censorship of film and video

This page considers censorship of film and video.

It covers -

• introduction
• film in the US
• film in the UK and Eire
• totalitarian regimes
• film in Australia
• in New Zealand
• and Canada
• and in the air

     introduction

Regimes for the regulation of films appeared soon after the invention of the silent moving image. Initial arrangements were based on licensing of exhibition venues, reflecting the long tradition of licensing theatres and other places of public performance. Examples were the NSW Theatres & Public Halls Act and the South Australian Places of Public Entertainment Act.

Demands for wider regulation were based on perceptions that the cinema was uniquely potent, compared to print, and that it was particularly attractive to the lower orders and/or women and children - presumed to be less rational and with lower self-control.

By the outbreak of war in 1914 most nations had established film censorship regimes that embraced film production, distribution and exhibition. Feature film production and promotion by that time had moved from a cottage industry to a more corporate basis, involving substantial investment and increasingly involving an integration of studios, distribution networks and exhibition chains - offering regulators a number of choke-points and encouraging caution by industry executives.

As we have noted in the profile on Australian censorship history, the absence of a substantial domestic production sector meant that most of the films exhibited in Australia and New Zealand were imported and thus susceptible to interdiction under Customs legislation such as the New Zealand Cinematograph-film Censorship Act 1916 and Australian Customs (Cinematograph) Regulations 1919 that systematised previously ad hoc arrangements.

The 1920s saw the establishment of vetting systems, with formal ratings being applied by government agencies or by industry-community bodies such as the notorious Hays Committee in the US. Ratings were a feature of regulation for most of last century: initially a flat imprimatur-style acceptance and later a more nuanced regime that identified film as suitable for different age groups, depending on violence, sexual or other content.

Typically films without a rating or that had been refused a rating could not be exhibited and were of little interest to commercial distributors; self-censorship predated production as few financiers were interested in works that would not transfer from can to screen (or from cargo-hold to international exhibition circuit).

Regimes (and their interpretation) varied between jurisdictions; in Australia for example particular films could be exhibited in one state but were not permitted in another state after failing to meet the requirements of local censorship agencies.

Any censorship regime is dynamic and a key theme in accounts of Hollywood (and its counterparts elsewhere in the wold) is the contortions - or merely cowardice - of industry figures seeking to comply with the dictates of government agencies and other bodies such as the Catholic League of Decency. Some subjects (eg homosexuality, veneral disease, 'miscegeny') did not appear on screen - or only in a coded form. It was long after Kinsey that most cinema goers saw their first film male-male kiss; Gone With The Wind was supposedly the first US feature in twenty years to include the profanity 'damn'.

Although authors, performers and audiences sometimes subverted the 'code', conventions about unmarried mothers and the sanctity of marriage were pervasive: one student for example has expressed surprise that in pre-1950 films those shots that feature bedrooms never seem to include anyone out of decorous pyjamas (or white tie and tails).

Compliance frequently involved use of the censor's shears - excising offending frames - or, more tellingly, inking out particular images. Day to day practice in totalitarian economies varied but in essence, political correctness was a prerequisite for acceptance of a script, production was monitored (accounts of Mao, Stalin or Goebbels editing scene by scene have a bizarre fascination) and films could be abruptly pulled from exhibition if political exigencies required.

The breakdown of the Studio System in the US during the 1950s - highlighted in the corporate profiles on the Ketupa.net site - as much as changing community standards or the exhaustion of those defending western civilisation from reefer madness and unwed mothers arguably accounts for a greater willingness by industry to challenge preconceptions and dictates about censorship, leading to an accelerating liberalisation of policy and practice during the past forty years in the US, Australia and other parts of the world.

