This is part of an editorial from Plugged in I thought the whole thing was good but this part very revealing:::"As eager as studios are to land a PG-13 by toning down R-rated fare, they are equally willing to sully family-oriented products with gratuitous content in order to escape a PG. “People will go out of their way to put one dirty word in it just to get the rating that they need to give the picture some legitimacy,” says Gremlins director Joe Dante, “so the kids won’t feel like they’re going to see their little brother’s movie.”
In other words, quality films that might’ve scored big with families are sacrificing wholesomeness for credibility in the eyes of 14-year-old boys. A gratuitous f-word. A flash of nudity. A few lurid innuendoes. Brief drug use. Too often these days, good stories are being pushed beyond the reach of discerning families.
Spielberg told cnn.com, “In a way, it’s better to get a PG-13 than a PG for certain movies.” The director believes that, with the exception of some animated films, the PG comes across as a turn-off to adolescents. “They think it’s going to be below [them] and they tend to want to say, ‘Well, PG-13 might have a little bit of hot sauce on it.’” Spielberg should know. The rating was his idea. “I went to [MPAA president] Jack Valenti, who’s a friend of mine, and I said, ‘Jack, why don’t we do a rating called PG-13, which would suit films like Gremlins and Indy 2? So I called Jack, and Jack said, ‘Leave it to me.’”
Some parents still leave it to Jack, trusting ratings rather than gathering content information about the movies their children want to see. The price can be steep. Although Valenti continues to declare the ratings system an unqualified success adored by moms and dads, a recent Plugged In Online poll (in which 65 percent of over 5,000 respondents said the PG-13 rating was either "vague and confusing" or "a Hollywood marketing tool"; 27 percent admitted it was "better than nothing" while only 8 percent called it "extremely helpful") tells a very different story. Sure, the PG-13 may be a boon at the box office, but it has become a bane to families, doing more to seduce children than inform discerning adults. "