Censorship
The purpose of this page is to discuss one of the most topical issues in cinema which is of course censorship. For starters, are you someone who believes in the freedom to watch what ever it is that appeals to you? Is it OK to watch violent movies that display graphic violence and mutilation or gratuitous sex scenes? Or are you someone who believes that censorship laws should become stricter in order to curb the growing sexual and violent depictions in cinema?
The whole idea behind censorship in cinema is the monitoring of films in order to remove what could be considered as obscene, objectionable, or even harmful to the people who will be watching the movie. Movies are rated in categories so that people will know what to expect and also to stop certain age groups from watching material that would not be considered suitable for them. The ratings that follow apply to Australia ( I don't know about censorship laws in other countries): X - X-rated material contains explicit sexual scenes and is only available to people over 18 years of age; R - Restricted material that contains heavy violence, heavy sex scenes ( though not explicit ), extreme drug use, extreme language, or a combination of more than one; MA - Mature Adults which is material that can be viewed by anyone above 15 only if accompanied by an adult; M - Mature which is material to be viewed by someone over the age of 15; PG - Parental Guidance is recommended for this rating; G - General which can be viewed by any age group.
The whole argument behind censorship is that certain depictions of life will serve to lower the standards of morals as well as inciting people to re-enact what they see on the screen. Certain situations in the past would support the latter argument. If you recall that after the release of the Rambo movies the spate of Rambo type assaults and shootings that took place. Even worse still was when a scene from the horror movie Child's Play 4 was re-enacted by two children in England who stoned a four year old boy to death.
The other side of the argument is that people who are disturbed enough to re-enact crimes that are presented in movies would carry out the crimes anyway, irrelevant of what they see on screen. People who reject stringent censorship laws believe that as adults, people should be allowed to choose what they view rather than having some board decide what is or isn't good for them to see.
One of the most interesting cases of censorship in recent years was the debate regarding the banning of the 1997 movie Lolita, where many people wanted to have the movie rejected from cinemas and video shops. When Vladimir Nabokov's controversial story was first put to film by Stanley Kubrick ( a director who would face further censorship battles with his film A Clockwork Orange) in the very conservative era of 1962, the movie was subject to criticism but was still released. In the much more liberal era of 1998 ( which was when the second movie was released ) the movie came under harsher criticism than both the release of the book and the first movie ever saw. The reason for this was that even though 1998 censorship laws were much more lenient than those in 1962, the media coverage of countless child abuse cases made the topic a very hot one. So it can be said that alot of the laws or feelings regarding censorship are based on the political flavour of the time.
Censorship Page
Last Updated October 24, 1999
Web Page by John Princiotto
Murdoch University
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Graphics courtesy of www.filmsite.org and debbytraywick@ussvoyager.com