Regulatory challenges were exacerbated by consumer acceptance of the VCR and more recently of the DVD. Consumption of films at home, rather than under the supervision of a cinema operator, removed the filter provided by the cinema ticket office. Legislation and industry codes could prevent sale/rental of 'unsuitable' recordings direct to minors but - as with broadcast content - restrictions on viewing were dependent on compliance by parents/guardians (and their recognition of rating systems) and their recourse to bowderisation services such as CleanFlicks. Some of those conundrums are explored Jonathan Coopersmith's valuable 1998 overview Pornography, Technology, and Progress (PDF).

     film censorship in the US

Film censorship in the US reflects that nation's First Amendment regime, with regulation centred on a ratings code developed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and state/local legislation concerned with restricting access by children.

Since the days of Thomas Edison US states and municipal governments have sought to control film exhibition through censorship agencies and through zoning or other public health legislation. In 1915 the Supreme Court ruled that films were not part of the "press" in Ohio and thus not entitled to First Amendment protection.

The National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (predecessor of the MPAA) subsequently articulated a code of standards identifying what was unacceptable in motion pictures. Self-regulation was contentious and in 1930 the narrow 1918 code was replaced by a more prescriptive scheme, the Hays Code, which survived till the collapse of the Studio System and Supreme Court judgements in 1952 (the 'Burstyn' case, regarding Rossellini's The Miracle) and 1953 that adult viewing of film was protected under the free speech and press guarantees of the First Amendment. Hitchcock, in an act of commercial daring, was accordingly able to feature a flushing toilet in his 1960 Psycho.

Hays had featured pre-production vetting of scripts by a Production Code Office that aimed to minimise depictions of nudity, "illegal traffic in drugs," white slavery, miscegenation, "sex hygiene and venereal diseases," childbirth, profanity, blasphemy and "ridicule of the clergy." The PCA, working closely with advocacy groups such as the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, monitored production and was able to secure post-production changes (or outright withdrawal) of films from the major studios.

The modern MPAA code was established in 1968 (with revision in 1984 and 1990), following a Supreme Court decision that governments were able to prevent the exposure of minors to books and films that could not be denied to adults.

The current version encompasses -

G for General Audiences, with "nothing in theme, language, nudity and sex, violence, etc. which would, in the view of the Rating Board, be offensive to parents whose younger children view the film"

PG Parental Guidance Suggested - "Some Material May Not Be Suitable For Children"

PG-13 for General Audiences, but with a higher level of intensity than in a film rated PG (eg "leaps beyond the boundaries of the PG rating in theme, violence, nudity, sensuality, language, or other contents, but does not quite fit within the restricted R category")

R for Restricted - no viewing by those under 17 without an accompanying parent or guardian ("hard language, or tough violence, or nudity within sensual scenes, or drug abuse or other elements")

NC-17 (originally X) for no-one under age 18 ("a film that most parents will consider patently too adult for their youngsters under 17. No children will be admitted. NC-17 does not necessarily mean "obscene or pornographic" in the oft-accepted or legal meaning of those words. The Board does not and cannot mark films with those words. These are legal terms and for courts to decide.")

Frank Walsh's Sin & Censorship (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 1996) is an approachable introduction to currents in US film censorship, enlivened by contemporary criticism such as this account of The Kiss (the sensational four minute 1896 film):

the spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other's lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over it is absolutely disgusting.

After that it was on to Pulp Fiction, via the cinema in Main Street and the works discussed in Dirty Movies: An Illustrated History of the Stag Film (New York: Chelsea House 1976) by Al Di Lauro & Gerald Rabkin. Gregory Black's The Catholic Crusade Against The Movies 1940-75 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) includes the 1961 demand from the Legion of Decency that depictions of sticking a tongue in a lover's ear be deleted, since 

this technique cannot be used without arousing erotically the susceptible members of any audience, anywhere, any time.

In 2006 Bollywood stars Aishwarya Rai (a former Miss World) and Hrithik Roshan faced criminal action in Madhya Pradesh over the their on-screen kiss in action film Dhoom 2. They were accused of lowering the dignity of Indian women and encouraging obscenity among the nation's youth.

