Does the rating system need to change?

I read an article recently that made me start thinking about the movie ratings system. It has always frustrated me -- for several reasons, not the least of which is that I think it's meaningless.

What does it really mean to go see a "PG-13" movie? Well - you know that you'll probably find the one requisite "f" word. (You can have one and only one in a PG-13 movie, you know.) Does that really tell me anything about the movie? I appreciate that the industry has recently included a few descriptive words, but what exactly is "strong" violence??? Why do Saving Private Ryan and The Amityville Horror have the same rating? I assume that the violence is radically different in those movies. What about language? Can we distinguish between the foul language of Good Will Hunting, which I would argue is integral to those characters and reveals quite a bit about the life they lead, and any generic action flick, which I would argue has foul language due to lazy writers who can't be bothered to write with a decent vocabulary and lazy audiences who don't want to listen to one. (Okay, that sentence feels like a run-on -- anyone want to give a quick criticism?) (BTW - I do love generic action flicks. Show me a big explosion or a huge wall of water destroying NYC and I'm there. I just get annoyed by the dialogue.)

And then there is the sex and nudity issue - they aren't really the same, you know. There could be a fairly explicit scene that I would be embarrassed to watch that has fully clothed actors. On the other hand, the full frontal nudity in A Room with a View is innocent and rather funny (and not sexual in ANY way. I mean, really - the middle-aged vicar is jumping into the pond. Not a turn on.)

This leads me to another small rant - why have the words "adult" and "mature" become dirty???? Aren't those good things to be? I would like to be a mature adult who makes wise, informed decisions. This certainly doesn't mean that I want anything to do with the adult film industry. It annoys me that these words which mean something beautiful and somewhat mysterious (how do we mature, anyway?) have become words that mean something bad, embarrassing, and very degrading. It makes me want to shake my fist at the vocabulary gods (and maybe Larry Flint and Hugh Hefner.)

Anyway - back to the ratings system. I realize that you can't necessarily quantify art. Who am I to say if one movie is "good" or "artistic" or even "redeeming" for anyone else. I would hesitate to put those types of labels on film. But, couldn't we find a more specific way of categorizing the movies we see? I think that many people I know are put off excellent movies by an "R" rating. For example, how many of you realized that The Last of the Mohicans was rated R? It is one of the most beautiful movies made in the 90's and has zero language or sex. Zero. There two very brief scenes of graphic violence that put this movie over the top. I'm actually pretty sure that it would not be an R today. But I know people who refuse to see it because of the rating.

Of course, a new system would have its own flaws and any system would be inadequate. I just wanted to spend a little time ranting about the one we have. The view's good from the cheap seats....