I met an interesting lady today, she’s a campaigner for MediaMarch, they’re an organisation attempting to decrease or remove bad language, violence and pornography from the media. She was a thoroughly pleasant and intelligent lady and we had a brief discussion about her campaign and why she was involved. Personally I completely disagree with her campaign as the current certification system in this country seems fine to me. Only once have I watched a film and been shocked by the certificate and that was Blade Trinity which has the word ‘Cunt’ in it and is only a 15.

I have always been dubious about people in favour of censorship but as I said she didn’t come across as an extremist right-wing Christian and she has her reasons for supporting the campaign. However, on viewing the website I was dissapointed to read this in a list of ‘inspired crimes’:

“The teenagers killed in the Columbine High School Massacre (linked with film ‘Basketball Diaries’) and Red Lake school, Minnesota (linked with Marilyn Manson’s music)”

Quite apart from being poorly worded, it is simply not true that a film or a musician made those boys kill their classmates. The boys were poorly brought up, were clearly not all there and had easy access to an arsenal of semi-automatic weaponry. If someone other than the boys themselves are too blame why not point the finger at the parents, or the economy, or the failure of the school system to notice their behaviour, or god forbid the American constitution and it’s ridiculous gun laws? No, it was clearly down to film about a heroin addict or the latest in a long line of shock rockers. The very same shock rocker that myself and friends have listened to since we were sixteen with no ill effects, although I’ve never seen Basketball Diaries so perhaps it’s only when the two are combined that they would turn me into a gun wielding sociopath.

I do understand why people are concerned by violence and sex in the media but I would argue that if you take something out of the mainstream it will continue but underground and completely uncensored. I also believe that people have the right to watch films that scare or arouse them and provided that no one is actually being hurt and that pornography is consensual then I don’t see the problem. She cited Hostel as an example of an incredibly violent film which also include sado-masochism, I haven’t seen it, I didn’t ask if she had. The point is that I’ve seen trailers for it and I knew it wasn’t something I would go out of my way to watch, it’s not my sort of thing so I won’t watch it. Why can’t these people do that? There are lots of beautiful films, Spirited Away, Before Sunset & Before Sunrise, Big Fish, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, if a film is a horror, a thriller, erotica or pornography then don’t watch it if you know it will offend you.

If you want something to campaign about campaign about the rubbish on television, campaign about people like Jade Goody becoming a multi-millionaire for being a thick, common, chav, or better yet campaign about things that really matter like the disgraceful human right violations around the world.

They’re just films, people get paid to make them, people get paid to be in them, people pay to see them, it’s a business. Serial killers, psychos, murderers, rapists and sexual deviants will still exist if you cleanse the entire media of anything even slightly offensive and then what will you do, find another scapegoat?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 14th, 2006 at 12:51 am and is filed under My Life in my Words, Rant-O-Rama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.