Some felt this didn’t go far enough towards eliminating content considered “obscene,” while others felt it would lead to draconian censorship. The X rating drew a line in the sand: no one under 18 (or, per a 1970 redraft, 17) was to be admitted to a theater showing an X-rated movie.
President Lyndon Johnson appointed longtime associate Jack Valenti to head the MPAA, and on Novemthe latter conceived a new industry Code of Self-Regulation and an alphabet-based “voluntary ratings system” to indicate the presence of sexual and/or violent content. What was the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade grouping of Hollywood’s major studios, to do so as to better inform anxious parents about which films were suitable for what ages? U.S. The Generation Gap was widening, the Vietnam War was beaming onto television screens nightly, and filmmakers were pushing the envelope worldwide.
