Abstract
This year the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is celebrating its centenary. Ever since its establishment in 1912, originally as the British Board of Film Censors, the BBFC has been an independent, non-governmental body, funded by the film industry and responsible for the national censorship and classification of films shown in British cinemas. Since the mid-1980s, when the organization changed its name and stressed its function as a classifier rather than as a censor, the Board managed to broaden its scope of action, and was given responsibility for classifying videos/DVDs for hire or purchase to view in the home as well as rating video games. Although the board is an industry-operated institution which in principle acts only as an advisory board for local authorities and councils (which may overrule any of the Board’s decisions), the BBFC has turned out to be one of the strictest film and video censorship systems in the western world.
Being probably the oldest media regulatory institution in Britain, the BBFC is also one of the most criticized. Even in the 1980s and more recently, when the BBFC’s classification policy has been characterized by a trend towards relaxation, the Board is often severely criticized for being hypersensitive to explicit images of sexuality, (sexual) violence, horror and strong language. Utilizing a classification system based on age restrictions, the Board can ban films and videos, or impose categories which might harm their commercial career by restricting them to a smaller market (e.g. the ‘R18’ category mostly referring to hardcore pornography), often in combination with imposing or demanding cuts from film makers, producers or distributors. Whereas classification systems in most European countries have abandoned the practice of banning and cutting movies, considering it obsolete, anachronistic in the Internet age, or contrary to the principle of artistic freedom, the BBFC still operates accordingly, as was, for instance, the case with Ken Loach’s recent The Angels’ Share (2012) where the ‘18’ classification was only avoided after a process of negotiation with the distributor and after the removal of several instances of ‘very strong language’ (e.g. the word ‘cunt’ was cut; BBFC certificate 16 May 2012).
Few film, video and games classification systems in the world have been more criticized and scrutinized than the BBFC, not only occasionally as in the case of Loach’s recent public attack on the Board’s ‘hypocrisy’, but also systematically by the press and by various activist anti-censorship organizations campaigning for freedom of expression. There is also a substantial deal of academic work on the BBFC, mainly on its history (e.g. Robertson, 1993 [1989]). One of the most prolific writers on media regulation and censorship in Britain, more in particular on film censorship, is Julian Petley. Over the past two decades, Petley has published many articles and books on the topic, not only academic work in scholarly journals and volumes, but also journalistic and opinion articles in newspapers and activist journals like The Guardian or the Index on Censorship. Most of this work has now been brought together in one intriguing volume, which to a large extent offers a refreshing update of the debate on audiovisual censorship since the 1980s. Most of the chapters in Petley’s Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain were written as a response to a new controversial decision by the BBFC, a new change in the Board’s policy, or they bear at least the trace of some urgency to reflect upon film and video censorship/classification today. The chapters are chronologically ordered around four episodes. Part I deals with the 1980s, the phenomenon of the video nasty, and the policy response to it in the form of the 1984 Video Recordings Act (VRA), which designated the BBFC as the classifying authority. The second part, equally consisting of three articles, examines the interpretation and operationalization of the Act during the 1980s, and critically looks at its consequences for the video industry. This part includes two interviews with James Ferman, who from 1975 till 1999 was the BBFC’s Secretary and (since 1985) Director, and who is mostly associated with a policy of relaxation and of restoring the BBFC’s public credibility. The third article (originally published in Sight and Sound in the winter of 1989/1990) extends the scope of the debate towards the question how the VRA and the BBFC’s policy finally narrowed the range of films which were available on the market during the second half of the 1980s, hence throwing up questions of censorship, market forces and oligopolization.
Part III looks at the 1990s, a decade characterized by the implications of the James Bulger affair, the press’s demonization of horror videos and the amendment of the VRA in 1993. The chapters in this part skilfully analyse the BBFC’s difficult task (and Ferman’s ability) in negotiating between the industry, the political arena and a ‘sensation-hungry and thoroughly illiberal press’, while at the same time defending the institution against the image of an ‘allegedly over-liberal BBFC’ (p. 83). Petley’s sharp analysis underlines how, finally, Ferman’s resistance to right-wing politicians’ and newspaper calls for tougher censorship can only be interpreted as meaning that the BBFC at that time was ‘less … a censor and more … a body actually engaged in struggles against censorship’ (p. 84). In the 1990s, the BBFC was also engaged in defending its policy during the public controversy around David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996), which was given an ‘18’ certificate by the Board, much against the will of local authorities and the right-wing press, which started a campaign against the ‘over-liberal BBFC and its independent-minded Director James Ferman’ (p. 127). The final chapter in this third part is an extended version of articles originally published in The Guardian and the Journal of Popular British Cinema, and it is probably one of the most interesting in the book. Not only does it contain some fine pieces of investigative work on how, during the second half of the 1990s, the BBFC examiners interpreted the liberalized guidelines in relation to the ‘R18’ category during their daily routines, leading to the conclusion that finally still ‘a large amount of material which was legally available nearly elsewhere in Europe remained (and remains) banned’ (p. 154). In this and other chapters, Petley also offers a sharp analysis of New Labour and the Blair government, which came to power in 1997 and which under Jack Straw as Home Secretary did not only fail ‘to bend the BBFC’ but even criticized Ferman publicly and ‘ordered an immediate halt to the whole liberalisation process’ (pp. 139, 156). New Labour’s ‘fundamental illiberalism’ (p. 157) underlines Petley’s central Plus ça change… argument, namely that the ‘events [outlined in his book] cover the Tory era from 1979 to 1997, the “New Labour” era from 1997 to 2010, and the beginnings of the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition era in May 2010, but changes of government and of prime minister have … made no impact at all on the narrative’ (p. 211).
This Plus ça change… argument is fully developed in the final chapters of the book, which extends the analysis to the first decade of the new century. Besides an interview with Ferman’s successor, Robin Duval (BBFC’s director from 1999 to 2004), and some fine case studies in Chapter 13 (on the re-examination of Wes Craven’s R-rated Last House on the Left, 1972), Part IV contains a concluding chapter in which Petley tries to bring forward a programme of reform. Although Petley’s book fully underlines the BBFC’s openness and its willingness to adapt its policies (the BBFC’s transparency, its shifting guidelines, the introduction of new categories, the trend towards public consultations and surveys, etc.), and although he agrees that ‘the BBFC is not the master of its own destiny’ (p. 156), the author convincingly maintains also that in recent years the ‘BBFC remains very far from fulfilling a purely classificatory role’ (p. 162). Besides arguing for the abolition of the Obscene Publications Act, the VRA and a redefinition of obscenity, offence and harm, Petley refers to some anachronisms like the unchanged powers of local authorities in terms of censorship, the availability of all kinds of material on the Internet, and to a growing societal heterogeneity in terms of values. For Petley, who in this book fully shows his multiple background as a film scholar, investigative journalist and activist, the role of the BBFC is not completely over, especially not in its ‘purely classificatory role’, where the Board ‘actually performs an extremely useful consumer guidance and media literacy function, especially for parents of young children’ (p. 210).