Parents deserve better from cinema classifiers

The lyrics of Blowin' in the Wind flooded into my head as I watched the movie trailers before the PG-classified Spiderwick Chronicles recently. You know the line: "And how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died". Apparently the answer is rather a lot. In five minutes on a Sunday morning in a cinema packed with families with young children, trailers for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Ironman and Star Trek were screened. All were dark, scary and, in the case of the first two, extraordinarily violent. Yet all three previews had Office of Film and Literature Classification approval. They could have been shown with any movie any time. This is despite the fact that both Ironman and Indiana Jones have computer games already classified M and blind Freddy could see from the content of the trailer that the movies should carry M classifications as well. It seems to be a hole in the classification regulations big enough to drive a truck through that you can preview any movie any time until they are classified but at that point trailers are restricted to being shown only with a movie of the same or lesser classification. Granted, trailers have to be classified themselves but both the Australian and the US regulators considered all three trailers as appropriate for all audiences. Which can only mean that either the regulators are way out of step with community expectations or I am. You take the most violent highlights of a movie, package them in a trailer completely out of context and that's okay for general audiences when the same level of violence spread out over 90 or so minutes isn't. What kind of warped logic is that? It just seems harder and harder for parents to make active, considered choices about the level of violence their children are exposed to. Surely parents should be able to take the kids to the cinema on a Sunday morning and have a reasonable expectation of what kind of content they will see. The present regulator-approved free-for-all is just not in the interests of good parenting.

Little Brother is Watching You

What are the two most violent things screened on television?
Forget the late night episodes of CSI (insert any US city here). If you want to see something truly shocking, disturbing, violent or riddled with bad language then television news or live sport is as good a place as any to start.
Take the very unfortunate incident last week of Ukranian swimming coach Mikhaylo Zubkov in a violent poolside brawl in Melbourne at the World Swimming Championships.
Live on TV at 6.30 at night families tuning in to see the world's greatest swimmers in action - what you would have to consider a "safe"family viewing - were treated to extremely disturbing vision.
One of the most disturbing parts of the incident for television viewers was that it was live which means that no-one could know what would happen next yet it was being screened without protection into homes at a time which is in the G classification zone.
Of course the great out for broadcasters is that news and live sport are exempted from classification under the code provided "the licensee exercises care in selecting material for broadcast having regard to:
2.4.1.1 the likely audience of the program; and
2.4.1.2 any identifiable public interest reason for presenting the program
material."
You'd have to wonder exactly what care is taken in broadcasting unedited live television footage of a volatile situation. In reality exactly none. Which is the problem. The incident, in itself, did not end up being too bad but no-one could have known the result.
But the frightening thing is the trend. With the increasing number of surveillance cameras and the fact that we all now carry devices capable of capturing video and still images the possibility of disturbing footage being captured and broadcast is higher than ever before. Indeed the television stations are falling over each other to get their hands on our footage and the most "attractive" footage to broadcasters seems to be the most violent footage.
All of us with children should be very alarmed. The more of this kind of footage children see, the more likely it is that they will succumb to wicked world syndrome. If you see this happening all the time on television it's not a big leap to start believing that's all that's happening all the time outside the square box.
Our children deserve better. Horrible things do happen in the world every day and for their own protection our children do need know that horrible people capable of doing horrible things are out there.
They just don't need to be deluged with it and the danger is that that's what is going to happen unless we give real thought to what happens to all that footage being collected by all those cameras all over the place.

What's good "family entertainment"?

My interest was aroused when I heard the new all-singing, all dancing Australian musical Sideshow Alley the Musical described as "a great one for all the family". This is the same musical which on it own ticketing information warns of coarse language and adult themes. So was the reviewer wrong. In my view yes - and no.

There is no one size fits all family so there can be no one size fits all appropriate family entertainment. A large part of our job as parents is to define our values and set appropriate boundaries for our kids. No censor, no classification system is a substitute for vigilant parenting.

The problem is that terms such as "coarse language" and "adult themes" really do little to inform. Indeed I've seen students wearing T shirts carrying the same slogan. Live theatre isn't required to be classified and no lover of the arts would suggest that it should be.

So, would I recommend the production to families? Well let's spell out the adult themes I am not yet ready to explain to my nine-year-old. Anal rape, adultery and suicide top the list. And the "adult themes" I would be prepared to take on - intolerance, homophobia and racism.

The coarse language doesn't need to be spelt out except to say that a four-letter word starting with F features a lot.

This is a truly remarkable production full of energy, imagination and sparkle. Is it family entertainment? Well that depends on the family involved. Many of the adult themes are implied rather than spelt out and it is possible many a child could see the show and love it for the colour and spectacle - not to mention the bearded lady and other sideshow freaks. Problem is that children "get" a lot more than we often give them credit for and it's not a risk I'd take.

Brisbane is full of exciting entertainment possibilities for families with children. We'll sit this one out