Sex, drugs and bad language - it's the movies
Sex is all right but violence or racism is not. That, broadly speaking, is the result of the latest extensive public opinion survey undertaken by the British Board of Film Classification.
A balanced sample of 9,000 people were quizzed on their viewing habits and their attitudes to a wide variety of films and issues to help the BBFC keep their classification guidelines in line with public opinion.
Over the years it seems that sex, particularly in 18 rated films, has become less of a taboo. European cinema has been pushing the boundaries of what can be shown in mainstream movies. Art house movies The Idiots, Baise-Moi, Romance and Intimacy have shown scenes of real penetrative sex which were outdone by Britain’s own Michael Winterbottom when his film Nine Songs showed a passionate love affair in graphic detail.
It seems that, providing the reason for the sex is justified in story terms, then the public no longer shies away from real sex on screen. Violence and bad language however is a completely different ball game.
When it comes to violence, knife crime, and other imitable trends, are generally troublesome to the public but particularly so at 15. Many respondents said it shouldn’t be shown at all at 12A. Drug abuse was another area which bothered many viewers. For parents, scenes showing or talking about solvent abuse caused a lot of anxiety – particularly in movies rated 12A and 15. Guidelines in these areas are to be tightened up.
The research seems to indicate that visual cues are picked up a lot faster by teenagers while dialogue-based references can pass youngsters by.
Language also a major concern to those quizzed by the researchers. Some sexual swear words were deemed to be so offensive that even a single mention in anger would mean an instant 18 certificate while the frequency of others could swiftly take a film into an 18 category. Language, particularly for older audiences, was deemed to be more shocking than images, or brief scenes, as they affected the whole tone of the film. It seems that the BBFC receives more complaints when someone like national treasure Judi Dench swears (even mildly) than if an action hero says the same words.
Racism and bigotry were also absolute no-no’s. Although for vintage movies it was agreed that you had to take the age in which they were made into account when rating them.
In certificate terms 12A and 15 unsurprisingly proved to be the areas of most contention simply because the majority of the respondents agreed that children grow up at different speeds. There was a consensus that at 12A parents had to take responsibility for what their children saw. The huge outcry over the 12A rating for the recent Batman film The Dark Knight, showed that just because Batman was a fantasy comic book character, it was wrong to assume that the film was suitable for all youngsters. There was a sizeable minority who strongly believed it should have had a 15 certificate.
Happily for grown-up cinema-goers there was a broad acceptance that for 18 certificate films pretty much anything goes – providing it was legal – although many people welcomed some content advice along with the rating. Again U’s and PG’s provided little controversy.
It seems that we, as film consumers, are growing up. Now all that remains is for our tastes to become a little more sophisticated. Having got the freedom to express ourselves on screen then perhaps we should concentrate a little more on story and a little less on simplistic spectacle. As we have seen, providing we have a decent story to tell, we can now say or do virtually anything we want. Let’s not waste this freedom on yet another puerile summer blockbuster.