- Keith Vaz, Labour MP (yes, you heard right, Labour…..), on Modern Warfare 2

Cat in the Brain (1990)

The Board carefully considered this low-budget Italian horror video in the light of the usual tests. It has over the years, in this context, expressed concern about images which bring sex and violence together. The BBFC Draft Guidelines for Classifying Films and Videos (published in July 1998 in the BBFC’s last Annual Report) identify sexually violent material as potentially harmful. The Guidelines explain that the Board is stricter with scenes of sexual violence on video than film, because of their potential to be played over and over at home. Sexual violence may only be shown providing the scenes do not offer sexual thrills.

“What are the reasons that lead to one’s choice in conducting evil acts? Pain is an undeniable factor. Pain is an inevitable aspect of human journey. Pain can also be constructive, as in the process of dealing with our pain, we engage in the positive development of human psyche. Unfortunately, many souls shy away from the necessary anguish of human experiences. They actively seek for short-term pleasure and intensely avoid pain. When one runs away from pain, from facing life openly, actions of evil set in. A good example is the devastating effects of addictions as we often observe where one disregards the welfare of oneself and others in pursuing self-gratification.”

I disagree with this. I feel that acting evilly is not due to avoiding of pain, it is a desire for change. Cara Newman seems to be suggesting that people start off fine and then go ahead with being ‘evil’ to stay this way and avoid feeling bad. I disagree. I feel that pain causes people to act evil as they are exposed to painful social stimulus and then seek reprieve from it and actively rebel, through ‘evil’ acts, in order to achieve change. This ‘pain’ might not be overt. It may not be that someone is being abused physically and then as an outlet abuses others… thought this could be the case… Rather i see the ‘pain’ as an oppressive and restricting force compounded by society. (office shootings)

I am completely against the argument that we are all build with innate ideas of what is good and what is bad (a core set of morals) and i further reject the ridiculous standpoint that some people (evil people) chose to reject these core values and go against their nature to commit atrocities. People do not choose to be evil. I belive it is too simplistic to think that people who have do ‘bad’ things do them because that have chosen to be ‘bad’. For many it is something they are either forced into doing by social systems and conventions. For example Brenda Ann Spencer the 16-year-old girl who killed her class mates et al in 1979 did not do this because she is an intrinsically bad person who chose to reject her natural feelings in place for more sadistic ‘evil’ ones. Rather she is a product of society. She is a person who, like all of us, contained the potential to be normal and ‘good’ as well as the potential to be ‘evil’. the only difference between the majority of the population and Brenda Ann Spencer is that something in her upbringing/ environment caused her to react in a way which rebelled against social convention in the most extreme way. Now the obvious argument to this might be “well now other people have the same upbringing and don’t do that so she must have something wrong with her right?” Well I’d suggest that anyone who is exposed to an environmental stimulus which may lead one to react in that way, as well all are at one point, has something wrong with them if they just accept that situation. Lets look at another example… right fucking billions of people conform to the strenuous, tedious, torture that is office work. These people spend a huge chunk of their life bored. Sitting at a desk doing menial, pointless work and being given wank all back (look at the cows in Radiohead’s 2+2=5 vid). Surely then it is totally understandable if some individuals respond to this social stimulus by rejecting their insufferable routine and escaping their hideous patterns of work by killing everyone in their office. See who in this context it is clearly, almost justifiable, that the individual committed such an evil act. If there is an evil in this would i would suggest that it is not the individual’s, rather social institutions and oppressive patterns and conventions which exist in the interests of the few and which leave the masses to be content with caged thought and uncurious entertainment outlets (media nad sport for instance).

• “Roze up, O Young men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court & the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War. Painters! on you I call. Sculptors! Architects! Suffer not the fashonable Folls to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works, or the expensive advertizing boasts that they make of such works; believe Christ & his Apostles that there is a Class of Men whose whole delight is in Destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are but just & true to our own Imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live for ever in Jesus our Lord.”

the biggest issue for me is probably that people don’t think about the massive implications which are created from censorship. It has become so easily and redily accepted by many that things get censored but lets think for a minuet what censorship is. Censorship is a dictation from a group of people who must surely be considered moral superiours as they are able to watch material and judge whether it is too damaging for the general population. I say they must be morally superiour as they have never themselves been corrupted by such works… interesting eh? Well to me that doesn’s sound right. How can you say that one person is more moral than another. that is a rediculous point… But hey lets assume they are for now or if not taht somehow watching it in with a view that it might be too corrupting acts somehow as a shield to the viewer. So this group can tell audiences what they are allowed to watch. They have the power to say that a certain piece is too extreme for an adult to watch… now here i’m not talking about children because i don’t know about censorship for kids, that’s a whole other issue. I am only talikng about total and utter banning of work for an adult audioence.

