Clayton Skorski

Film Classification Essay

The British Board of Film Classification is run by a self-governing, non-governmental organisation which since 1912 has classified cinema movies and videos DVDs since the passing of Video Recordings Act (1984). Created in 1912; the BBFC and on the 1st January 1913 It began functioning. Its legal basis was the Cinematograph Act 1909, which required cinemas to have licenses from local establishments. The BBFC is not controlled for profit; the income is used to cover costs. The BBFC's financial affairs are managed by the Council of Management. Members of the Council are drawn from the manufacturing and servicing sections of the film industry, banking, corporate accountancy, TV broadcasting and production and the charity sector. Council of Management members are not able to intercept with classification decisions and policy making, also there can’t be any biased perceived conflict of interest within the decisions, simultaneously; members have to command the confidence of our customers. At this moment of time, there are a list of names on Council membership, who are, Graham Lee, Steve Jaggs, Sonita Alleyne, Maggie Carver, Joanne Shaw and Jonathan Teckman. The BBFC covers classifications on many platforms, which are films, DVDs and video games. According to the Video Recordings Act 2010 it is a must obligation to classify videos. Their main intentions for doing this are for a simple target, “to protect children and other vulnerable groups from harm through being exposed to unsuitable material”. Within Britain, Every movie or video game that is set to be realised, it has to go through the BBFC. The Guidelines of the BBFC are not just decided by a select few of people with unfair views, fair from it, it is based on the views of over eight thousand members of the public and that is also including many teenagers; due to now the BBFC has campaigned a new policy, that is to get the opinion from a wide age range of both genders; the youngest being as young as 16 to get a broader opinion and views on the ratings on movies in the UK. The views from the younger members of teenagers’ were taken from a selection of schools that took part in an online survey, the survey asked about movies that related to them that they would know about, movies and games they had seen and games they had played. The BBFC’s guidelines are the main guidelines used to rate all films and DVDs in the UK. Since external issues are affecting the guidelines, such as, realism of movies, how easy is it to obtain a copy of the game, and obviously violence, sex, language and drugs ect, for reasons like this they are updated every four years. Other factors that affect the guidelines are things such as, research into media consumption, law and expert opinion. Set up in 1912 by the film industry, The British Board of Film Censors is an autonomous body to bring a degree of uniformity to the classification of film nationally. In 1982 (UK) a term which was called "Video nasty" was used, It covered a number of distributed movies, the reason they were given this term was due to the violent content by the press.

There are many different issues the BBFC must deal with when classifying films. These include violence, drugs, and language and sex references. These different issues are evaluated by the BBFC and it determines whether the film will be classified at a U, PG, 12, 12A, 15 or an 18 rating. The case that I have chosen to write about is 127 Hours/The Human Centipede, the reason I have chosen to do this case is because I feel like everyone has a right to view what they want if they are over the age of 18, and not what they are told is “suitable” for them. The way I will be portraying my views across this topic is comparing and

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contrasting the film classification system. A personal interest of mine is to watch movies, regardless of the genre or age. Because of this I have seen a vast range of 18+ material, such as killing, blood, decapitation ect. So having movies like this available to the public, but not other movies does not make sense to me, if you are going to ban one movie due to “unsuitable” content, but not with others that are similar, why not ban any period. Even if you are an adult (18+) it can still even be classed as unsuitable for adults and can get banned from them also, it will not classify material that is in breach of the obscene publication acts 1959 and 1964. Which has both its upside and downside. The upside to the acts is that it protects a young audience from these types of movies, and stops them copying them, protect the public, and especially children, from content which might raise harm risks, empower the public, especially parents, to make informed viewing choices, recognise and respect adult freedom of choice within the law, respond to and reflect changing social attitudes towards media content through proactive public consultation and research, provide a cost-effective, efficient classification service within our statutory remit, work in partnership with the industry to develop innovative service models to provide content advice which support emerging media delivery systems, provide an effective service to enforcement agencies. However on the other hand the downside to the acts is that it, why can someone tell you what to watch? Anyone can download it online, which, is actually temps people even more to watch it due to the ban, and they want to see why it was banned, which just goes completely against their targets in the first place. Even though there are some good valid points to why some movies can be banned regardless of the audiences age, such as people copying what they see, like shooting people and incidents along that line in my opinion it is ridiculous that someone has the power to tell you what to watch or not to watch. And it should not be up to someone to tell you that YOU may be offended by the movie. Having the age range (PG, 12+. 18+ ect) is a great idea because it tells everyone what to expect given the category, but not even having the option to even watch a movie that is decided by someone else is just absurd. But everything is done for a reason, and obviously they people who have thought of this idea thinks it has a positive outcome, so I will be going into detail about the upside and downside of cases.

The case I have chosen to talk about first is the movie 127 Hours, 127 Hours is a drama inspired by the true story of a young extreme sports enthusiast who gets injured whilst ‘canyon’ climbing in a remote part of Utah. Having fallen down a crack in the earth, Aron's arm becomes trapped and he has limited supplies of food and water. After several days he realizes extreme measures are required if he is to escape with his life. He makes a decision: to cut off the arm so he can climb for help.

