Ratings provide a form of self-censorship that the media industries apply after pressure from the public and the government. The Hollywood Production Code of the 1930s was negotiated to handle issues from sex and violence to religion for mainstream cinema.

With the break up of studio control and cultural changes of the 1960s, the Motion Picture Association of America switched from self-control to consumer advising, instituting a four-part system that tended to exclude children on the basis of language, sexual content and occasionally onscreen brutality but also left open the negotiation of parental control and responsibility. While the G rating (associated with Disney or family films) was suitable for all, other categories sought parental guidance and parental responsibility to attend with a child (R, and, after 1984, PG-13 as well). The X rating (eagerly extended in pornographic film advertising to double and triple X) proved most troubling, leading eventually to an NC-17 rating that sought to distinguish big-budget films with sexual content from pornography. Still, the NC-17 rating greatly diminishes the number of Eyes Wide Shut (1999), digitally inserted figures screens available for a movie. Hence, in Kubrick’s blocked key actions from American audiences to obtain an R.

This rating was flagged of course as an immediate temptation for adolescents, especially as video rentals imposed controls on parents rather than theaters. Nonetheless, it remains a model for similar systems to rate television, records and computer products, where sex and language still dominate issues of violence, although the latter has become more critical in music and computer games. Other rating systems have been devised that look at overall morality (Catholic Legion of Decency), as well as critical evaluations (by stars, thumbs, age appropriateness and even grades) that classify films for a continually competitive marketplace.