Gerald Garner's The Censorship Papers (New York: Dodd Mead 1987) offers an insider's view of industry self-censorship 1934-68, complemented by Stephen Vaughn's Freedom & Entertainment: Rating the Movies in an Age of New Media (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2006). Movie Censorship & American Culture (Washington: Smithsonian 1996), edited by Francis Couvares, provides an overview of the US regimes to background the essays in Controlling Hollywood: Censorship & Regulation in the Studio Era (New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni Press 2000) edited by Matthew Bernstein.

Leonard Leff & Jerold Simmons' Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, & the Production Code from the 1920's to the 1960's (New York: Doubleday 1991) is lighter; we recommend instead Thomas Doherty's Vice Rewarded: The Wages of Cinematic Sin - Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality & Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934 (New York: Columbia Uni Press 1999) and Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration (New York: Columbia Uni Press 2007). 

Thomas Waugh's Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography & Film from their Beginnings to Stonewall (New York: Columbia Uni Press 1996), John Burger's One-Handed Histories: The Eroto-Politics of Gay Male Video Pornography (New York: Haworth 1995) and Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet (New York: Harper & Row 1982) offer other perspectives.

Jon Lewis' Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Created the Modern Film Industry (New York: New York Uni Press 2000) is incisive. For early tensions see in particular Nancy Rosenbloom's 'Progressive Reform, Censorship, and the Motion Picture Industry, 1909-1917' in Popular Culture and Political Change in Modern America (Albany: State Uni of New York Press 1991) edited by Ronald Edsforth & Larry Bennett and Richard Maltby's 'The Production Code and the Hays Office' in Grand Designs: Hollywood Cinema of the 1930s (New York: Scribner's 1998) edited by Tino Balio.

Richard Maltby's Harmless Entertainment: Hollywood & the Ideology of Consensus (Metuchen: Scarecrow 1983) might be usefully read in conjunction with more splenetic works such as Michael Medved's Hollywood vs America (New York: HarperCollins 1992)

Context is provided by Lawrence Friedman's lucid American Law in the 20th Century (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 2002).

     film censorship in the UK and Eire

Film censorship in the UK is based on the Obscene Publications Act 1964 and associated legislation such as the Video Recordings Act 1984, with significant responsibility being given to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), an industry body.

The primary Act prohibits material that "tends to deprave or corrupt persons who are likely to read, see or hear it" (with defence on 'public good' grounds, eg "in the interests of science, literature, art or learning or of other objects of general concern"). The BBFC, formerly the British Board of Film Censorship, traces its origins to 1912 and as with many self-regulatory bodies in the UK has tended to act as an agency of government.

It was formally recognised by the Video Recordings Act 1984 - a delayed response to the 1979 report of the Williams Committee on Obscenity & Film Censorship in the UK - as the body responsible for video classification in the UK. However, its activity as as film censor remains on a non-statutory basis.

In principle local government has the power under the Cinematograph Act 1909 and Cinematograph Act 1952 to allow any cinema to exhibit any film or prohibit exhibition (eg in 1973 the Greater London Council granted a licence for Thorsen's Quiet Days in Clichy, in 1998 Camden Council granted a licence regarding Hooper's Texas Chain Saw Massacre and 1996 Westminster Council prohibited exhibition of Cronenberg's Crash despite exhibition elsewhere in the UK). In practice the national and local governments have accepted ratings by the BBFC.

The 1952 enactment, consolidated with other film legislation in 1985, establishes that no film is to be exhibited if the licensing authority gives written notice prohibiting exhibition, children are prohibited from "unsuitable" films (with the cinema box office to act as an age bar), films cannot be exhibited without certification and that certification must be evident in advertising, at the cinema entrance and on screen immediately before the film is shown.

The 1994 Video Recordings Act highlights the need for the BBFC to consider harm to potential viewers ( including potential underage viewers) and "harm to society through viewer's behaviour" in relation to works that deal with criminal behaviour, illegal drugs, violent behaviour and incidents, "horrific behaviour or incidents" and of course human sexual activities.

