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Article: Movie Rating
- Article from:
- West's Encyclopedia of American Law
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 The Gale Group, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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MOVIE RATING
A classification given to a commercially released motion picture that indicates to consumers whether the film contains sex, profanity, violence, or other subject matter that may be inappropriate for persons in certain age groups.
The idea for a nationwide movie rating system took root in the late 1960s. In 1966 Jack Valenti, a former aide to President lyndon b. johnson, became president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). That same year the film
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
was completed. The film used terms such as
screw
and
hump
to refer to sexual intercourse. Because these terms were considered controversial language, Valenti met with officials at ...