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Subject: Confessions of the film censor ...
Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 16:32:44 -0500
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
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http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=275660 [Independent.co.uk]
Confessions of the film censor
'In the case of one film, the question was whether the law governing
cruelty to animals in the making of films applied to fish'
Andreas Whittam Smith
18 March 2002
It looks as if my period as president of the British Board of Film
Classification (BBFC) will end in the summer with a bit of a bang. Not
the sort of uproar I relish, by the way, but part of the job. For our
decision to give the French film Baise-moi one cut and an 18 certificate
has already led to criticism even though it doesn't open until May. The
story concerns two young women, low-life characters, both of whom are
brutally raped. One, in partnership with a third young woman, responds
by murdering a series of men whom the pair have first seduced.
While the pro-censorship lobby would have wanted more extensive cuts, if
not an outright ban, there is an equal and opposite argument. For our
published guidelines state: "The BBFC respects the right of adults to
choose their own entertainment, within the law. It will therefore expect
to intervene only rarely in relation to 18-rated cinema films."
By the law we chiefly mean two Acts of Parliament; the Obscene
Publications Act 1959 and the Protection of Children Act 1978. But given
that there is no legal problem in this case, the question is √ why did
you intervene at all? Why shouldn't adults make up their own minds?
Here, as so often, one finds that two reasonable principles clash with
each other. For we view our guidelines as representing a sort of pact
with the public. People have a general idea of what to expect when they
go to the cinema. Accepted norms for levels of violence, sexual
explicitness, bad language and the like have been established. The BBFC
can see where these boundaries are. We believed that one scene in
Baise-moi, with its graphic presentation of violent, non-consensual sex,
was on the wrong side of the line.
Indeed the notion that has echoed in my mind since assuming
responsibility for the BBFC four and a half years ago is legitimacy. I
don't think it is enough to rely on precedent or on certain pieces of
legislation such as the Video Recordings Act or on the fact that cinemas
are obliged to follow our classification system under the terms of their
licences with local authorities. These are not sufficient warrant for
the exercise of our power √ which is not negligible. After all, we can
prevent children and young people from going to films they might wish to
see and, as Baise-moi shows, we can censor a work intended for adults.
The legitimacy I am concerned to achieve, imperfect as it is bound to
be, comes from opening up as many direct channels of communication with
the public as possible. We began the process by codifying the BBFC's
practice. Then we staged a series of public meetings around the country
to explain how we conducted classification. Some of the meetings were
aggressive occasions √ loudly pro-censorship in Belfast, for instance,
and strongly libertarian in London. We revised the guidelines in line
with what we had learnt and then engaged in an iterative process √
exposing the new guidelines to further meetings, to focus-group
examination and to public-opinion polling.
It is easy to criticise public meetings on the grounds that the audience
is generally unrepresentative of the nation as a whole and that, even if
a few hundred attend on each occasion, this represents a vanishingly
small proportion of the total population. None the less, they are my
favourite method of communication. The very act of inviting everybody
and of giving anybody who cares to turn up the chance to question what
you are doing is itself a statement of accountability.
An important consequence flows. The BBFC does not have, and in my
opinion should not have, a moral position of its own. I don't think it
should strike attitudes. Rather, it should seek to be useful; an example
of this is the way in which it helps parents to regulate the viewing of
their children. It should try to base its judgements on what it can
learn about public opinion. And it must observe the wishes of the
electorate as expressed through legislation.
That said, the issues that face the full-time examining staff, and
ultimately the president and vice presidents, can be difficult to
resolve. The single video that I have found most difficult to watch was
a documentary on body-piercing. You see pieces of metal being inserted
into or through body parts. I had to fight to keep my eyes on the
screen. Yet the activity is legal and consensual, and shouldn't cause
harm. Quite a number of people have had it done. It is a familiar sight.
The mainstream film I found most difficult to assess was Lolita, based
on the famous Nabokov novel, with its open espousal of paedophilia.
Unfortunately, the film's makers had raised Lolita's age from 12 in the
novel to 14 rising 15. That changed the dynamics of the narrative.
Lolita seemed less like a child and more like a precocious teenager. And
as a result the character of Humbert, the gentleman seducer, was made
more sympathetic.
One gradually gets of a sense of where problems will arise. Hollywood
studios test the limits of violence and bad language. British-made films
for the art house circuit focus on social deprivation and may contain
problematic scenes of drug abuse. Continental film-makers are more
likely to try to push the boundaries of sexual explicitness. Animal
cruelty comes from east Asian countries. In the case of one film from
South Korea, the question was whether the law governing cruelty to
animals in the making of films applied to fish. We were advised that it
did.
The video market, with its ability to serve small interest groups, can
pose problems concerning unconventional sexual behaviour. Indeed, I
think that my successor might have to confront the question to what
extent the depiction of sado-masochism on screen can be passed.
I have rarely had to deal with this. As it happens, the guidelines for
material confined to sale or hire only in licensed sex shops, the
Restricted 18 category, provides some allowance for mild consensual
activity involving the infliction of pain, for clearly consenting
role-playing games and for non-harmful fetish material. I know, even
this list makes the mind boggle, or at least it does mine, but, as I
have learnt, that is life as it is lived.
Perhaps I rabbit on too much about legitimacy. Recently at a dinner for
people concerned with regulation of content in broadcasting, film and
video, we were each asked in turn what advice we would give to the new
super-regulator, Ofcom, which the Government is creating to oversee all
the broadcast media except the BBC. I naturally said that it should
first seek to achieve the full legitimacy that comes not only from the
Act of Parliament under which the new body is being set up, but also
from direct contact with viewers and listeners. Legitimacy is what I
have thought about most often as BBFC president. It allows you to take
hard decisions.
aws@globalnet.co.uk
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