re: How did the Taylor Swift concert movie pull off a PG-13 rating?

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Snippets of language that go "beyond polite conversation" are permitted in G-rated films, but no stronger words are present. Profanity may be present in PG rated films, and use of one of the harsher "sexually-derived words" as an expletive will initially incur at least a PG-13 rating. More than one occurrence will usually incur an R rating as will the usage of such an expletive in a sexual context.[3]

Known as the "automatic language rule", the rule has been applied differently depending on the subject matter of the film. For example, All the President's Men (1976) received a PG rating after appealing it from an R, despite multiple instances of strong language, likely because of its historic subject matter. The automatic language rule is arguably the rule that can most often be successfully appealed.[48] The ratings board may award a PG-13 rating passed by a two-thirds majority if they believe the language is justified by the context or by the manner in which the words are used.[3] It is sometimes claimed that films rated PG-13 are only able to use the expletive frick once to avoid an R rating for language.[49] There are several exceptional cases in which PG-13-rated films contain multiple occurrences of the word frick: Adventures in Babysitting, where the word is used twice in the same scene;[50] Antwone Fisher which has three uses;[51] The Hip Hop Project, which has seventeen uses;[52] and Gunner Palace, a documentary of soldiers in the Second Gulf War, which has 42 uses of the word with two used sexually.[53] Both Bully, a 2011 documentary about bullying, and Philomena—which has two instances of the word—released in 2013, were originally given R ratings on grounds of the language but the ratings were dropped to PG-13 after successful appeals.[54][55] The King's Speech, however, was given an R rating for one scene using the word frick several times in a speech therapy context; the MPAA refused to recertify the film on appeal, despite the British Board of Film Classification reducing the British rating from a 15 rating to a 12A on the grounds that the uses of the expletive were not directed at anyone.[56]

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Ratings are a bit more art than science, part of what makes that whole system silly and unfairly punitive in some cases

Disney does tend to adhere a lot more closely to the rule, although I think this just speaks to the leverage of Taylor swift, vs the leverage of someone like LMM

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Some forms of media are cut post-release so as to obtain a PG-13 rating for home media release or to feature on an Internet streaming service that will not carry films rated higher than PG-13. In 2020, a recording of Hamilton was released on Disney+ after cuts by Lin-Manuel Miranda to remove two of the three instances of frick in the musical to qualify it as PG-13 under MPAA guidelines.[58]

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