When adapting the 2019 LGBTQ romantic novel Red, White & Royal Blue for the screen, Matthew Lopez was careful to circumvent an R-rating. The film has a handful of sex scenes that stop short of full-frontal nudity — there’s some bare butts and, naturally, shirtless men.
But it wasn’t enough. Red, White & Royal Blue was rated R, meaning people under 17 would need to be accompanied by a parent or guardian to see it.
Another recent film with LGBTQ leads, the French romantic drama Passages, received an even harsher NC-17 rating, which would restrict people under 18 from seeing the film at all, and also keep it from playing in certain theatres.
If they exposed the specific reasons for each rating, that would expose how arbitrary it all is.
They do that for TV shows and I think it works out pretty well. Knowing that it’s TV-MA because of language vs. TV-MA because of nudity or TV-MA because of violence is a big game changer for many parents.