When Robin Duval took over from James Ferman as director of the BBFC earlier this
year, he was already used to dealing with a certain amount of flak. Thirteen years with
the ITC as a senior regulator of public taste had prepared him for the job. But when he
was invited to apply to be the new film censor, Duval was aware he could be taking on even
more of a poisoned chalice.
Duval said: I could see it was a job with a very severe downside. Being shot at by
both the liberals, who find any censorship unacceptable, and the more censorious lobby,
who feel that it's a great failure of duty on the board's behalf to even classify a film
like Lolita. But I also knew that if I didn't take this job I would never have another
comparable opportunity before I retired. In the end the challenge was irresistible.
This week sees his biggest challenge yet, the release of Lars von Trier's film
The
Idiots. It deals with a commune of young people who pretend to be mentally
disabled as an expression of their anti-middle-class ideology - the sort of storyline
which could well upset the disabled lobby. It also features a group sex scene containing a
brief glimpse of sexual penetration. The film has been classified as 18 without cuts.
Obviously we had to consider the possibility that the film might offend disabled
members of the public, says Duval.
But the view of the film taken as a whole is a
positive and sensible one, particularly where real disabled characters are involved. The
young people's idiot behaviour is specifically shown as the means they use to take refuge
from society.
As to the sequence which Duval describes as a very fleeting moment of explicit
sexual activity it is, he explains, well within BBFC guidelines, which allow images
of real sex in 18-rated movies provided they are brief and justified by context. As, for
example, in the Japanese film In the Realm of the Senses.
This
particular scene in The Idiots marks the critical point at which the
commune oversteps its own boundaries of behaviour and begins to fall apart. Given the
brevity of the image and its importance to the narrative structure, we concluded it was
within those guidelines.
There was, however, a considerable delay in the film receiving its certification, a
fact which gave rise to rumours that the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, had attempted to
intervene. The rumours are firmly refuted by Duval. "There was never any question
that the Home Office would be involved. The notion is just silly. James Ferman took the
view with regard to all the material that was coming through at that time that it was not
fair to make decisions two or three weeks before I arrived and for me to then carry the
can for something I didn't participate in. The principal reason why The Idiots
was postponed was simply to give me the opportunity to make up my own mind about it."
The change in the board's title from BBFC, which happened 15 years ago, is for Duval an
important distinction. Ninety-three per cent of the films, videos and computer games which
come through the board's offices are uncut, he claims, and most cuts that are made are by
mutual agreement with the distributors, clipping out, for example, a few seconds of
excessive violence from a film which is otherwise suitable for a 15 certificate in order
to reach the wider audience. But what about adult films? Is it appropriate for over-18s to
have their entertainment vetted by a censor?
It's pretty rare for an 18 rated movie or video to be cut, says Duval
(Duval is either lying or the reporter is misquoting, about 30 videos a month
are cut with an 18 rating). The regulator's business is to get the best sense
he or she can of what the public believes to be appropriate, and these days there's a
visible hardening of the public's view against censorship, particularly of material for
adults. What people require is as much information as possible about the material and
that's why the BBFC operates such a detailed classification system. When we do cut an
18-rated movie it's almost invariably because it contains material which it's simply not
legal to show, because it's in breach of one of the various relevant pieces of
legislation.
When Duval moved into his new post in January, there were a number of potential hot
potatoes sitting in his in tray. The Exorcist for example, which, 25
years after it first appeared in the cinema, has finally been certificated 18 for video.
We
now have a great deal of evidence to indicate that the fears we had in the past about the
possible harmful effects of the film were misplaced.
In fact it's not absolutely
clear that there was significant harm back in the 1970s. I must say I was more frightened
by Rosemary's Baby.
Despite the reputation Duval's predecessor had in some quarters of being secretive and
autocratic in his decision-making, the board has been at pains to make itself and its
decisions more accessible to the public. Last summer it mounted a series of roadshows
around the country and in its 1998 annual report it published for the first time the
guidelines it follows when classifying a film. The BBFC also now has its own website, with
information about policy and specific films.
If, for example, you request a search for the recently released French film
Seul
Contre Tous, which contains a scene in which the main character is
watching an explicitly pornographic movie, you will uncover the information that
Seul
Contre Tous has been passed 18 for adult theme, strong violence and sex and
coarse language . . . with optical softening to make two sexual penetration scenes less
explicit.
Although he has never made a feature film himself, Duval has a practical working
knowledge of the industry. He worked in television commercials and film and television
production for the Central Office of Information. In his twenties and thirties he was a
keen amateur actor and self-confessed film buff, and he still enjoys a trip to his local
cinema, loaded down with popcorn and cola, to see a popular blockbuster. His most recent
rave is Shakespeare In Love, while his particular cinematic
dislike is sexual violence, which he loathes, citing the rape scenes in
Straw Dogs
as an example - something which obviously made a strong impression on him in his youth.
