Should books have rating certificates?

[Glitch]

Rather than an age rating system, how about a content system?

I found an example on the back of a DVD - Terminator 3.

Language : Infrequent, strong.
Sex / Nudity : Once, moderate, nudity.
Violence : Frequent, some strong, fantasy.
Other : None.

 

[Overread]

Glitch that kind of system work work best

However we then have to consider that a huge number of even kid friendly books have blood and violence in them. As a society we accept more in the written word than we ever would in the more visual mediums. Books have been around for longer; they've proven that violence and such in books doesn't breed legions of blood frenzied anti-social monsters; indeed the reading of many books tends to result in the polar opposite of anti-social behaviour (even if most die-hard readers might not be the most social of creatures at times).

I think also its a difference in perception as well. A child and an adult might read the same lines; but the mental image they build is going to be different and because its almost an internal thing in theory the mental image built up shouldn't be so extreme as to be outside of that persons already experienced life. So in theory there isn't the same shock-value that a slasher film would have.

 

[thaddeus6th]

I suspect if there were a category/content approach then age 'guidelines' or restrictions would follow almost immediately.

 

[Rodders]

I'm dead against anything that puts a restriction on reading.

 

[Nick B]

I'm dead against anything that puts a restriction on reading.

It isn't about restricting reading, it is about knowing what content the book has. For instance, a year or so ago I started reading what was labelled as a fantasy book, sword and sorcery type. It quickly degenerated into the authors porn fantasy. I stopped reading at that point, and if I had known ahead, I wouldnt have wasted any time starting it. I certainly wouldnt want my ten year old daughter reading it. She reads well ahead of her age and the book in question gave absolutely no clue that it was anything more than a normal fantasy story. No one would want their ten year old daughter reading fifty shades, which this book was on a par with once it got going.

I wouldnt want to stop anybody reading anything, but if there was some sort of clasification, you could see what was in store for the reader ahead of actualy reading the book.

 

[Glitch]

If you slap a sticker on a book and say it contains certain themes, then some people/institutions will use that information to pigeonhole the book.

Using a voluntary system will also result in different interpretations of the content.

The headings I mentioned are for films. If we were to develop a system for books. What headings would you want to see?

 

[thaddeus6th]

An issue with such categorisation is that every medium which uses that also, I believe, uses age ratings (films, videogames and DVDs/blu-rays of TV productions do).

 

[steelyglint]

This is something I mentioned a while back too. The titles we have at the moment are almost like a rating system now, but it also turns away a greater audience.
I know many people who wont read YA because they see it as aimed at young teenagers. New Adult almost sounds insulting to me.

A rating system would work, and also open up more work to more readers. IF it was done considerately. IE, not age rated.

You could use old terms such as C for childrens books, U for universal, no sex, no swearing, no gore. R (restricted )or some limited stuff, RA (restricted adult) for swearing, sex, violent stuff, and X for erotica.

It just lets people know what they are in for, not to be 'enforced'. I think it would encourage a larger audience for works that put people off by getting labelled with a target age group.

That 'RA (restricted adult) for swearing' might be a bit of a problem.

I'd imagine it would be based on the appearance of certain words in the text. But there are books that have, on one page or another, every single word considered 'taboo' by the dictionary - they're called dictionaries. Restricting dictionaries to adult-only use?

Kids these days seem to care little about spelling. They have no sense of the shame they should rightly feel when they make some semi-literate and ungrammatical contribution online, oblivious to the multiple millions of net users around the planet seeing their misspelled and insanely-punctuated efforts as the product of thick, gittish and unintelligent dunderheads being produced by the obviously-failing, finance-starved and deep-in-terminal-decay education system that totally missed the point with these lard-brained, know-nothing wastes of skin who consider such blatant and self-inflicted stupidity to be the very height of cool.

"Juss keepin' it real, man."