one of my issues with censorship as a concept is that i belive that every piece of drama, art, media, whaterer has something to teach. You can learn a huge amount about a piece’s social climate and environment from that piece, regardless of what it is. Therefore censorship which is applied to everything except that of interllectial or artistic importance should not be able to apply to anything as everything has an artistic or interllectuial importance in that even if a piece was not intened for interlectual stimulation it can still achieve this. In essence censorship is a barbaric act which surpresses knowledge and withdraws from  the public consumption material which may well convey important messages. That my problem with it see?

Also Censors seem to have the power to decide what is and isn’t politically correct. They are able to and do ban media which could potentially offend. This completely ruins political correctness. It is censors who are responsible for pollution our society with the form of political correctness which people complanin about so much and this is bad for 2 reasons. On the one hand people get absorbed in a world completely detached from the real one and end up compounding stereotypes by their blatant and inaccurate placement and definition of minorities. And on the other people lose faith in  pcness and end up reverting to a state of nochance and uncareing about important pcness. In other words one the one hand censors produce ‘Proffesor Umbriges’ and on the other you get Clarksons.

I love how in this picture the censorship mark makes it look much more offensive or is that just me

• A clockwork orange – Stanley Kubrick- Well lets start with a classic eh? It seems that the biggest problem with this film may have been that it made Alex a much too likeable character. This censors though would lead to people wanting to be like him an d therefore commit the atrocities which he committed right? ‘monkey see monkey do’… This i feel is a little bit simplistic, even for the censors, the very idea that people are this easily influenced into doing evil things because someone cool did it is commonplace though, and has been used in explaining violent acts on countless occasions… which i’m sure i’ll get to. It’s so easy to say that it was a piece of film or porn or media something which made little Jimmy burn down his school and so so freaking wrong. This argument completely ignores cause and effect, suggesting that little Jimmy was a perfectly good little boy untill he was corrupted by the nasty nasty film and then he became evil, not that he was perhaps leaning towards the dark side and just happened to see a film which mirrored his view and, because society doesn’t seem to teach about the difference between fantasy and reality he found it hard to distinguish the two. Also this view that a film can turn someone evil, relies heavily on the argument that the world is split into two sides, good folk and madmen. Wouldn’t it be so simple if everything bad that happens was committed by some different species that walked, talked and looked just like humans but which was very not human. Then we could just discover their ‘mark’, round them up and kill em all right? ;P But if course this isn’t the case. ‘evil people are still people. It’s so easy for people to say that films make some people go bad, completely ignoring that we all have that potential and that we all have the same base instincts which are provoked very much in the same way by films and stuff and it is  other, much larger and hard to understand/ change environmental factors which direct someone into acting evil.
• The Devils – Kene Russell
• O Calcutta – Banned by the BBFC in 1972
• Cast tango – Bertolucci – Frank smith tried to get it banned March 1973 (adding him to black list)
• Freaks – 1930something banned because it used people with real deformities. Well now really how can you justify that. This case is a prime example of people being too afraid of complaints to allow something to be aired. The performance itself focused on carnival folk who were given the label ‘freaks’. It is very telling that the censors couldn’t distinguish that this was a legitimate reason for the title and not just an insulting word used against people with deformities. The stupidity of this decision makes me so angry. It seems like the censors are determined to prevent all showing of any sort of marginalised population in the media as it is so scarce (because of the censors) that they feel anything they do show will have to be a stereotype which they approve and allow everyone else to have for the particular social group. I wonder if the same off the wall carnivalesque stylistic storyline was performed by ‘normal’ actors, whether it would be passed by the censors…
• Visions of Ecstasy – Nigel Wingrove – this 19 min long piece was refused certification by the BBFC because it could be liable to prosecution for BLASPHEMY this was 1989! -> Blasphemy laws have been repealed in 2008 and the film is planned on being released
• The Beast in heat- Luigi Batzella – Story of some nazi moleting beast thing lol… Banned in uk still :’(
• Grotesque – nice and contempary

More to come…