Not suitable for adults?
Every so often, concerned parents argue that children watch too many scary films. I am going to fly in the face of conventional wisdom and suggest, these days at least, children generally don’t watch enough scary films.
Before everyone shouts me down, please don’t misunderstand. Obvious adult material should be restricted to adult viewing, and I am not suggesting that children should watch loads of television and play endless violent computer games. What I am saying is that these days, there is a real tendency to wrap children in cotton wool, patronise them and pass our fears on to them. This is obviously a wider social issue, and covers many factors from paranoid parents who no longer allow their kids out to play for fear of them being abducted by paedophiles, to the health and safety legislation that has put many children’s activities out of bounds.
To the point at hand however – has anyone else who grew up in the 1980’s noticed how PG rated films have lost their edge? For example, how can Jaws possibly have the same certificate as Cars? The PG certificate, meaning parental guidance, was originally a rating which wisely understood that whilst Jaws might not be suitable for some eight year olds, it would be suitable for other eight year olds. Parents knew their children best, hence Parental Guidance. Sensible, simple and effective.
Then somewhere in the late 1990’s, it all seemed to go pear-shaped. For some reason, parents started thinking PG ought to mean the same as U. This resulted in gradual tightening of BBFC classification guidelines at the lower levels, whilst the upper categories have been increasingly relaxed. To quote the good book, the BBFC have “strained out a gnat and swallowed a camel”.
I will not discuss the camels in this article, but the gnats are of interest to me. A recent gnat that I thought particularly petty took the form of a one second barely noticeable head-butt in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Said head-butt was delivered during a fight scene by Jango Fett to Obi-Wan Kenobi. This one second was sanctimoniously trimmed from the UK release, because the BBFC were apparently worried about copycat incidents. OK, so children copy what they see. So why not cut all lightsabre fights too, because impressionable youngsters will probably grab sticks and start fighting (growing up with Star Wars, I know I did). Conversely, in an apparent case of double standards, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring contained not one but two head-butts, and both were passed at PG. When questioned, the BBFC said the reason the head-butts were allowed in that case were because of the clear fantasy context. What context was Star Wars? Gritty realism?
Another absolutely insane example of this kind of nanny censorship came a couple of years ago when an episode of Doctor Who was rated 12 instead of the usual PG, which was doubly pointless as many children would have seen the episode when it was originally broadcast. The story in question featured a brief scene where a man has a Dalek captured and begins to drill into the casing. Apparently, the BBFC were concerned that this kind of torture could be copied in the playground (it would appear they believe children have power tools to play with and several Daleks to bully).
In fairness, it’s not so much the BBFC who are to blame for this, as they are not really a censorship board. They simply respond to what they perceive to be the will of the public, who for some reason want to keep their kids indoors playing computer games and watching CBeebies. Well, if they must be kept indoors, I suggest showing them some edgier stories with good and evil clearly defined. As a father of a not-quite four year old whose favourite films include King Kong (the 1933 original) and several Ray Harryhausen pictures, I can see how these movies are proving a vital part of his imaginative development. Obviously all children are different, but if we didn’t try to protect them quite so much I think we would end up with less neurotic adults.
People consistently underestimate children. In the same way the Grimm fairytales make perfect sense to children but horrify parents, many of the films and TV programmes I loved in my childhood earned the ire of concerned adults as I was growing up in the 1980’s. Examples include the afore-mentioned Jaws (too scary), The A-Team (too violent), Gremlins (too gory) and the first two Indiana Jones films (too scary, too violent and too gory). Actually, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which had already been cut by over a minute by the BBFC, was further cut for an afternoon showing on Christmas Day by the BBC in 1987, and still managed to draw loads of complaints. Amusingly, a cartoon appeared in the Radio Times shortly afterwards showing two children sitting on a sofa and smiling as they watched Indiana Jones, whilst two adults cowered behind the sofa. The caption read: “It’s terrifying for the children!”
That cartoon pretty much sums up this article. Viewed as a child, Jaws, Indiana Jones and Gremlins didn’t bother me in the slightest. As an adult I now think Jaws is terrifying, Indiana Jones is unbelievably violent and gruesome, and Gremlins is at least two-thirds of the way to a full-on horror film. I didn’t notice the dark sexual undertones in Flash Gordon, but I do now. I didn’t realise quite how violent the James Bond films were (all rated PG up to The Living Daylights in 1987), but I do now. I also grasp how dark and cruel the ending of Time Bandits is, but as a child it made perfect sense. And was there really that much swearing in The Goonies? Was that someone’s hand the crocodile just bit off in Romancing the Stone? How many Nazis did Clint Eastwood gun down in Where Eagles Dare? Did Ghostbusters really have that many rude jokes? Wait a minute, these films are all PG!
The BBFC’s way to deal with this problem has been to make the 12 certificate advisory, largely due to the outcry that occurred when Spider-man was crazily rated 12 instead of PG. The side effect of this is that many films legitimately rated 12 can be seen by under-12s, and parent’s simply think of 12A the way they used to view PG. How long before they begin to complain that 12A should be like a U?
Therefore, in the interests of confused and traumatised adults, I propose the reintroduction of the original mandatory 12 certificate plus a new certificate to act as a reverse of 12A specifically for films like Jaws or Indiana Jones: suitable only for persons under 12. Over 12’s require the presence of a responsible child guardian.
Simon Dillon, March 2008.
