The BBFC has, after an appeal by the distributor of The King’s Speech against the original ‘15’ rating, applied its formal reconsideration process to the cinema release and classified it ‘12A’ with the Consumer Advice ‘Contains strong language in a speech therapy context’.

The BBFC’s language Guidelines for ‘12A’ state: ‘The use of strong language (for example f***) must be infrequent’.  In the case of The King’s Speech there are two isolated instances where the character of King George VI uses strong language several times at the instigation of his therapist during the speech therapy sessions he is undergoing to alleviate his stammer.  The strong language is not aggressive and not directed at any person.

The Guidelines state that ‘because works from time to time present issues in ways which cannot be anticipated, these criteria will not be applied in an over literal way if such an interpretation would lead to an outcome which would confound audience expectations’.  After careful consideration by the President and Director of the BBFC, the Board took the view that the way the strong language is presented in The King’s Speech did not contravene the language Guidelines at ‘12A’ and that the public would understand why the Board has reached this decision.

The remake of the 1978 ‘rape and revenge’ film, I Spit on Your Grave, has been cut by the BBFC to receive an ‘18’ cinema rating.  Cuts have been requested to A Serbian Film for DVD and Blu-ray release.

The original version of I Spit on Your Grave was at the centre of the concerns about children accessing violent and sexually violent videos and the unregulated availability of potentially obscene videos that led to the passing of the Video Recordings Act in 1984.  This remake, which has been submitted for cinema classification, broadly follows the plot of the original, telling the story of a young woman who is gang raped and who subsequently takes her revenge on the perpetrators.  While the rape sequence in the modern version places slightly less emphasis on the nudity of the victim than the original, there is more emphasis on threat and humiliation.  The modern version also has higher production values.  The Board has required a total of 17 cuts (amounting to 43 seconds of changes) to the rape sequence for breaches of the Board’s sexual violence policy. (The original remains cut, also for breaches to this policy.)

The BBFC has also required cuts to the DVD submission of A Serbian Film for an ‘18’ rating.  This Serbian language film with subtitles is about a former Serbian porn star, who is lured out of early retirement by an offer of money to participate in an ‘artistic’ porn film for the ‘foreign market’.  When he is forced to participate in abusive activities he tries to pull out but is drugged and is forced to continue with the filming.

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A year of declining submissions for cinema and DVD but increased online certification via the BBFC.online scheme is marked in the BBFC Annual Report for 2009, published today.

While the Board saw ‘traditional’ media submissions fall for the third year running, the voluntary classification scheme for video content being supplied by downloading and streaming continues to draw new content providers and suppliers*.  2009 was the first full calendar year of operation and saw online certificates reach over 8,000, covering film and television content.  The BBFC.online scheme was developed in the knowledge that the EU Audiovisual Services Directive would require  the UK to introduce,  by the end of 2009,  a form of statutory regulation for certain video-on- demand services operating from within the UK. This EU Directive requires all member states to introduce certain basic rules for video-on-demand services which offer ‘TV-like’ content to the public.

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The BBFC has rejected the sexually violent DVD, Lost in the Hood. This means that it cannot be legally supplied anywhere in the UK. The decision was taken by the Director, David Cooke and the Presidential Team of Sir Quentin Thomas, Alison Hastings and Gerard Lemos.

Lost in the Hood is a US sex work focussing exclusively on the abduction and rape of a number of men. In each scenario, the predatory male characters chose a victim who appears to have become ‘lost in the hood’ (ie a bad neighbourhood in the United States). They then abduct their chosen victim and force him to engage in sexual acts with them against his will. Each scene places a strong emphasis on the non consensual nature of the sex, with the victims pleading to be released, showing discomfort and making unsuccessful attempts to escape. Similarly, the perpetrators display a high level of physical and verbal aggression. By presenting the spectacle of sexual violence within the context of an explicit sex work, whose primary intention is to sexually arouse the viewer, Lost in the Hood has the effect of eroticising and endorsing sexual violence in a potentially harmful fashion.

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