That you are - real ignorant, cretinous, vapid, imbecilic, doltish, vacuous, moronic, inane, obtuse, asinine, dim, idiotic, risible, dull-witted, and simple-minded, you utter sh*t-for-brains. Who's going to tie your shoelaces, wipe your backside and change your nappy when you reach the age of majority and you're alone, the contents of your faecally-impacted skull facing the impossible tasks of surviving in a world full of vastly more-intelligent people than yourself, and of understanding anything at all going on around you?

I give you no more than 90 seconds if you happen to be near a road - you don't have the intellectual capacity to grasp basic toilet training, so you aren't about to master concepts such as acceleration, velocity, impact forces, mass or pressure before a bus plasters your worthless, useless and lifeless corpse into the road surface for the local council's street-sweepers, and any passing Corvids, to tease bits of you from between the tar-embedded stone chippings of the asphalt over the ensuing few months.

Lets see your texting thumb, your godawful music, your baseless, pointless and useless moodiness and your silly hairstyle rescue you from that. Still, your contribution to humanity, and the fertilizer (your minced remains), is noted and commemorated on an inscribed ice cube stored in the main blast furnace of your local refuse incinerator. Hurry, last chance to s.....ah, well. Never mind, not that you had one anyway - mind, that is.

.

 

[Nick B]

That 'RA (restricted adult) for swearing' might be a bit of a problem.

I'd imagine it would be based on the appearance of certain words in the text. But there are books that have, on one page or another, every single word considered 'taboo' by the dictionary - they're called dictionaries. Restricting dictionaries to adult-only use?

.

I did say the ratings would be to inform potential readers of the content, not to restrict who could read the book.

 

[Overread]

Thing is take something like the tale of Hansel and Gretel - you've got almost near cannibalistic elements in that story (and the witch does end up in the oven). Something fairly "innocent" in the tale told to children and yet when boiled down into its component elements really the material of horror.

So suddenly you'd have to have not only the content, but an interpretation of the content upon the spin. At that point of introducing interpretation you introduce a huge level of bias and of argument. You could well go in circles for years with arguments and paperwork as different groups would argue over the dividing line between enough and too much of specific content. This made harder by the huge library of material that comes before which would try to shape the new standard - books which under standard assessment could be put higher than they are "seen" in culture to be now. Much Shakespear would fast end up adult only - but is required reading for teenagers at many schools - is that an exception or do we have to try and interpret it as something less than it is.

Likely it would only apply to "new" publications to get around that; which would kind of work as new material won't have as much connection and historical bias (barring sequels and the like). However it could still be a big nightmare.

This is not to say that such debate does not also happen with films and computer games - it certainly does - but culturally we accept it already. Well least we partly do; games are still a grey area for many parents so I suspect books would be as well. Sure you'd stop schools and libraries and booksellers; but in the end that isn't much and most parents would probably consider it overkill. Heck I suspect most here on Chrons would argue about it a lot and would likely many disagree on some line or another.

Publishers would also dislike it initially - consider how huge Game of Thrones is and how many teenagers are reading it. Consider that it would most certainly get into the Restricted Adults only rating within seconds. Suddenly its a scary brutal nasty thing
Such a rating could kill mature writing fast as authors and publishers would chase the more lucrative "U" rating or at least "young teen" rating for the maximum potential market impact. Mature content and themes in stories would become very hard to get published simply because you'd have less market potential and publishers would not be favouring it unless it was really good.




In the end maybe just better reviews would cover the need. An improvement in the quality of shop staff for advice - in the descriptions on Amazon sales pages and in the number of review publications putting out quality informative and not-spoiler laden reviews.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Also, who's going to slap these stickers on the books? There are thousands of sp books every day. Who reads them all? Who makes the judgement? Who pays for it? This sort of thing can only work in an industry that either has the money to do it, and the will, or has a voluntary code that everyone complies with. Unless somewhere like Amazon decided to lead on it and restrict books without the guidance, it simply can't be implemented without government input and masses of public money.

