1. BBFC
The bbfc stands for the British board of film classification and
as the name states, they class films with what ages can see
them. They are the reason you could not watch that film in
the cinema because it had a few too many drops of blood at
one point. Every film producer needs to pay the BBFC to
classify their film before being able to release it to the cinema
whether they want to or not, just because of the fact that the
film needs to be classified for the cinema so four year olds do
not end up watching pornography. Despite this, the BBFC do
not profit from their work and work for the satisfaction that
people do not watch what they want but what society expects
them to see. Within the BBFC, the employees have to watch
each film and note down everything they think is offensive in
some way. Although the film producer may intend a film to be
a 12A (to have a larger audience and profit), the film may as
well end up being an 18+ after the BBFC is done with it.
The U rating means all people over the age of four can watch
the film. This is due to cinemas not letting little irritating
children in to cry and screech throughout the whole movie.
The PG rating means the child’s parents must come in too if a little kid were to
watch it.
A 12A rating means the same except someone over 12 can watch the movie
without their mommy.
A 12 rating means some as young as twelve and anyone above that can watch the
movie on their own.
This then applies the same way for the other ratings: They show the minimum
age the audience must be to watch the movie.
Finally an R18 rating means only adults can watch the movie as it has strong sex
and fetish content.
Legal acts
2. Child protection act
The child protection act is used to protect children from working for more than 4
hours a day; they are also not allowed to be placed in scenes involving sexual
content.
Video recording act 1984
The video recording act is an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed in
1984. It states that commercial video recordings must carry a classification that
has been agreed upon by an authority designated in the home office. The British
board of film classification was made as the classification authority in 1985. This
was put in place when VHS was introduced as people could rewind to watch
things which were meant to be seen only once. Due to this raising a lot of
controversy, this act was introduced so that people too young for certain scenes
would not be watching them.
Obscene publication act
The BBFC have the right to remove any film from being viewed in the United
Kingdom if it contains too much disturbing content. This content includes scenes
that may cause physical or mental harm to an audience, which may result in a
negative impact. The BBFC can ask the producer to remove certain scenes in
order to allow the movie to be published. They also ban material that they
believe may result in criminal acts.
Effect of BBFC upon film
The BBFC has had a fair impact upon film; as it has banned many films they saw
as too offensive to be viewed by the public. They also banned films, which broke
the rules and regulations of the legal acts. A banned movie is often referred to as
a “video nasty” and this term became popular when VHS came out in the 1980’s
because people could get a copy of a banned movie and watch it in the comfort of
their own home with no restriction of what they see. Due to these movies being
offensive to groups of people, the video recording act has to be issued to calm
down religious extremists and other groups of people who felt offended. After
this, a lot of movies were deemed unsuitable to be watched at home or in
general. The majority of these movies were horror however there were some
other genres involving sex and torture. Movies such as ‘Straw Dog’, ‘Driller Killer’
and ‘Last house on the left’ were banned for disobeying the legal acts and were
considered a video nasty because of their (claimed disturbing) content.