That Act, as subsequently amended, establishes age bands for viewing/retailing videos -

U Universal: suitable for all viewers
Uc Universal: particularly suitable for children
PG Parental guidance: parents are advised that some scenes may be unsuitable for young children
12 passed for audiences aged 12 and over
15 suitable only for those age 15 and over
18 suitable only for those age 18 and over
R18 may be sold only in licensed sex shops to those of age 18 and over

The emphasis under that legislation on self-regulation by content producers and distributors was reflected in establishment in 1989 of the Video Standards Council (VSC), a non-profit making body set up to develop and oversee a Code of Practice to "promote high standards within the video industry". That Code - along with ratings - was subsequently expanded to the computer and video games industry.

The BBFC site identifies 'cuts' to films (often at the request of exhibitors), which peaked at 33.9% in 1974 and are currently running at around 3%. Films refused classification appear to be running at around 100 per year.

Dewe Mathews' Censored: The Story of Film Censorship in Britain (London: Chatto & Windus 1994) is a general history. James Robertson's The British Board of Film Censors: Film Censorship in Britain 1896-1950 (London: Croom Helm 1985), The Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action 1913-1972 (London: Routledge 1989) and Censored Screams: The British Ban on Hollywood Horror in the Thirties (Jefferson: McFarland 1997) by Tom Johnson are heavier going but definitive.

Film Censorship (London: Gollancz 1975) by Guy Phelps and Enid Wistrich's I Don't Mind the Sex, It's the Violence: Film Censorship Explored (London: Marion Boyars 1978) are more polemical than Bernard Williams' Obscenity and Film Censorship (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1981). John Trevelyan's What the Censor Saw (London: Michael Joseph 1973) is a popular account.

Annette Kuhn's Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality 1909-1925 (London: Routledge 1988) and Anthony Aldgate's Censorship & the Permissive Society: British Cinema & Theatre 1955-1965 (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1995) catch the UK censors in action at critical times.

For Eire see in particular Kevin Rockett's Irish Film Censorship: A cultural Journey from Silent Cinema to Internet Pornography (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2004).

     totalitarian regimes

For the USSR see in particular The Red Pencil: Artists, Scholars, and Censors in the USSR (Boston: Unwin Hyman 1989) edited by Marianna Choldin & Maurice Friedberg, Enemies of the People: The Destruction of Society Literary, Theatre & Film Arts in the 1930's (Evanston: Northwestern Uni Press 2002) edited by Katherine Eaton. For Nazi Germany see David Welch's Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1983).

     Australia

The Australian regime for films and videos centres on classification by the Office of Film & Literature Classification (OFLC).

Films, videos and and computer games legally available in Australia (ie imported and locally produced) must receive an OFLC rating under the National Classification Scheme (NCS), a cooperative arrangement under the Classification (Publications, Films & Computer Games) Act 1995 (CPFCGA) discussed earlier in this guide.

The NCS embraces local classifications under state/territory classification and enforcement legislation. It is predicated on principles that "adults should be able to read, hear and see what they want", with protection of minors from material "likely to harm or disturb them" and recognition of "community concerns" about exposure to unsolicited offensive material and "depictions that condone or incite violence, particularly sexual violence, and the portrayal of persons in a demeaning manner".

The rating code for film and video covers three purely advisory ratings and three ratings with age restrictions -

G films/videos are considered suitable for all viewers

PG rated content may contain material "confusing or upsetting to children" and thus requiring parental guidance for children under 15 years

M15+ content is suitable for those 15 years and over

The MA15+, R18+ and X18+ categories are "legally restricted".

Viewing (or hiring) of MA15+ content must take place in the company of a parent or adult guardian.

R18+ content is restricted to adults (ie age 18 years or over).

X18+ rated works contain sexually explicit material , are restricted to those 18 years and over, and can only be legally sold/hired in the ACT and Northern Territory. (That's resulted in extensive sales by entrepreneurs in those territories to consumers in the states.)

