How Film Censorship Has Changed in the UK

Current technology makes it effectively impossible to censor the written word, theatre censorship was abolished in 1968, and there has never been any systematic regulation of other art forms - anyone seeking to clamp down on such events must mount a private prosecution, a lengthy and expensive process.

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• the British Board of Film Classification was originally founded in 1912 as the British Board of Film Censors
• BBFC guidelines are based on two main factors: legal requirements (for instance, unsimulated animal cruelty, indecent images of children) and the BBFC's own policies 
• Current context-based system where artistic merit is a key factor in assessing individual films
• This is controversial, due to the inevitable inconsistency. Some films are treated much more leniently than others with very similar content, as a result of largely subjective judgements by a handful of people
• But means a number of important films being passed either uncut or with a milder age restriction
• A side-effect of its stated commitment to greater openness is that it is now easy to find out if films have been cut in their British versions and current technology makes it equally simple to order uncut and unclassified videos and DVDs from elsewhere
• When video was introduced in the late 1970s, there was no specific legislation governing its content and major distributors were reluctant to get involved with a medium they considered vulnerable to piracy, meant small independent companies to flood the market with low-budget horror films and lurid advertising campaigns
• Most had little or no artistic merit, though there was an inclusion of work to be withdrawn by respected genre practitioners Dario Argento, Wes Craven, Lucio Fulci and Tobe Hooper, arthouse auteurs Andrzej Zulawski and Paul Morrissey, and the then unknown Abel Ferrara
• May 1982 article in the Sunday Times headed "How high street horror is invading the home". This theme was enthusiastically taken up by the tabloid press, creating what Martin Barker has called a 'moral panic'
• 194 Criminal Justice Act which added a clause covering potential harm "caused to potential viewers or, by their behaviour, to society" by material dealing with "criminal behaviour, illegal drugs, violent behaviour or incidents, horrific behaviour or incidents or human sexual activity"
• This was because of the result of the 1994 Newson Report, which alleged that violent videos were capable of causing psychological damage, especially to impressionable children
• This report wrongly suggested that a definitive link had been established, with Newson merely drawing inferences from individual case studies and her case studies were sourced from often highly speculative accounts in the press rather than independent first-hand research
• In the post-war years it was fears of social unrest that were near the top of the agenda.
• The history of British film censorship is as much social as cultural: the reasons films were banned in the 1920s (revolutionary politics) and 1950s (nudity) say as much about the society of the time as anything in the films

• In our era of far greater equality the BBFC is noticeably tougher on sexual violence today than it was thirty years ago, though correspondingly much more relaxed about most other issues

• As the nation relaxed into the 1960s, nudity becomes a prime concern. 
• The early 1970s saw film-makers keen to push at the limits of acceptability.
• Viewed from 2011, many of the board's decisions seem odd, quaint even, and we are able to see many of the scenes originally deemed unacceptable on DVD reissues.
• In the 1980s the board changed its name from British Board of Film Censors to that of Film Classification and it was levels of violence that capture the attention.

Read More:
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/445733/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15107384