The real concern in this movie is that it is a nervous and frequently horrifying drama that explores frightening visions of hurt and isolation; however it does also celebrate the human spirit, power and the potential for strength and creativity. In 2010 the movie was given to the BBFC without a category request to let them decide, it was given a 15 category from the examiners, the main reason for this is that there are around fifteen uses of strong language, However the strong language is debated due to the scene and the movie circumstances, for example, Strong language was used a few times in a scene when Aron falls and realises he is stuck; but for obvious reasons there are too many uses to be given a 12, only 12’s that have strong language is a 12 due to the ‘infrequent’ amount of strong language; permitted by the

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BBFC Guidelines. Also there are some “friendly” sex references within the movie, a scene that has an example of this is when Aron is trapped and then fantasises about things that have happened in his life leading up to the present where, trapped and alone with no-one aware he is missing, he thinks about how he would like to have relationships in the future. And with this, there is also a scene in a car in which several young people appear semi-naked, exposing their skin to the snow. That however is not the main issue with relation to the BBFC; the main problem is within a scene that generated a lot of controversy when it was reviewed in the U.S, prior to its UK classification, the main issue was described as tough to watch. The sequence that caused this issue was at 74 minutes that includes strong, gory detail, as Aron finally decides to chop off his own arm with a relatively blunt penknife. As examiners noted, it is detailed, clear and strong visuals of Aron hacking of flesh, some bloodletting, and also the view of Aron breaking his own bone and a clear shot where you can see him cutting a nerve (CSI-style) and given this it is understandable that the viewing experience is certainly likely to be intense for audiences.

Just from the off you can understand why there has been complaints with the scene as seeing a person cutting flesh can be unpleasant and very disturbing. So you would expect a movie like this to be an 18 due to the obvious, as not only does it protect younger audience from these types of scenes which can have traumatic effects, and can even result into physical effects, such as them coping the actions. However, the context of the scene was considered carefully, which I agree completely. Yes, in a different context I would understand why there would be problems to this type of scene, for example, horror movies, if it was just to have gory scenes just because it meant to scare the audience. But in this case, there is no malicious intent to the bloody scenes; it was a realistic outcome to the problem Aron was in. It was ether cutting his hand of to escape and live, or to die. It isn’t a horror image which relishes or invites pleasure in the gore or injury. In fact, while it shows and suggests violence and also technically self-harm, it is not gestured as a bad thing, yet a representation of skilled improvised surgical technique, that was undertaken in the most extreme of circumstances and is required to save a life.

The event takes place while the man is exploring, which promotes ideas of survival, creativity, independence and comfort; which in most eyes portrayed as heroic actions then most people may have had to result to doing so if they were in a similar issue. Having these contextual arguments were taken into account in reports and discussions which concluded that though this is a strong gory image, it would be an over-literal reading of the guidelines to confine the work to the adult category, given its possible appeal to a slightly younger audience, and its clear points of difference from stronger violent films and horror works passed at 18. A downside to this is that audiences under the age of 18 have never seen or experienced a possible predicament, and if they later in life see a scene like this that is in context of conflicting pain or blood, they will be shocked and may cause issues, but having seen a bloody scene that has no importance of conflicting self-harm may be easier to watch as it is done for a reason. However it then changed into an age 15 to given the potential for the scene to be ‘difficult to watch’, and CA and ECI were created, although care was taken not to completely spoil the scene for those viewers coming to the film unaware of the details of the story. CA noted that 127 Hours contained 'one scene of strong gory injury and strong language'. The ECI described the scene: "Aron's predicament, as he suffers the effects

Clayton Skorski

of thirst, hunger and cold, becomes increasingly tense and desperate and begins to take a toll on his mental state. Realising that he is likely to die in the ravine, Aron makes a desperate decision which offers him the only means of surviving. The outcome presents a scene which places a focus on self-inflicted strong gory injury. The BBFC's Guidelines at 15 state that 'Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury. The strongest gory images are unlikely to be acceptable'. The injury is not the result of violence as such, but is self-inflicted out of necessity and although there are moments of graphic detail in the scene, they are not dwelt upon for sensationalist reasons but to show the real-life extremes to which an individual had to go in order to survive. Those intending to see the film are advised that the scene carries the potential to cause distress and physical discomfort." This in my opinion is a great awareness of the BBFC as they didn’t have to cut the scene out as it would have ruined the movie completely, and also they understood that the scene was not intended, and states. Aron makes a desperate decision which offers him the only means of surviving, with a real-life outcome.

Is the BBFC relevant? In today’s media most people who use the internet also download there media illegally. So that gives them the option to download any movie they want, when they want. Movies like 127 hours and The Human Centipede and others that got banned for a scene that may have controversy, temps people to watch the movie to see what the big deal is about. Just like if a child is told not to hit a red button, or touch the pan because it is hot, there first reaction is to do the opposite. And movies that get slammed in the media have the same effect, they will want to watch it, so it goes completely against the BBFC’s intentions and they do not achieve what they are set out to do. So really, BBFC banning movies is not relevant at all.

In conclusion I think BBFC did make the smart and well thought out choice, as it is a movie that shows a real life problem and a good story based on real life, it would not be right to cut out the part where he does cut his arm off, as it was will be an emotional part of the movie (even though it may be hard to watch) and most of the audience knew that cutting of his arm would be the obvious outcome given his situation. I do agree with the fact to why it was discussed to be classed as an 18 due to the scene, but as it is not intended to be the highlight of the movie, it was right to leave it in and let the audience experience the real life journey the person went through.