And... which is really worse? Sex or violence? Since the violence which the stars have to perform is usually fake yet the nudity and dialog are real, I can understand why most Americans find sex and bad language on film more troublesome than their European counterparts do. If our real intent is to protect chilren from what they aren't prepared to understand, then I submit it's far more important to worry about sex than violence. There aren't a lot of weapons around my house for kids to mess around with.
Sex is bad? The human race only exists because each and every one of our ancestors had sex!
If our real intent is to protect chilren from what they aren't prepared to understand, then I submit it's far more important to worry about sex than violence. There aren't a lot of weapons around my house for kids to mess around with.
I'll submit that the real intent of banning sex is to protect adults from having to explain things to children that they are not prepared to understand.
When I was a child, sexual references shot completely over my head, and I think that that is true for most kids. When we were young, we used to listen to songs like "Hot Blooded", and "Hot Child In The City" -- songs with VERY strong sexual content, and although our parents were probably cringing, we were never even confused -- much less harmed -- by the sexual content. We just didn't understand it. It might as well not have been there. Or it was boring. Or yucky. Eew! Makeout scene! Time to throw popcorn!
Kids just don't notice or understand sexual references, until they hit puberty, which is the time that they are supposed to start noticing and understanding sexual material anyhow.
However, EVERY child understands violence, because violence is a part of every person's life starting from the first time they get pushed over on the playground, or before. Children understand violence VERY well, because it hurts, and unfortunately most conflicts in movies and television are resolved with violence and physical force.
And yes, television and movies DO influence behavior. Just ask the advertisers who spend billions of dollars to purchase advertising time. If television didn't influence behavior, why would they spend the money to buy it?
And finally, weapons are not required for children to learn to resolve conflicts by committing acts of violence. A fist is adequate, and most kids come equipped with two of those. And how about the kid who watched WWW wrestling, then did a body slam on his sister just like he saw on TV and killed her. Too bad he wasn't watching something with sexual content instead. His sister might be alive and he might not be in prison today. He probably wouldn't have been influenced by the sexual content because unlike violence, children's minds are not wired to understand sex until the hormones kick in.
It's laughable that you think my comments somehow seek to excuse violent trash like the WWF. It's another topic for another place to consider the parents who allow video babysitting of that variety. I don't even seek to excuse the violence in Tomb Raider, frankly. I was mainly exploring why Americans are more tolerant of movie violence in the sex/violence equation than Europeans are. If Tomb Raider were defendable art then the studio would never have agreed to the BBFC demands in order to collect more admission money from 12-15 year-olds.
Fortunately (or not) adults are free to access just about as much onscreen sex and violence as they want these days. Why should we try to find excuses for giving such access to children through mainstream entertainment?
Company chose to significantly reduce sight of a flick knife in several scenes, removing in particular material which appeared to glamorise the weapon , in order to achieve a 12. An uncut 15 was available to the distributor. The distributor also sought and was given advice during post-production which resulted in a reduction in violence in the final fight sequence (including the complete removal of a headbutt) prior to formal submission.[/b]
BTW, you can find this information for any film which has been submitted to the BBFC since it started in 1912 by going to www.bbfc.co.uk and clicking on 'search'.
One weird aspect of the BBFC is that its decisions do not have legal force for films shown in cinemas, but they do for rental and retail video. In the UK it is not a criminal offence to let a 12 year-old into a 15-certificate film, but it is to sell him a 15-certificate video. The 1909 Cinematograph Act, which was introduced as a fire safety measure (following a number of fatal nitrate fires in hastily converted shops being used as cinemas), required cinemas to be licensed by their city or county councils. The idea was authorities would inspect cinemas to make sure they weren't a fire risk. But in 1911-12, they started imposing other conditions on the licence as well, e.g. not opening on Sundays, not showing films beyond 11pm, and from there it was just a short step to censoring individual films.
There was a court case in 1912 in which a cinema in Lambeth accused its council of overstepping the mark, but the council won, and this effectively set the legal precedent for film censorship. The industry was then thrown into chaos - one film would be banned by one town and passed in the next - and so, to be sure of consistency, the BBFC was established as an industry body in order to take the job of censorship off the councils' hands. It then became the norm for cinema licences to say 'you may only show films which have been passed by the BBFC'. However, that's not the law, and there have been cases where councils have overridden the BBFC, usually to do with religion. For example 'Life of Brian' and 'Last Temptation of Christ' remain banned in one or two towns, and 'Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom' was passed for showing by one or two councils before the BBFC finally passed it last year.