Films that are refused classification - ie identified as (RC) - cannot be legally imported without express permission from the Director of the OFLC and cannot be sold, hired, advertised or exhibited in Australia. Grounds for refusal of classification include depiction of bestiality or torture and sexual exploitation of minors.

What of film that is not acquired for public exhibition or sale? It is clear that some individuals are importing unrated or banned DVDs and other film formats on a non-commercial basis. Some of those imports are intercepted by the Australian Customs Service (generally in conjunction with Australia Post) under the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1956; overall figures are uncertain.

In contrast to the UK, the OFLC (and comparable state agencies) is a Commonwealth government agency rather than an industry body.

For an introduction to Australian moving image censorship, bedevilled by often conflicting federal and state film censorship regimes over the past century, consult Ina Bertrand's indispensable Film Censorship in Australia (St Lucia: Uni of Qld Press 1978). Sonia Walker's brief 2002 paper Film Censorship In Western Australia: Public, Government And Industry Responses 1898-1928 suggests that some concerns are perennial.

Pointers to other studies are given in the more detailed profile on the shape of censorship in Australia.

     film censorship in New Zealand

New Zealand's current film censorship regime is based on the Films Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993 (here). The background to that legislation is discussed in the more detailed profile on the shape of censorship in New Zealand.

The legislation is similar to the Australian federal scheme, with a prohibition on exhibition/distribution of unrated film and video. The Act defines what is considered harmful to the public good and establishes criteria for rating and labelling films and other publications.

Harm embraces a work that

describes, depicts, expresses, or otherwise deals with matters such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty, or violence in such a manner that the availability of the publication is likely to be injurious to the public good

In rating films consideration is given to the extent and manner in which the work deals with -

• torture and Cruelty
• promotion of criminal acts
• violence and sexual violence
• sexual conduct with or by children
• exploitation of children's nudity
• degrading, dehumanising or demeaning conduct
• representations of a particular class of person as inherently inferior by reason of a prohibited ground of discrimination

There is an outright ban on works that promote -

• the sexual exploitation of children
• sexual violence or coercion
• torture or extreme violence
• bestiality, necrophilia, urophilia and coprophilia

     and in Canada

Film and video classification in Canada is a provincial responsibility, with variation between provinces that is similar to the former Australian state/territory regime. Suggestions for a unitary national scheme, notably in the report of the 1985 report of the federal Special Committee on Pornography & Prostitution (Fraser Committee), have not progressed.

Provincial film classification boards, most of which from the first years of last century, have the authority under theatre legislation to censor publicly-exhibited films. The emphasis over the past decade has been on industry self-censorship. There is an "expectation" that producers and distributors will avoid a Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) N-17 rating, the industry advisory that recommends against viewing by those under 17 unless accompanied by an adult.

The Canadian regime, like that of the UK, features a separate rating for videos, with all provinces except Quebec requiring inclusion of Canadian Home Video ratings identifiers on rental videos. Rating under the national Canadian Rating System for Home Videos is based on averaging film classifications assigned by the seven provincial boards. Interestingly, although retailers are not supposed to sell/hire adult videos to minors, there is no federal legislation prohibiting that.

For an historical overview see Malcolm Dean's Censored! Only in Canada: The History of Film Censorship - The Scandal of the Screen (Toronto: Virgo Press 1981), Gerald Horne's lucid 1997 Pornography in Cinema and Provincial Film & Video Classification in Canada (PDF) and Gary Evans' In the National Interest: A Chronicle of the NFB of Canada from 1949-1989 (Toronto: Uni of Toronto Press 1991).

     and in the air

Inflight editing standards vary by airline and by region. They are generally but more conservative than broadcast television editing standards and typically centre on

• no airline crash scenes or references to airline disasters
• reticence regarding terrorism (or references to terrorism), violence, guns, drug abuse, physical abuse
• no nudity/sex scenes
• no profanity
• no images of/references to other airlines
• no "racist comments or denigrating references to culture, religion, or nationality".

The World Airline Entertainment Association comments that the "most ideal inflight film genres" are "comedy, romantic-comedy, light adventure".






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