Not so PG-13

As I have been doing some research on CARA (Classification & Ratings Administration), for my Junior-theme why question, which is "why in American films, sexuality is considered more unsuitable to the audiences than violence?", I realized that I really have no clue how to answer my why question. I have read a couple articles online and a part of a book so far but no answer was found for why sexuality is considered more harmful to viewers than violence in American movies. For this blog post I will write about one of the biggest questions I had when I was researching about this topic, whitish focuses on one specific film rating: PG-13.

 The question is, why is violence so prevalent in PG-13 films, especially in modern films? Violent scenes in PG-13 movies nowadays are quite tremendous. People getting pierced by bullets, stabbed by knives countless times, engulfed in bomb blasts, crushed by debris,  etc.... The ways of people getting killed in PG-13 movies are becoming more elaborated and gruesome as days go by. The same can be said with horror scenes in PG-13 horror movies, but the overload of violence in recent PG-13 movies is way more concerning. A research by Ohio University shows that the number of PG-13 movies that contains gun violence has tripled since the rating first came out in 1985. Researchers feared that the huge increase in gun actions in PG-13 movies could strengthen the weapons effect and could cause teens to become interested in using them. I believe not only movies but games like Call of Duty or Battlefield, which are war games that has the players shooting their opponents to death, could add fuel to the fire of teens becoming less cautious to using guns.  Sexuality in PG-13 movies is at most actors using curse words or words that indicate sexual content. The lack of balance between the amount of violence and sexuality allowed in PG-13 movies is obvious but the reason behind MPAA handling sexual contents more strictly is just a mystery.

Although I'm still in the midst of a long research to go, I feel like I can get some good answers to my why question if I research more about the prevailing violence in PG-13 movies.