President Andreas Whittam Smith and new Director Robin Duval pay tribute to the retiring director, James Ferman, as the “doyen of regulators”. Among the many qualities recognised are his passion for film, his conscientious and tireless capacity for work, and his determination to achieve a proper balance between protecting vulnerable viewers and safeguarding freedom of expression. This will be his legacy, alongside the authority and respect he has earned throughout the regulatory industry in the UK and in Europe, as well as his consistent and courageous commitment to fair-dealing, to judging every work on its merits even when others have attached to it virtues or mischiefs of their own imagining. (President’s Introduction & New Director’s Report)
Reviewing his last year as BBFC Director, James Ferman reflects on 24 years of trends in British film and video classification. Of the many lasting achievements over that period he cites as the most important the formulation of a clear set of principles and policies. He pinpoints violence as the key issue during his tenure as director, particularly sexual violence. Mr Ferman offers his best wishes to the new management team in taking classification into the new millennium. (Director’s Report for 1998)
At the top of the Board's agenda in 1998 was the codification of its principles and procedures into a comprehensive set of Classification Guidelines (Appendix I) which were first circulated in draft form and discussed in a nation-wide ‘Roadshow’. From this series of public meetings it emerged that screen violence has become the principal focus of public concern, and it remained one of the main preoccupations of the Board throughout the year. (Director’s Report for 1998) On film and video, the Board was at pains to moderate the levels of 'violence as entertainment' in films like Lethal Weapon 4, where the distributors collaborated with the Board in toning down the blood-letting, cutting neck breaks, head butts, garottings, eye-gougings, and the noisy breaking of bones in five of the seven reels in order to achieve a '15' rather than an '18'. Even more welcome were films which explored violence rather than exploited it, films like Saving Private Ryan in which the harrowing truth about war was deemed appropriate for a mid-teens audience. Violence in children’s films was subject to particularly stringent monitoring and at times intervention, with heavy cuts required in the latest of the 3 Ninjas series where the risks of copycat violence were self-evident in the martial arts sequences. Surprisingly, a cut to a vicious head-butt was needed even in Disney’s cartoon epic Mulan for similar reasons.
The Board increased its commitment to openness and accountability with a series of press releases on controversial or high-profile decisions (Appendix II). Hot on the heels of the Roadshow and the publication of its Guidelines, the Board opened its doors to journalists for the first Radio 4 documentary on the Board’s work, broadcast in December, and for a major television documentary transmitted during Channel 4’s Censorship Weekend early in the New Year. And before Christmas the Board’s new website at http://www.bbfc.co.uk went live with free information about the Board's entire register ofclassified films and videos. It also carries press releases, classification guidelines and papers about theBoard and its work. Its volume of e-mail has increased steadily, currently sustaining about 40 'hits' per hour throughout the working day.
The President announced his intention to widen the sources of advice even further by setting up an Advisory Panel on Children’s Viewing to ensure that the Board’s policy and practice maintains sufficient concern for the needs and vulnerabilities of children. The panel of twelve members will be announced shortly.
The Board’s burgeoning programme of media education continued to develop, with examiners undertaking an impressive range of talks and presentations from primary school children up to students at graduate level andbeyond. Examiners also enjoyed their second successful annual contribution to Film Education’s National Schools Film Week with presentations to a total of 763 primary and secondary students in cinemas from Edinburgh to Belfast and from Cardiff to London.
It was a year of surprisingly little controversy, with the early concern about ‘taboo’ themes in certain films fading away as they were released and their actual content became apparent. A range of professional consultants confirmed the Board's view that the film Lolita tackled the sensitive issue of paedophilia with sufficient discretion to be passed ‘18’ without cuts. Likewise, Kissed and Crash failed to offer any substance to sensation seekers when passed for adult viewing on video. (Review of The Year)
For the Board, it was the busiest year since 1989. Of the 393 cinema features classified in 1998, only 14 (3.6%) were cut (the lowest percentage on record). Most of these films were cut for violence, and many were cut voluntarily so that the distributor could achieve a lower and more commercially profitable classification. In 1998, a total of 3,823 certificates were issued (or refused) for video, an increase of 20% on 1997. Cuts were required to 325 videos (8.5% of the total). Most of these were for violence, but 13 hours of cuts were also made in sex material, most of it originally submitted in the hope of achieving an 'R18' certificate for supply in licensed sex shops.
