Today, in the United States, it's nearly impossible to get a G rating on anything without some serious negotiation. The MPA (Motion Picture Association)note is more than happy to rate something as PG for "nothing offensive." Almost nothing makes it to theaters with a G rating anymore.
It wasn't always this way.
Since 1968, when the MPA rating system was introduced, the G rating has shifted and been significantly devalued. Originally, G ratings were for movies for a "General" audience, not for "Grandparents and Goo-goo-babies," following the rationale of other countries' schemes, primarily that of the BBFC.note Earlier G-rated films not only included violence but sometimes even showed blood. Planet of the Apes (1968), released the same year the MPAA ratings started, was rated G, but you saw Charlton Heston's bare butt and heard "damned dirty ape" and "God damn you all to hell!". Similarly, the 1970 historical drama Cromwell was heavy on violence and death, including an on-screen beheading.note This also applied to reissues of older films: in 1969, Disney’s Fantasia was (infamously) re-released note with a G rating, despite the Night on Bald Mountain sequence containing full-frontal female nudity (although the racist caricatures were excised). Likewise, Gone with the Wind was re-released in 1971 rated G despite the overt romanticization of the Lost Cause and racist portrayals, barely-off-screen sex, bloodshed, and a sea of dead bodies... as well as the use of the word "damn."
But the rearrangement of the ratings system between 1970 and 1972 by CARA (Code and Ratings Administration), which saw the "M" (Mature) rating switch to "GP" (General Audences—Parental Guidance Suggested) and then to the modern "PG" rating as a result of confusion over its suitability for children, largely put an end to that, with the notable exception of 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which was rated G despite featuring a couple of horrific deaths by Teleporter Accident as well as several sexual references.
The stigma for the G rating arose from the fact that the G rating was viewed as a Spiritual Successor to the pre-1966 Hays Code, in which films that were approved by the Code were viewed as bland, especially in the eyes of New Hollywood's rebellious filmmakers. Eventually the stigma that G-rated films were only for children was that children’s films were also viewed as boring, so it wouldn’t be a surprise that people started to make the stigma that they were only for children.note By the mid-1970s, a glut of low-quality films (mostly nature documentaries and dubbed foreign family films, mostly from Mexico) led the phrase "If it's G, it ain't for me" to become common among exhibitors.
As a result, filmmakers added gratuitous objectionable content to their films (such as language or sex references) so that they wouldn’t get the stigma that they would arouse if they were rated G. A New Hope had an equal split of votes between the raters who wanted the film to be rated G and PG, but 20th Century Fox wanted the film to be rated PG due to concerns that teenagers would not see the film if it was rated G and if Moral Guardians would protest against the film’s G rating due to its Family-Unfriendly Violence, in which Fox succeeded in getting the rating that they wanted. The MPAA changed the descriptor of the PG rating from “some material may not be suitable for pre-teenagers” to “some material may not be suitable for children” soon after the success of A New Hope, which allowed for more filmmakers to apply this kind of tactic to their films due to the vagueness of the term “children.” Eventually, the PG rating accompanied a wide spectrum from a few mild cuss words in Annie (1982) to the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Those Wacky Nazis have their faces melted off by the Ark of the Covenant.
By 1980, the MPAA was already enforcing the Animation Age Ghetto due to the stigma of the G rating coinciding with the stigma surrounding animation. In which CARA started to be more lenient towards animation compared to live-action. For example, the 1982 animated film The Secret of NIMH was given a G rating despite its Nightmare Fuel content and violence. The film is darker in comparison to some of the tamer PG-rated live-action films of its time, such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the aforementioned Annie.note
Then in 1984, people protested against the Family-Unfriendly Deaths in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins despite their PG ratings, therefore being seen by many young children who really shouldn't. After this, the MPAA introduced the PG-13 rating, the first film released with that rating being Red Dawn (1984). The PG rating was more used than the PG-13 rating for the first few years due to the unfamiliarity of the PG-13 rating with audiences. This resulted in PG-rated films that would absolutely not receive a PG rating today, such as the Precision F-Strikes in Big, Beetlejuice, and Spaceballs.note This was changed in 1989, when notable blockbusters such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Licence to Kill, and Batman (1989) all received PG-13 ratings, ushering in the dominance that the rating would soon hold.
Then, in the late 1990s, the MPAA became more lenient on what movies could show and still receive a PG or PG-13 rating rather than an R-rating (a phenomenon referred to as "ratings creep"), again the result of too many films sneaking in objectionable content, especially in the case of (nominally) family-oriented live-action comedies (1997's Liar Liar and the 1998 remake of The Nutty Professor being standout examples). However, the requirements for the G rating essentially remained the same. This created a crunch from both sides whereby movies were less likely to be rated either G or R, the effects of which became increasingly noticeable as the 2000s progressed, even as the latter part of the decade saw a glut of R-rated films. Also, in the 1990s, films that received G ratings became profitable Direct to Video. Say what you will about the quality of these films, but any parent will tell you that 30 minutes to an hour of free babysitting will buy you a lot of patience.
