Failure to liberate

[aesmael]

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

When I started applying Australia's film classification standards to stories I read I was a bit curious and a bit hoping to highlight some absurdity in the system. More than one of my favourite stories, it turns out, would be illegal to sell in this country if they were film rather than print, at least by my reading of the standards. Not, as many reading this will know, that that's hugely difficult to achieve. But now it looks like something similar is being seriously proposed - potentially to require art in Australia to be rated by a board and, if deemed unsuitable, according to a potentially contracting standard of suitability, to declare it unfit to be shown.

Hopefully this has no chance of being recommended by the actual review later this year, nor of going into effect. Hopefully this is only the news take an opportunity to stir up a flurry of panic and protest, but Australia already has a bad history of restrictive censorship.

The best word I have to describe the Australian government's position on matters of rating and access is infantilising. Really, what else would you call a proposal to censor the nation's internet of anything more risque than a 15-year-old can legally see in a movie theatre? Refusing classification to any film depicting full-frontal nudity would be another step to really, truly banning all Australians from any media conservative Christians think is unsuited for children.

I am rather fed up with people seeking authority to 'protect' everyone else from what they deem immoral. If it's a matter of religion, then that's down to the individual. If someone believes my soul is imperilled by nudity or violence or images of people enjoying sex, then that is between me and your fictitious god. If you think society overall is endangered by access to such material, then you need to first show compelling evidence that its availability prohibits the free and safe daily life of the people. Otherwise we've no business banning media unless mayhaps it was produced by the actual abuse of or harm to actual living persons[1].

[1] Hint: BDSM is not necessarily abuse.

["But the chief of staff of the Australian Christian Lobby, Lyle Gavin, said there were dangers to children everywhere because of the failure of the classification scheme. ''Arguments against tighter classification measures and using technology will be mounted from the extreme left and the extreme right of politics,'' he told the inquiry. ''On the right, the nanny state argument will be applied against tougher measures and the use of filtering technology. On the left, it will be argued that adults should be able to see whatever they want, even claiming photos of naked children have artistic merit.''"

Hint 2: predicting your opponents' responses does not actually constitute a refutation of them]

Comments

[raptorempress]

Oh Australia and your censorship, I will never cease to be annoyed at it, even though I live nowhere near your landmasses.

The whole double standard about refusing classification to video games that would get an R rating is completely ridiculous. It's not like it's a different organization providing the ratings or anything. Are people seriously still of the mentality that video games are only simple distractions for young children and teenagers who suddenly become uninterested upon hitting the age of 18? Not to mention the ban on selling X rated material...

That plus Australia's ridiculous prices for video games and such pretty much means I'd never want to live there unless some changes were made. It's a shame given in many ways Australia is more of a developed nation than the U.S. is (what with our lack of universal healthcare).

[coniferous_you]

Infantilisation sounds about right. I can kind of understand the knee-jerk reaction toward censoring objects in popular media that contains a lot of violence, but this aggressive reaction toward purely sexual content bothers me. Why is it more permissible to show gun violence on television (let's look at the popularity of cop shows), than a loving, sexual act between consenting adults?

I tend to support a person's right to produce things that bore me if they feel like doing so (which would cover most products including graphic content in popular media), and this is one issue where it is nearly impossible to see the other side of the argument. I would not agree with it, but the argument for fiscal conservatism seems easier to swallow than this crazy social conservatism. No one is saving money here; people are just being punished.

To come back to a previous point, people are going to get access to these things anyway. And all that repression is going to do is make for lower standards of quality when it comes to media objects with graphic content. The mere existence of graphic content will draw people toward the object, rather than the quality of the piece itself (but of course, that is almost a world-wide problem at this point).


People have sex; people swear; people hit each other with sticks; big deal, give me a story. It can have those elements or not, as long as the story is good.

HOWEVER, all of this is shaken by the fact that you implied that the fine arts would be affected? That would be reason for much concern. Popular media isn't positioned to criticize the current social order, but fine arts....

[coniferous_you]

(I managed to use the word "content" only a few times in this comment; I hate what that word has become. I feel wrong using it).