Of the 41 digital works classified, 27 were games and 14 were interactive CD-Roms, of which two were cut for '18' on grounds of sexual explicitness. The sequel to Carmaggedon was submitted in the form of a ‘demo’ or sampler, where the pleasures on offer seemed as morally dubious as those of its forerunner in that they still arose from the mowing down of innocent pedestrians. Following professional advice from four psychologists, the demo was finally offered an ’18’ certificate on condition that a parental lock was incorporated. Whilst the Board remains cautious about the classification of such works, it acknowledges the lack of sufficient research into the long-term effects of games upon those who regularly play them. It also notes for the future the unforeseen complication that games requiring classification on video are beginning to bypass the legal requirements by being distributed first of all on the Internet. A blood or 'splat pack' for Carmageddon was made available on the Net in order to convert the exempt zombie version to the unclassified full-blood version. (Digital Media)
The Board produced a summary of current available research into violent video games (Appendix VI), which concludes that there may be benefits in a more substantial study investigating both short and long term effects.
The Home Office published the full report of research conducted by Professor Kevin Browne into The Effects of Video Violence on Young Offenders. It indicated that children from a violent background were more likely to seek out violent entertainment which treated violence as glamorous and even admirable. Such works may validate the violence of the family background, reinforcing its influence as a role model. In that way, violent videos may feed the taste for violence and reinforce violent thoughts and impulses, thus encouraging the commission of more offences. The research underlines the need for continued vigilance in censoring levels of screen violence for younger viewers.
The launch of DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) marked the most significant development of the year for the industry, and the versatility of the medium, with its capacity to deliver multiple visual and audio tracks and components, poses new challenges to the Board for classification. In particular, it allows scenes to be taken out of context and assembled in quite different contexts with potentially disturbing effects. Given that no items on a recording should carry a higher classification than the feature, the Board must ensure that clips taken out of context remain suitable for viewing in the category given to the original work.
Five videos were rejected in 1998, but one of the rejects was overturned on appeal. Two of the five, Maniac and Frisk, were serial killer films in which sex was linked with the pleasures of killing. In both these videos, the juxtaposition of sex and violence seemed likely to have a dangerous impact on some vulnerable viewers. Changing Room Exposed was rejected on the grounds that a video which invades the privacy of a men’s changing room without the knowledge or consent of those being photographed breaches the right to privacy guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. In the Board's view this right outweighed the distributor's right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the Convention, which formed the grounds for an appeal to the Video Appeals Committee. Although the appeal was withdrawn before the hearing, the Board's case is summarised in Appendix IV (Board's Reply to the Notice of Appeal). The fourth reject was Deadbeat At Dawn, a work considered so incessantly violent that, even after cuts to the glamorised use of weaponry throughout, the intensity of the violence seemed in clear breach of the harm condition of the Video Recordings Act. (Appendix II - Press Releases; Appendix IV - Board's Reply to Notice of Appeal on Changing Room Exposed)
An explicit sex video called Makin' Whoopee! was refused an ‘R18’ certificate (for supply only through licensed sex shops) when the distributor declined to make the cuts required by the Board. The Board was concerned that material of this nature was liable to seizure and forfeiture under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act. The Board's decision to reject was appealed and the Appeal was successful. The Video Appeals Committee concluded that the material was not obscene. Although one decision could not be regarded as setting a benchmark, the decision was taken by R18 suppliers as an encouragement to submit more explicitmaterial for classification. The Board has a duty not to classify material that is in breach of the law and cannot rely on the appeals judgement in this single case to set guidelines which would conflict with enforcement practice elsewhere.
( Appendix II - Press Releases; Appendix V - Decision of the Video Appeals Committee on Makin' Whoopee!)
Andreas Whittam Smith - President
Robin Duval - Director