While doing some research on censorship I came across a 2002 essay by Jan Chambers, someone who resigned from the British Board of Film Categorization. Below is an excerpt:
I resigned as an examiner in June after six months, wearied by the relentless viewing of hard-core pornography and its lowering, deadening effect on the mind. I felt like a gatekeeper to the sex industry. A sex worker.
Talking to friends was interesting. The smirks on their faces soon turned to slack-jawed bewilderment when I answered their questions about porn viewing. I could have given a lighter 18-cert touch to my replies, but their expressions of disgust confirmed to me that it is troubling to watch degrading stuff – even if you do get paid for it.
My friends and I are neither prudes nor puritans, but porn liberals who imagine hard-core tapes – those available only in registered sex shops and given the classification R18 – as liberating and exciting, rather than the joyless, graphic genital fests that they are, should consider the relentless debasement of (mostly) young women involved.
A typical R18 report might read: “Explicit hard-core porn tape set in private house. Woman strips on bed and masturbates. At two minutes man comes in. She fellates man. Second man enters; troilus sex ensues – she fellates him also. At six minutes double penetration of anus and vagina. At eight minutes close-up of double penetration of vagina only. Sex then includes more fellatio, cunnilingus and annilingus in close-up followed by vaginal, anal and dildo penetration. Man ejaculates on to woman’s face… ” and so on.
This would be uncut and describe the first of about seven similar scenarios of a two-hour tape, all accompanied by a ubiquitous drum’n’bass soundtrack and very little dialogue, listened to carefully for references to underage sex. Men frequently ejaculated into women’s faces. To do it inside a woman’s body is not spectacular enough and implies a certain intimacy of which there is none.
The above report might conclude: “All sexual activity consensual and fine within current BBFC guidelines. No UK laws have been broken.”
These reports justify an R18 certificate – distinguishing tapes from the softer 18 porn which has implied sex only – and alert senior management to cuts to material that transgress the publicly available BBFC guidelines, such as sexual violence, reference to underage sex or dehumanising activity. Bestiality and rape is banned and therefore not presented. The BBFC list of can’t dos in these guidelines is longer than that for cans, which is visibly consenting, physically safe sex between adults over 18. Occasionally a whole work may be rejected, but this is rare because porn distributors want their product through. Resubmitting costs money, and to present something illegal hands the BBFC a crime scene – so they play the game.
R18 tapes are only available in registered sex shops, of which there are relatively few. Yet something like 13% of the material on examiners’ viewing schedules is made up of them – a significant increase from the 1% just three years ago. Why is this?
The full work is available here.
–Ann Bartow
