Alex Clare

Ethical Issues In The Media Industry

Film Classification (BBFC)The BBFC is a non governmental company funded by the film industry which has been giving films there classifications for the past 100 years, since 1912. Also DVDs and videos since 1984 since the Video Recording Act was passed. The BBFC is based in London. The Act was introduced for safety reasons after a number of nitrate film fires in unsuitable venues like fairgrounds and shops that had been hastily converted into cinemas, but the following year a court ruling determined that the criteria for granting or refusing a licence did not have to be restricted to issues of health and safety.

Describing the Cons of the BBFC

On the other hand the BBFC is very important because there is evidence to show that films can influence a child's behaviour. For example it has been shown that if a child is brought up watching violent movies then he will grow up to be a violent adult. It is the same with children and parents at home, if a child is brought up with their dad being violent to their mum then a girl when she is older is more likely to stay with a violent partner, and when male is older it is more likely that he will be violent to their partner.

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Describing the Pros of the BBFC On the other hand the BBFC is very important

because there is evidence to show that films can influence a child's behaviour. For example it has been shown that if a child is brought up watching violent movies then he will grow up to be a violent adult. It is the same with children and parents at home, if a child is brought up with their dad being violent to their mum then a girl when she is older is more likely to stay with a violent partner, and when male is older it is more likely that he will be violent to their partner.

The Bobo Doll experimenthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHHdovK

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The Bobo Doll experiment was an experiment undertaken by Albert Bandura in 1961

He was trying to prove that children where impressionable and would copy adults even if what they were doing was violent, so he set up this experiment. He showed a video to a boy of an adult hitting the bobo doll to see if he would copy, and he did. He learnt from this experiment that children who are exposed to aggressive modelling are more aggressive to the bobo doll by hitting it with a hammer and attacking it with a gun.

Where as children who weren't exposed to the aggressive modelling did not act aggressively to the doll.

Laws/Legislations films breakThe human centipede 2 was banned because the

movie was just about these people being tortured and the Dr watching it, the characters didn’t really have a chance to get escape from the Dr. They had no personality so they were portrayed more as objects than humans with lives.

It was also banned because of two scenes in the film, a report by the BBFC draws focus to two scenes, one of which features sandpaper, another of which features barbed wire, both in places of extreme discomfort.

What happened next?Even thought the Human Centipede 2 was

banned in the cinema and not be released as a DVD it was still released on the internet for anyone to watch. This means you can watch it for free and anyone what ever age is able to watch it because there is no way to know how old somebody is when they are watching something on the internet. Also by the BBFC banning the film this made people want to watch it more because they wanted to know why the film was banned and was the film really that bad and disturbing that it needed to be band from UK cinema

Video Nasty's The "Video Nasty's" were part of a list made by the UK government,

containing films which were considered to be films of questionable material. Which could mean either excessive violence, or sexuality, or simply inappropriate subject matter. These films were pulled from rental shelves, and in some instances, the production companies were tried. The list started off with 99 films on it but then was cut too 74 films. 39 of the 74 films were successfully tried as being 'obscene.‘

There was a main women called Mary Whitehouse, who felt it was her right and obligation to ‘clean up’ Britain by banning one movie at a time. She was the one who created this list.

Now a lot of the movies on this list are now unbanned, are a 15 and have been shown on film4. This shows how much times have changed because what we saw as bad and unwatchable in those days we think is fine now and we completely unban them and show them on TV for anyone of any age to watch

Conclusion On one hand I think important because there is evidence to show

that films can influence a child's behaviour. For example the BoBo Doll experiment and children who are brought up watching violent movies then will grow up to be a violent adult. It is the same with children and parents at home, if a child is brought up with their dad being violent to their mum then a girl when she is older is more likely to stay with a violent partner, and when male is older it is more likely that he will be violent to their partner.

On the other hand I feel that we do not need the BBFC because if I want to watch something, but I cant watch it in the cinema because I am not old enough I can go watch it on the internet at home for free with no age limit requiered. So in a way the film classifications are useless now you can watch films on the internet. Also I feel why should the BBFC be able to tell me what I am and are not allowed to watch, for example if I want to watch a movie which I think looks really good, I think it is unfair that they can decided if I am allowed to watch it or not by making it a 18.