F--king Film Censors!

[Guest fountainhall]

Who would be a film censor? Once the scissors come out, someone is going to be unhappy and scream about it. But in Britain, at least, it seems some of the rules are quite transparent.

 

Take the word “fuck”. Apparently the British Board of Film Classification rules state that you can use the word up to four times in the course of a movie - if, that is, you want the movie to get a 12A rating, which means twelve or over accompanied by an adult. More than four times and you’re going to get a 15 rating. The latter clearly loses quite a bit of the youth market.

 

Pretty clear, you’d think. But what about The King’s Speech and that scene where Colin Firth stutters the word around 17 times, and yet the movie still got a 12A rating.

 

BBFC Director David Cooke says –

 

"The language thing is difficult, because we know the public wants us to look out for that. We have a rule of thumb that you can't have more than four uses of the F-word at 12A," says Cooke. "The King's Speech had around 17, depending on how you count them. The distinction we drew was that The King's Speech had them all stuttered out in two bursts and was in the speech therapy context – we felt it was a wholly exceptional context.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/09/century-film-censorship

 

Which makes me wonder, "Why four? Why not five - or just three? Who decided on four?" Well, I suppose it’s nice to know that the censors do actually use a bit of artistic discretion sometimes. But I can’t help thinking that with most 10-year olds both well aware of and using the ‘f’ word, that particular rule is a bit dumb.

 

It reminds me, though, of a little story my sister recently told me. Taking her 7-year old grandson David shopping one morning, it was obvious that he wanted to say something. With a twinkle in his eye, he turned to my sister and said: “Granny, I know what the ‘f’ word means.” Taken somewhat aback and determined not to acknowledge what she’d just heard, my sister merely kept walking. Within seconds, an arm tugged at her coat and a little face beamed up at her. ”Granny, I know what the ‘f’ word is.”

 

Realising that resistance in this case would be useless yet somewhat fearful that some explaining might be required, she relented and as nonchalantly as possible asked what it meant. “Shit” came the reply!