So the BBFC have always been able to sidestep complaints that they are an unelected bunch of censors, blah blah blah, by pointing out that they could not totally ban a film, and that even the councils can't stop private screenings. With video, however, the BBFC do have legal force (under the 1984 video recordings act) - it is a direct criminal offence to buy or sell videos in contravention of their rating, which is a bit more of an issue from a civil liberties point of view.
You may not have a whole lot of weapons around your house for you kids to get hold of but there are surely a great many US households with guns available to children
If this is not the case why do we see so many reports of shootings by kids in school!
They did the same thing here with our version of Men In Black to get it through with a lower PG rating.
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"If you think THIS is fantastic...wait until you see the full effect with the HIMP!"
- Chief Inspector Clouseau.
Irrelevant. There are just as many if not *more* knives, sticks, baseball bats, and other things that can be made into a 'weapon' than just firearms.
>>If this is not the case why do we see so many reports of shootings by kids in school!<<
How many school shootings were there 25 years ago? 15 years ago? Firearms were just as accessible then as they are now. What about the incident in Japan where swords and knives were used in a massacre? Ban all knives? Give me a break. 
The reason for all the violence is a combination of things, the biggest ones being a system that is so fucked up that children are allowed to go out of control as it is now for all intents and purposes illegal (in the US at least) to discipline a child, plus all the liberal, politically correct, feel-good gobbledygook that is beiing shoved into their brains , giving them the moral stance of "Nothing is 'wrong' or 'bad' and I can do ANYTHING I WANT and YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING TO STOP ME!" not to mention the VERY high percentage of individuals involved in the non-gang-related school massacres being on Prozac, Ritalin, and other psychoactive drugs, and the rest of the establishment is at fault for not realizing there is a time bomb waiting to explode, instead seeing that these individuals (I will use Harris and Klebold from Columbine as an example) were going waaay off the deep end, with their web site, and their other bizarre actions that 25 years ago would have had them either in jail or in an insane asylum. Instead their behaviors were taken by the screwed system we are living in as 'expressing their individuality' and letting their feelings out' and the like. Look at the result of this.
Being in the UK you have a different system so you really cannot truly understand the problems here.
Telling it like it is,
Aaron
I agree with Charles, I am pretty sure that the uk 12,15 and 18 classifications are legally binding in cinemas.
Wasn't there something in the early 90's when Princess Di took one of the princes to a movie he was under age for and the cinema ended up being closed for a while by the BBFC.
To the British and other non-Americans, you got to understand that what Hollywood and what the United States media feeds you, the majority of us don't live that way, or believe those things. Our system is, according to Aaron, "fucked up", and the reason is simple: If your nation had our population numbers, ethnic groups, geography, history, and government, you too would have the same problems. We applied what works over here, and now where living in a time our founders never could have imagined, with the laws they gave us. And you know what? They still work. You guys outside this country see the bad, because only the bad, catches your attention. And even though your governments are our greatest allies, your people laugh at us everyday, but we're just like you. Its only the "Hollywood elites" who make you think that all Americans are gun toting thugs who kill inocent school kids with firearms our parents leave out on display in the living room.
We're not animals over here. As an operator I'm sure you've projected film that goes against your morals or makes fun of things you enjoy. Personally, I go to church every Sunday morning and in the winter I hunt and trap. Does that make me sub-human. Hollywood would tell you so. Look at how Christians are portrayed in Dogma or the scene with the trap that "mangles poor little animals" in Crocidile Dundee III. I show this stuff daily, but it's not me. Foreigners who see this might assume these plots show all Americans, but they don't.
Just remember we're just like you.
As for Princess Di, she attempted to get Prince Harry in to see a 15-cert film at the Odeon West End in 1996 - I once met the duty manager who refused to let them in (an anti-Royalist who I suspect will look upon the incident as the highlight of her career). The film was 'Some Mother's Son', which starred Aidan Gillen as an IRA fundraiser operating in the US. Ironically, the under-age issue grabbed all the headlines and even the right-of-centre press did not raise the issue of why a well-known public figure was taking her son to see propaganda for a group of murderous terrorists. At the very least it was a serious misjudgement.
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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
http://www.muellersatomics.com/