bring us closer the question: has non-violent programming been Killing Our Children?



I prefer the toad less raveled.

I came here to see if anyone else had that thought. the 'Hero' of the movie murders 3 people!

You have to understand that the MPAA was still fine-tuning their nascent ratings system in 1972. In just four years they had already changed their original 1968 designation "M" rating (for "Mature") to "GP" in 1970 (for "General audiences, Parental guidance suggested") and finally to "PG" in 1972. "PG-13" would be added in 1984.

The ratings system has always been far more a subjective process than people realize. For example, another puzzling instance that I can remember from that time was the G-rated "Andromeda Strain", released the year before, which featured brief shots of an exposed female breast, and later, naked male backsides. And before the "X" rating took on the connotation as referring only to pornographic films, Best Picture winner "Midnight Cowboy" had originally been rated "X" (as well as Best Picture nominee "A Clockwork Orange" just two years later). (Both were eventually re-rated "R".) And despite several rather brutal moments throughout "Jaws" (e.g., Quint's demise), it mustered only a tepid "PG" rating (though it did include the warning on the poster "May be too intense for younger children"--which, interestingly, was also printed on the "Andromeda Strain" poster!). Huh?

Now, compare the violence in G-rated "Silent Running" to that of PG-rated "Jaws" released just 3 years later...and maybe the softer "G" makes a little more sense.