One site I often visit is Melonfarmers.co.uk, which has a wealth of information and opinion on censorship. As such, the old video nasties of the 1980s often crop up, especially as they are re-released with or without cuts.
This week it was the turn of Fulci's House by the Cemetery, happily now passed uncut. It was the cuts previously made in 2001 that made me wonder:
"Cuts required to two sequences of detailed violence against women (stabs to chest and neck with sharp spike, knife cutting throat), in accordance with BBFC policy on violence, and to take into account recent, successful prosecutions of the uncut version under the Obscene Publications Act 1959."
Now, I don't know about you but violence against women is not something that really comes to the fore when you have a zombie doctor running amok. The New York Ripper, maybe, but Dr Freudstein?
Where was the 'fantasy' aspect, the recognition that it's not real?
What did seem present, however, was a double standard: would violence against men be mentioned in the same way? Probably not, I suspect.
Of course the BBFC is pretty much irrelevant in these days of the internet and region free players anyway - who doesn't already have an uncut import of House by the Cemetery anyways?
3 comments:
While I agree that the "violence against women" charge seems somewhat odd in this case and that there is a definite double standard, I suppose it's also worth mentioning that this is one area where a double standard seems justified to me - all too often (generally speaking and I don't even think your post is a (particularly good) example of this) the existence of a double standard is automatically seen as something negative and while this is certainly appropriate in most cases I think there are several instances where it isn't the double standard itself, but its reasons for existing in the first place that should be criticised and I think "violence against women in movies" is certainly one of these instances, given how common things like "rape as a titillation" were for a fairly long time.
Women have been subjected to violence throughout history, and although this horrendous action is condemned by all societies, it is still prevalent in many, especially the third world countries. In a survey carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2005, out of the ten counties surveyed, more than 50 percent of women in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru and Tanzania reported having been subjected to physical or sexual violence by intimate partners, with figures reaching a staggering 71 percent in rural Ethiopia. Only in Japan, less than 20 percent of women report incidents of domestic violence.
Care, isn't Japan also a society noted for having a lot of media violence (however that is defined) and, as such, which perhaps indicates that you can have fantasy violence without necessarily seeing a strong correlation in real world violence?
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