 

[Overread]

Actually its very possible.

Pre the digital book revolution nearly all in-print books were read by editors and at least went through some form of review; adding the requirement that editors be trained in verification and thus be able to hand out certificates would be the simplest method.
Publishing houses could actually get behind that idea very readily as it would allow them some form of control again upon the gates into being published if you HAD to have an editor read and certify your work (and we can assume that certification would come with cost and thus might be hard to get outside of publishing houses). Such a system would really curtail the independent market for a few years till it all caught up.

It could be done; but certainly like you say it would be a huge logistical nightmare to catch-up. And that is without considering the international market!

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I don't see the point - I'd read Clockwork Orange and discovered my first bodice ripper by the time I was ten. But then I got into trouble at my daughter's nursery because I'd taught her her the three little pigs complete with bacon sandwiches, ham and pineapple pizza and wolf soup (it also included bone crunching, butchery and slurping) -- she went and told it to the other children.

My daughter has read a variety of stories in the past month (she's 12); Hunger Games, Young Bond, Fault in Our Stars, something called Sisters and Red Shift.

 

[WaylanderToo]

Thing is take something like the tale of Hansel and Gretel - you've got almost near cannibalistic elements in that story (and the witch does end up in the oven). Something fairly "innocent" in the tale told to children and yet when boiled down into its component elements really the material of horror.

IIRC the original Grimm's fairy tales were VERY grim - we've just got a hugely sanitised version of them.


Anywho - back on topic. In the 80's there was the 'moral majority' movement lead IIRC by Tipper Gore who managed to get 'parental advisory' stickers placed on all music deemed to be unsuitable (who actually defines unsuitable - but that's a who other topic) - the effect was that these stickers actually became a marketing tool rather than detrimental to sales. Thinking about it in another way if a book is marked as 'salacious' for one or 2 scenes talking "...'bout a man and a woman making love..." I really don't want to be viewed as reading porn when it is far from that. Over-all I also like Glitch's idea

 

[Danny McG]

Reading through some of the points made by various members in this thread. IMO deffo no 'advisory labels' or warning stickers. You wouldn't be allowed near a Bible until 18 in such an instance. Mega violence, rape, incest, torture, human sacrifice, brutal slavery etc etc - and that's just in the first three books!

 

[althea]

I would never have read The Hunger Games trilogy,if I had known it was for YA.
My mother allowed us to read whatever we wanted to read.Of course we read "unsuitable" for children books,like Dickens,at an early age.
At first ,when I was reading through this thread,I thought rating books would be a good idea.Now, after a bit of thought,I'm against it.

 

[BAYLOR]

Ratings are for movies, not books.

 

[Parson]

I would never have read The Hunger Games trilogy,if I had known it was for YA.

Which really shows us that any kind of system for describing books falls afoul of the outlier. I'd like to say something like "good books always find an audience." But then I remember 50 Shades of Gray. BARF!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

When it comes to books, I think the cover copy (or for ebooks the online product pages) do a pretty good job of warning readers what kind of content to expect. If the book is full of steamy sex or graphic brutal action you can usually depend on that fact to be mentioned somewhere in the description and/or the admiring blurbs from other authors—not as a warning, but as a selling point. These are not things that publishers try to conceal from the public. Quite the reverse. A rating system would merely be superfluous.

 

[thaddeus6th]

On YA: I don't read it. In the same way I don't read children's books (except when I order them by accident and then get strangely annoyed when I force myself to read it and end up quite liking it).

I don't need lots of violence or swearing etc in what I read, but YA just sounds a bit too soft. No problem with that or the clean-reads (indeed, I think it's useful for people who don't like foul language and bloodshed to have a category for things lacking gore and swearing) but it doesn't feel like my cup of tea.

It would be interesting to consider how many people the YA tag entices, and how many it puts off. I do wonder to what extent, more broadly, book descriptions are lighthouses rather than siren calls.