Origin | 2023 | PG-13 | – 2.6.3

Why is “Origin” rated PG-13? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “thematic material involving racism, violence, some disturbing images, language and smoking.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a few kissing scenes, discussions of restrictions on relationships between people, a man being hanged to death, a teenage boy shot to death by a man, a woman being shot in the head, people chained inside sailing ships transporting them to slavery, children and mothers separated in concentration camps, a man and two women dying from illness, many discussions of systemic racism, caste systems and the eradication of people, burning books, depictions and discussions of Nazism, caste systems and Jim Crow Laws, and some arguments and moderate language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

---

The systems human beings use to separate people and determine the way they can live their lives according to perceived identities, ethnicities, color, etc. are explored in this dramatization of “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson. With Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash, Finn Wittrock, Victoria Pedretti, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Isha Blaaker, Vera Farmiga, Audra McDonald, Connie Nielsen, Blair Underwood, Nick Offerman, Myles Frost and Donna Mills. Directed by Ava DuVernay. A few lines of dialogue are spoken in German with English subtitles. [Running Time: 2:21]

Origin SEX/NUDITY 2

 – A man and a woman kiss, he lifts her up and they hug. A man and a woman kiss in a few scenes. Men and women dance in a dance hall and one man and one woman hold each other close and kiss.
► A man and a woman flirt and the man invites the woman to join him for birthday cake at his mother’s house and she accepts. People discuss the abolition of sexual activity between Germans and Jewish people. People discuss “illegal love” as we see a German man in a relationship with a Jewish woman in Nazi Germany.
► Women at a few galas wear low-cut and off-the-shoulder dresses that reveal cleavage, bare shoulders and backs. A woman sits in a bathtub and reads a book by candlelight (we see her bare shoulders, partial cleavage and arms). A woman wears a low-cut pajama top that reveals cleavage. A woman wears a low-cut dress that reveals cleavage in a few scenes.

Origin VIOLENCE/GORE 6

 – A teen boy (we understand that this is a reenactment of the murder of Trayvon Martin) leaves a convenience store and is followed by someone in a car while we hear 911 emergency calls describing a suspicious person walking through a neighborhood at night; the teen stops when the car stops near him, the driver exits the vehicle while holding a gun, the two struggle and the teen screams for help until he is shot dead. People gather and watch as a man is hanged on a tree (we see his feet twitch and then go still) and one man holds a young child on his shoulders and says, “Front row seat.” A man and a woman in a car are stopped by Nazi soldiers and held at gunpoint while dogs bark aggressively at them and one soldier opens the trunk hatch to find a young girl; they take her away as the man and the woman scream and struggle with the other soldiers. Many people are shown piled in the holds of sailing vessels and we see them chained; some are shown being sick (we see goo) and others are shown motionless and presumably dead. Children are separated from their mothers in a concentration camp and one woman charges toward her child as he is taken away; the woman is held by two soldiers and shot in the head (off-screen) while others watch in horror.
► A man lies motionless on a floor and a woman tries to wake him and revive him but he is dead; we then see people grieving at a funeral. A woman lies in a hospital bed with IVs and monitors and we understand that she died. A woman uses an oxygen mask and coughs and we understand that she is sick; another woman receives a text saying, “I think it will be today,” meaning the day the sick woman might die.
► A man tells a man and a woman that they should leave Germany because everything is being torn apart and we see a rally of people burning mounds of books (we hear that 20,000 books were burned). A speaker at a Nazi rally remarks about “Jewish intellectualism and decadence.”
► A 9-year-old boy is told that he is not allowed in a public swimming pool and we see him sitting outside the fence watching as his friends swim; the boy is told that he can get into the pool but only on a float and without touching the water and we see him being pulled around the pool by a lifeguard while other people stand around the side of the pool watching. A man describes a caste of people in India being considered to have “polluted shadows” and we hear about a young boy that was forbidden to touch anything that other children touched in a school; we see the child sitting on the floor during a lesson in a classroom and being given water by pouring from a vessel into his mouth so that he wouldn’t touch anything.
► A man among a crowd of shipyard workers does not salute during a Nazi rally while everyone else does; we see swastikas on armbands worn by men on a stage. A man and a woman approach a librarian to check out a book in a library and they are asked to present their library card and their passports while the librarian seems suspicious of them. A man holds a revolver as he and a woman drive through a rural area.
► German Nazis discuss American Jim Crow Laws and determine how to use the language of the US laws to enforce their own ideology of separating people; they argue that it will not work with Jewish people in Germany because they have financial power. People discuss white supremacists and that a woman was killed during a peaceful protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. People discuss “illegal love” as we see a German man in a relationship with Jewish women in Nazi Germany. A woman argues that racism is a misnomer and that it cannot be defined. A woman tells her adult daughter that she has to behave in a way that will “keep you safe.” People discuss that it is illegal to display a swastika in Germany. We hear that a Black man was beaten by a shop owner when the man asked for a receipt. A man says of a Black man that he is “getting too big for his britches.” People discuss the “mixing of races” not being allowed and to “never contradict whites.” A woman describes an interaction with a principal when she was a child and that he knew that she was not from the area because she looked him in the eye and that Black children from the area knew not to do that. People discuss the rape, mutilation and murder of people in order to keep order and maintain caste systems. A man says that his mother died and that his father is “as mean as they come.” A man asks if he was “mansplaining” and then if he was in “white savior mode” when he confronted a man for not doing what a woman asked him to do.
► A man applies oil (for protection) to another man that will later be required to clean out public toilets by climbing in a deep pool of muck (we see goo and matter as he hands filled buckets to another man that dumps them out).

Origin LANGUAGE 3

 – 2 mild scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 4 mild obscenities, 2 derogatory terms for Black people, name-calling (sweetie, silly, polite and buttoned up, untouchables, foolishness, soulless animal, evil, sinful, crude, monkey, madness, horrific, rude, scapegoats), exclamations (I told you so, working my nerves, goodness), 2 religious exclamations (e.g. oh God, for Christ’s sake). | profanity glossary |

Origin SUBSTANCE USE

 – People drink wine with meals in a few scenes, and a man drinks a beer in a dance hall. A man lights a cigarette in a library, people smoke cigarettes in several scenes, and a man smokes a pipe.

Origin DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Racism, Dalits, caste systems, Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, death of loved ones, the Tuskegee Airmen, illegal love, sacrifice, social anthropology, endogamy, Jim Crow Laws, subjugation, extermination, stoking fear, gun control, labels, hierarchy, lynching, the Indian untouchables, injustice, moral corruption, victimization, cruelty, torture, patterns of hatred, freedom, critical race theory, Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Ambedkar, Al Bright, the “Deep South.”

Origin MESSAGE

 – Humans will find all sorts of way to discriminate against each other. You don’t escape trauma by ignoring it.