The effective banning of the French film Baise Moi raises fundamental questions about the dignity and value of the individual and the farce of censorship.
The film was originally given a R rating – for over 18-year-olds, but after some complaints by an unspecified number of people the Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, ordered a review. The Classification Review Board changed the R rating to a refusal of classification on Friday after the film had been screened for a week. Refusal of classification is an effective ban because it is an offence to screen an unclassified film and various state offences relate to X ratings or refused ratings.
The film is described as explicit, nihilist, violent and feminist. It describes how two women go on a spree of sex and killing after one is raped and the other sees her best friend shot. It is not the sort of film that a large number of people would want to see, but others would like to whether for entertainment or to see it as art.
The idea that a group of appointed people can view a film and then order that others cannot is worse than elitism. It sets up one group as superior morally, ethically and aesthetically than the rest of the population. If they are chosen of that basis, maybe there would be some logic to the censorship process. But it is difficult to see how any process could yield a group carrying such superior attributes of intellect and morality. If, on the other hand, the censorship board is chosen to reflect ordinary community standards, the censors run into difficulty. If they are come from and are representative of the ordinary community on what basis can it be argued that they should be allowed to see certain films and their peers be barred from them? There is none.
In a modern society that respects individuals as equal before the law and respects them as capable of making their own decisions, there is no role for banning certain books or films. There is a role, however, for a group of people to classify material. And it should be a board that has representatives of ordinary community standards. But the role of such a board is to classify material so that those going to see films or buy and read books are not taken by surprise. They will get value from the experience of the board in viewing material and warning them of content according to established guidelines: sex, nudity, violence, language, themes and so on. The Classification Board by and large does a good job in this regard. Classification by a board has another function. It enables a film producer or distributor to leave a film as it is, or to take out some material if it wants to the film to get a lower classification, presumably to get a wider audience. It is a matter for the distributor to balance the worth of the material against audience appeal. Maybe there is a case for some higher classifications, but not banning.
In some respects an outright ban will be counter-productive. The decision by Mr Williams to order the review sparked such publicity that far more people went to see the film in the week it was open than would otherwise have been the case. And now it is banned, people will be more curious than otherwise and obtain it very easily by tape or DVD from overseas, though they will not enjoy the wide screen or the social and artistic occasion of a cinema experience. That makes Australia look quite immature – that its government thinks there are some things that its officials can see, but which its population cannot. Soon technology will make censorship irrelevant.