Reflections from lessons 1&2 (including BBFC facts)

Things I found interesting about film regulation:

1. Laws regarding film regulation are often impossible to enforce and mainly exist to cover the backs of certain government and film organizations from possible attack.

Any child can simply ask an older friend or relative to purchase an 18-rated film and bring it home for them to watch, thus rendering the law preventing unsuitable films being sold to minors useless.

With the recent growth of online shopping, this law has been subverted even further, as people need to present no identification or proof of age when purchasing 18-rated films or any other unsuitable items.

Another option for underage children is to watch unsuitable films virally. Websites which stream unsuitable films will often have no security at all and at most a pop-up warning which the user is able to dismiss with a single click.

So if these laws have virtually no impact on young people's viewing habits, why do they exist? They exist simply to shield politicians, to make it look like the government is protecting our children when in truth it is merely protecting itself. Media products are a very convenient scapegoat for parents to blame their child's bad behaviour on, as many parents seem to rely on television and video games to parent their children for them. And when this plan fails and the child unfortunately grows up a murdering psychopath, the parents look first not to their own neglect and flawed parenting, but to the easy target of "video nasties". Naturally they go straight to the government, demanding protective laws and whipping up a public outcry in the process. And of course the politicans eagerly oblige, passing law after pointless law until the mob is satisfied. This is the way it will always be unless parents start to take responsibility for their offspring.


    2. The film industry is responsible for its own regulation.

All film in the UK is regulated by the BBFC (the British Board of Film Classification), which exists as an independent, non-governmental body and has exercised responsibilities over cinema for more than ninety years, and over video since 1985.

BBFC FACTS:
The British Board of Film Censors was established in 1912 by the film industry when local authorities started to impose their own, widely varying, censorship standards on films. The Board was set up in order to bring a degree of uniformity to those standards. The object was to create a body which could make judgements that were acceptable nationally. To this end the Board has needed to earn the trust of the local authorities, Parliament, the press and the public. It must not only be independent, but be seen to be so, taking care, for example, that the film industry does not influence its decisions, and that, similarly, pressure groups and the media do not determine its standards.

The BBFC is answerable to OFCOM, which is a government organization, however their interference is minimal and as long as the public remain happy with classification the BBFC is left alone to do its job.

The BBFC is funded by the film industry itself, as filmmakers have to pay a fee to have their film classified.

They operate under the Video Recordings Act of 1984, which dictates that any 'video work' must be classified by the BBFC before public release.

They also must take into account the Human Rights Act of 1998 and freedom of expression, yet this freedom is recinded when in conflict with the Obscene Publications Act, the Protection of Children Act, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act and the Public Order Act, all of which establish rules banning so-called 'extreme pornography' and works considered harmful to society.

These laws are able to override the right to freedom of expression in this country, however the boundaries are not always clear and controversy often arises when certain video works contain material which is not clearly definable into a category.


3. There are subtle differences between the UK and US in their opinions of what qualifies as unsuitable material.

For example, in America, strong violence and gore is not considered as particularly shocking, whereas swearing is abhorred. The opposite is true in Britain, and these subtle differences in cultural views on offensive material must be taken into account by classification authorities such as the BBFC.