Tobacco, Alcohol, and Other Risk Behaviors in Film: How Well Do MPAA Ratings Distinguish Content?

Abstract

To evaluate the usefulness of Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings for parental selection of appropriate films for children, the 100 top grossing movies each year from 1996 through 2004 ( N  = 900) were content analyzed to measure risk behaviors in each film. More restrictive MPAA ratings (R and PG-13) were associated with increased mean seconds of portrayals of tobacco use, alcohol use, and sexual content; increased frequency of violent content; and increased salience of drug use. MPAA ratings, however, did not clearly distinguish films based on tobacco or alcohol use. Fifty percent of R-rated movies contained 124 seconds or more of tobacco use, comparable with 26% of PG-13 and 17% of PG movies. Fifty percent of R-rated movies contained 162 seconds or more of alcohol use, comparable with 49% of PG-13 and 25% of PG movies. Because of the high degree of overlap in alcohol and tobacco content between rating categories, the MPAA rating system, as currently defined, is not adequate for parents who wish to limit their children's exposure to tobacco or alcohol content in movies.

This work was supported by National Cancer Institute grants CA94273 and CA108918. We thank Dan Nassau and Balvinder Rakhra for coding the movies; Diana Nelsen for supervising the content analysis; Jennifer Gibson for preparing the data files; and anonymous reviewers for comments on a previous version of the article.

Notes

¹Unlike tobacco and alcohol content, drug use was not timed in seconds. The effects of the drugs portrayed in films typically last far longer than the actual ingestion or consumption (which is what was measured for tobacco and alcohol content), but it is difficult to determine when those effects end. Therefore, categorical coding was adopted to reflect the salience of drug use, rather than the amount of time drug use appeared on screen.

²Violence also was not timed. Because of the often-extended nature of violent portrayals and the way violence often is interwoven in the plot, it is difficult to reliably determine the beginning and end points of violent portrayals for timing. Therefore, a categorical variable assessing general frequency of violence in the film was used.

³As an additional test of “ratings creep,” year of release was regressed on each outcome variable separately within each MPAA rating category. These results are not presented because there were no significant results to indicate that year of release was a significant predictor of an increase in content of any risk behavior within any rating category.

∗Note. Tukey's wholly significant difference test was used to compare means across tobacco exposure, alcohol exposure, and sexual content. A Bonferroni correction was used to compare proportions for drug use salience and violence. G notation indicates statistically different from G movies; PG statistically different from PG movies; 13 statistically different from PG-13 movies. †High salience drug use included the categories moderate and extreme drug use. ‡High frequency violence contained the categories moderate and frequent violence.