In 2001, Shrek became a box-office success despite its PG rating, which proved that an animated film didn't need a G rating to succeed in the box office, especially since the PG rating was seen as "box-office poison" for animated films due to the failure of The Black Cauldron in 1985. Shrek's success convinced animation studios that the PG rating was the go-to ticket for their films to differentiate themselves from the Disney product. As the 2000s passed, the restrictions on the G rating became tighter: Toilet Humor was no longer permissible in a G-rated film, and neither were drinking or smoking by 2007 (with the depiction of tobacco products becoming a one-way ticket for an R rating). However, the biggest change to the G rating was in 2004 after Janet Jackson’s half-second nipple slip during the Super Bowl. The incident and the ensuing protests by watchdog groups led to more stringent regulations against nudity, foul language, and violence on film and television, and consequently caused the MPAA to enact more restrictions on their ratings. Previously, movies with PG-13 ratings used to have some nudity and lots of blood, but the MPAA’s restrictions would now make it an automatic R rating if they were in a film. Thus, the films that would’ve gotten lower ratings got higher ratings, which affected the G rating.
Even with the restrictions imposed after the 2004 incident, the G rating was still used. That was until the The New '10s, when film studios stopped having their films rated G as a result of both the renewed protests over objectionable content in Toy Story 3 and Cars 2 leading the MPAA to enact even harsher restrictions on the rating, and the failure of Winnie the Pooh (2011) making film studios believe that a G-rated movie would lead to a box-office bomb. Afterwards, the G rating became extremely rare, with more films that would’ve gotten a G rating beforehand getting PG ratings. Finding Dory was rated PG for... well, basically no reason ("mild thematic elements"). And PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, despite being based off of a Preschool Show and its predecessor being rated G, was rated PG for "mild action/peril." The rating for the film was probably the nail in the coffin. The PG rating is now solidly synonymous with children's movies, with films that would previously have been rated PG now targeting the PG-13 rating. Despite this, Toy Story 4 became a massive success, despite its G rating.
Oscar Bait films often add some "stronger" content to get a PG-13 or R rating, whereas their general tone would be that of a PG-rated film, as few films with this rating have won the Best Picture Award. 1968's Oliver! is the only G-rated film to win Best Picture, but it is also considered to be one of the award's weakest winners ever.
This has also applied to higher ratings, namely "R" and an adults-only rating, originally termed "X," which was not copyrighted unlike the others as it was meant to be available to anyone that desired to avoid the scrutiny of the ratings process, but this ended up backfiring as the letter "X" soon became synonymous with pornography, which mirrored what was happening to the BBFC's equivalent (which was changed to "R18" in 1982). A controversial example of this was 1973's The Exorcist, which gained an "R" instead of an "X" because everybody involved was aware the latter rating was "box-office poison," especially for a large-budget film. By 1990, acclaimed films such as Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, and sex, lies, and videotape were either assigned "X" ratings or went unrated, which caused an uproar among film circles large enough to force the MPAA to rename this rating to NC-17note late that year, but exhibitors and the media were leery over it, and after the failure of 1995's Showgirls, it largely fell into disuse, with filmmakers preferring to eschew the ratings system for works with strong adult content. (However, there have been isolated exceptions such as Shame and Killer Joe.) Meanwhile, theater owners began giving less and less space to R-rated films after 2010 (mostly to make room for tentpole blockbusters with PG or PG-13 ratings), which led many studios to release two versions of more "mature" films: a PG-13 one for theaters and an "R-rated" one for home video, an extension of the "unrated cuts" often used in the home releases of several R-rated comedies in the 2000s.
Later attempts to content-rate media in the U.S. and abroad used the by-now-obvious shortcomings of film rating systems as an object lesson. When U.S. television created its "parental guideline" ratings in the late 1990s, the "G is for Grandma" effect was specifically mentioned and is almost certainly the motivation for the U.S. TV rating system having both a TV-Y rating and a TV-G rating: TV-Y is "specifically for kids," and TV-G means "nothing offensive."note Similarly, the ESRB ratings for video games, needing to account for both content and playability, have both the "E for Everyone" rating and the "eC for Early Childhood" rating for younger players. The E10+ rating was introduced in 2004 after some games pushed the bar a little further earlier in the decade. Some of those lower-end E or E10+ games suffer as well, albeit to a lesser extent. Even though the video game industry is no stranger to edginess for marketing's sake, this trope is probably the least common in video games. That said, "E for Everyone" changed from its original name, "K-A for Kids to Adults," specifically because games sold better among older gamers when the rating didn't have "kid" in it. eC was retired as a rating in 2018; like how G-rated movies turned out to do better direct-to-video, eC-rated games do much better as iPad or Android apps. (The Apple App Store uses its own rating system, which designates games that would’ve received an eC rating as "ages 4+" alongside games that would’ve received an E rating; the Google Play Store uses the local video game system, so they're lumped together with the E-for-Everyone games in the US and Canada.)
