Research into age certificates and the role of the BBFC - Miss Georgiou

How Does The BBFC Work?

 

In order to help protect young children from unsuitable gruesome scenes in inappropriate films. The examiners have to take into consideration, Children, Teenagers and Adults. The BBFC have guidelines that help them categorise the criteria helped to rate the films and DVDS in Britain. They update the certificates every four years and take into account the changing views on things such as violence, sex, language and drugs in the modern days. The British Board Of Film Classification, choose what age certificates film get. This can either be U, PG, 12, 12A, 15 and 18.

"The BBFC is a trusted guide to media content. Working as an independent, self-financing and not-for-profit media content regulator, the BBFC operates transparent, consistent and trusted co-regulatory and self-regulatory classification and labelling systems in the UK."

They are very experienced at classifying. They serve with the intention to protect viewers form videos that might be inappropriate or harmful, this is then given to the view for them to decide them-self because over the age of 18 an adult has their own choice.

As a highly expert and experienced regulator, our mission is to:

• protect the public, mostly children form content with might raise harm risks
• empower the public, especially parents, to make informed viewing choices
• recognise and respect adult freedom of choice with the law
• respond to and reflect changing social attitudes towards media content through proactive public consultation and research
• work in partnership with the industry to develop innovative service models to provide content advice which support emerging media delivery systems
• provide an effective service to enforcement agencies

There are many different ratings starting at U all they to R18, the argument over the recent years has been that adults shouldn't have a freedom of choice because if a film has broken the law while filming, something that could consist of illegal drug use or sexual assault.

On the other hand an adult has the right to make their own decisions, but I think that there should be the age 21 certificate because at the age of 18 a mind is still easy to psychologically harm and 21 should be the right age for a brain to mature enough to be able to with stand such images. Also the argument of should there be different a special age set for people with mental illness because a film that is psychologically effective can have a massive effect on them.

A story that has made a big effect on the rating system is the release of Spiderman(2002) The final fight scene with the Green Goblin was said to be been too violent for 12 year olds but shouldn't but put up to a 15, this is because the fight scene was very intense and not so animated like the other fight scenes, showing knifes, blood and death by their superhero using such weapons it makes them more glamourized making younger children want to play with them meaning as they grown up may think that its normal to act like this. They could also copy the actions while playing making them dangerous. The creators tried to change how intense it was by editing but did not want to lose the storyline, the main audience for this film was around 12 and older if it was a 15 they would lose a high percentage of their audience.

After much consideration the BBCF made a new category 12A meaning with adults consent, making it clear to parents that there was strong sense to violence in the filming and it could be there decision if there child is wise enough to watch this.