RAY CONNOLLY: Batman and Britain's pathetic film censors

13 April 2012

We are in the middle of an epidemic of casual violence.

A knife attack now takes place somewhere in Britain every 24 minutes, and more than 20 young people have already been stabbed to death this year in London alone.

Lawmakers, teachers and parents shake their heads in despair as an explanation is sought for this upsurge in barbarity.

Family entertainment? Heath Ledger's Joker holds a knife to a victim's face

Family entertainment? Heath Ledger's Joker holds a knife to a victim's face

But perhaps the reason is depressingly simple: knives have become cool.

After all, what is the most popular movie of the moment and the fastest-earning film of all time?

It's The Dark Knight, the new Batman blockbuster, in which a one-time comic book character, the Joker, played manically by the late Heath Ledger, explains why he prefers killing with a knife.

His victims, he says, take longer to die that way.

With blade in hand and all the realism that Hollywood can conjure, he then repeatedly demonstrates his trade. He's terrifying - but incredibly hip.

So what certificate is this big screen procession of brutality being shown under?

Hard to be believe, but it's a 12A - which means that in the eyes of the British Board of Film Classification it is suitable for pre-teens if they are accompanied by an adult.

Last week, Mail columnist Allison Pearson asked how such a remorselessly violent film could be deemed 'family friendly'. And I found myself asking exactly the same question, as have many others.

Already, parents' complaints have been pouring into individual cinema managers, to Warner Brothers - the film's distributors - and to the BBFC, which gave the film such a nonsensically low rating.

It's easy to see why they are upset. The crazed Joker shoving a man's head onto an upright pencil is not my idea of childish entertainment.

And don't tell me that we don't actually see the pencil enter the poor victim's eye. We don't have to.

Our imagination, heightened to intensity by the sound effects, fills in the gaps more than adequately.

Let's not kid ourselves that a 12A certificate means no one even younger will see it.

Come to think of it, the boy behind me in the cinema yesterday looked as though he were barely ten.

And then there will be the DVD. Children of just about any age will be able to watch it then - whether an adult is present or not.

The 'home entertainment' version can be expected sometime around Christmas, and it will be a merry Christmas for Warner Brothers as the billions roll in.

But it seems to me that they, and the irresponsible British film classifiers who astonishingly think that this is a children's movie, should be ashamed of themselves.

Because it's nothing less than a hundred-odd-million-dollar commercial for evil, in which the Joker, with his bloodied gash for a mouth, kills psychotically and endlessly, and the absurd Batman character, originally a heroic figure in the Forties' DC Comics, is cast as a brutal interrogator.

It's little wonder that some unsuspecting parents find themselves horrified and angry that they have been gulled into taking their children into such a theatre of blood.

Personally, I've never been one for censorship. As an adult, I don't want to be told what I can and can't see, what I might or might not read, or what I should or shouldn't listen to.

But that doesn't mean that I think society as a whole doesn't have an overriding responsibility to protect its young and impressionable from those who would corrupt them. I absolutely do.

And it seems to me that the current lax attitude to the portrayal of violence in films, especially those aimed at young people, amounts to negligence.

For generations, the film censor routinely demanded cuts in films being released in Britain. Sometimes these were asinine and plainly prudish, with the censor being out of step with society as a whole.

Over 30 years ago, for example, when 30 per cent of films were being censored, I was present when the then film censor John Trevelyan asked producer David Puttnam to make some cuts to our film That'll Be The Day - because it showed too much of a girl's knickers. To me that seemed a little silly.

But cuts involving violence, such as, for instance, those made in the teenage knife fight involving James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause (a film about teenagers), I would have endorsed completely.

Today, such a scene would not even be considered problematical as, over the decades, movies have become ever more violent, ever more hyper-realistic.

So far this year, only one film has been cut by the BBFC.

It would be nice to think that that's because filmmakers are becoming ever more aware of their responsibilities. But we know that isn't so.

Violence sells. Scenes of viciousness are now common, because the makers can get away with it and therefore make more money for their backers.

As for the British Board of Film Classification and its 33 full-time examiners - that body which should be guarding the young and impressionable? It just seems to have given up.

But what happens when young people are continually deluged by violent images?

Many filmmakers will tell you that it has no effect upon them, that they can tell the difference between a movie and the real world.

Many psychologists would disagree.

They would say, and I would agree with them, that the continual showing of brutality anaesthetises some people against the true horror of violence.

Knife games might be seen as being hip and cool because that is overwhelmingly how movies depict them.

When Heath Ledger as the Joker kills someone, we don't see the terrible effects of someone dying. The camera quickly moves on. Violence becomes a joke.

But real life, and real death, isn't a joke.

Just before the screening I saw of The Dark Knight this week, a short public service film for road safety was shown in which a girl steps off the pavement and is killed by a passing car.

The makers of this short clearly hope it will have an effect, as the makers of other commercials hope the message they hope to get across will be heeded, whether they are selling a soft drink or shampoo.

In fact, businesses invest countless millions of pounds every year in trying to convince us that their product is better than its rivals. They wouldn't do that if commercials didn't work.

The evidence shows that commercials do work - particularly with repeated showings.

But if commercials work by benignly brainwashing us, how can anyone honestly argue that repeated and heightened violence in movies such as The Dark Knight, foolish and absurd though the story might be, doesn't also brainwash us into believing that brutality and easy killing is just a glamorous way of life?

Most of us can obviously tell the difference between a violent film and real life, and we won't run around, knife in hand, like the Joker.

Some, however - those, perhaps, whose attitude to violence has been dulled by a young lifetime watching pretend cruelty and mayhem on the screen - might not see the difference quite so clearly when their blood is high.

So do violent films groom some young people for violence in real life? I think they might.

With its lax judgment towards violence on film, the BBFC isn't just risking nightmares among many children who I believe are too young to be allowed to see the Joker going about his diabolical work.

By allowing the endless glamorisation of film violence, it is, I believe, failing in a much wider duty to us all.

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