Censors Working Overtime

Sun Herald

Sunday September 25, 2005

Barry Divola

They're accused of being political extremists, exercising personal taste and even bludging. Barry Divola meets the people hand-picked to classify our films, computer games and porn magazines.

Here's how Alex Greene spent a recent Thursday. In the morning, she watched a feature film that had yet to be released into cinemas, then she put in a couple of hours sitting through episodes of The Nanny on DVD. She broke for lunch and spent the afternoon playing a PlayStation 2 game called SingStar Pop, finishing the day by flicking through porn magazines.

No, Greene didn't chuck a sickie that Thursday. She was at work. She does this kind of thing every day and she's paid a salary package of more than $90,000 a year to do it.

Nine people do exactly this job, five days a week. They are the members of the Classification Board at the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC). And I'm sorry to inform you that the deadline for applications for the latest intake was July 8. More than 900 people applied and after a rigorous six-month selection process, five or six will be chosen. But if you're kicking yourself and thinking you've just missed out on a chance at the cushiest job in Australia, you may first want to sit down and talk to these people about the realities of their employment.

Everyone knows everything about the censors. Or they think they do, anyway. There are all sorts of misconceptions and myths swirling around the Classification Board. Here are six of them.

1. They're all grey-haired, prudish fogies/they're all permissive, Sydney-centric lefties.

Of the nine board members, the youngest is 28 and the oldest is 61. Six of them are under 40. Three are from Tasmania and the others have spent most of their lives in Victoria, WA, SA and regional NSW. Roughly half have children. All moved to Sydney to take up the position, initially for three years, with a seven-year maximum stay.

Between them, they've worked at the BBC and in community radio, on building sites and in model and performance management, in environmental health and the police department, from London to the Kimberley. Des Clark was lord mayor of Melbourne in the early '90s and has held senior positions at the Australian Film Commission and the Melbourne International Film Festival. Alex Greene worked at Movie World as an attendant on the Gremlins, Batman and Wild West rides. "It was the best job

I ever had," she says. "My hero is Bugs Bunny."

2. They make cuts to films.

They don't cut films. Their job is to assess what's presented to them. The board wields no scissors.

3. They make decisions based on their own personal opinions, tastes and prejudices.

They make decisions based on the Commonwealth Classification Act, the National Classification Code and the Classification Guidelines (which can be viewed and downloaded at www.oflc.gov.au). The job is not quite as simple as counting swear words or noting the appearance of naughty bits. For example, the guidelines set out ways of assessing the impact of a scene or taking context into account.

Each board member I spoke to brought up the act, the code and the guidelines like clockwork and explained that they had to work with these tools every day. On fairly close examination, however, none of the board members appeared to be an android. As human beings, they obviously have their own likes and dislikes, sensitivities and moral frameworks.

How do they perform this balancing act between what's required of them and how they personally feel about what they're watching? "I do feel that sometimes people think we just make these decisions based on what we think of a film," says senior classifier Wendy Banfield, a former paralegal with arts and law degrees. "It's not like that at all. You might personally hate something but you can't let that enter your judgement because you have to apply the guidelines. By the same token, you might like something and think it's got a lot of value but if it's outside the guidelines, you have to follow them."

Classifier Robert Sanderson, who used to work in investment banking and performance and model management, says, "I think the reason that the board has such a diverse range of backgrounds and ages is because everybody will interpret the tools we're given differently and bring something different to the table."

4. They classify TV.

The board classifies films, DVDs, videos, magazines and computer games. They don't classify TV; that's the job of the Australian Broadcasting Authority.

5. When a decision is changed, it means that they've caved in to public opinion or pressure from interest groups.

It's true that decisions can be changed. It's not true that the board flip-flops. "That's one thing that gets misrepresented in daily newspapers, prime-time TV shows and drive-time radio shows and it can be very frustrating," says deputy director Paul Hunt, the most outspoken of the board members. "They have no idea about the difference between M and MA 15+, and they mix up the Classification Board and the Classification Review Board. And these fundamental inaccuracies get repeated as fact and that changes public perception."

Let's take the example of 9 Songs, the Michael Winterbottom film that tells the story of a couple who spend most of their time seeing bands and having real, on-screen sex. In November 2004, the Classification Board gave it an X 18+ rating, effectively banning it from general cinema release. The film's distributors appealed the decision and they resubmitted it to the Classification Review Board, which is a separate group of five people that uses the same guidelines and is appointed by the governor-general. In January this year, the review board, in a three-to-two majority, overturned that decision, giving 9 Songs an R 18+ rating with the consumer advice "actual sex, high-level sex scenes".

Sometimes things go the other way. In 2002, even more controversy surrounded Baise-Moi, which was initially given an R rating and was released in cinemas for two weeks. The then attorney-general Daryl Williams applied for a review, the rating was revoked and the film was taken off screens. Although there is often public debate, criticism, outrage and vigorous lobbying, both boards maintain they're making their decisions based on the act, the code and the guidelines.

6. It's a total bludge of a job.

In the 2004-2005 financial year, the board made more than 10,000 decisions (454 for feature films). Classifiers see one to three cinema-release features a week and many, many more on video or DVD - including all the extra material, such as director commentary. Last year, more than 5700 videos/DVDs were classified and recently there's been such an increase in the workload that they'll be expanding from nine classifiers to about 15 in 2006.

A light-hearted piece in The Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year suggested that the job is one of the better larks on offer by our government. The reaction of the board varied from amusement to bemusement. "Don't think that you'll be sitting in a cinema all day watching fantastic films," warns senior classifier Marie-Louise Carroll, who formerly worked in legal and business affairs for British TV and Film Victoria. "There are a lot of - how can I put this politely? - poorly made films. And a lot of work, day in and day out, is very mundane."

Des Clark says that "some of the films are so clunky that you sit there saying, 'What were they thinking?'" but he's never walked out of one, adding that "we're not there to say whether they're good or bad". And then there's all that sex and violence - before starting the job, there's an intensive training process and a buddy system with an experienced classifier, where candidates are exposed to some of the more confrontational material they'll have to face, and they practise applying the guidelines, debating their arguments and making group decisions.

But there's one part of the job that none can be prepared for. It's kept in the corner of a storeroom, behind a door that can only be opened by passing a Mission Impossible-style palm scanner. They refer to it as "the police work" - the child pornography and other contentious material seized by the authorities that may come to the OFLC to be classified in order to assist police with their proceedings. Last year, as part of Operation Auxin, they looked at a lot of child porn in an intense period because police legally needed official classifications to obtain arrests and convictions. "As an average Australian, I had only

a general idea of what child pornography might be like," says Jeremy Fenton, who came to the job after a long-time involvement in community radio in Lismore in NSW. "Before starting the job, we knew we would have to watch this but to actually see it is quite shocking and confrontational."

How often do they have to view this sort of material? Fenton is quiet for a few moments and looks down at the boardroom table. "I don't store those sorts of facts and figures in my head because it's not something I care to dwell on. It's one of the very few negative things I'll take away from this job and a part of me wishes I'd never seen it."

To help them cope with the disturbing nature of this material, Fenton and his colleagues have access to psychologists who provide counselling to anyone who is anxious or depressed as a result of what they see in the workplace. A senior classifier also has the discretion to remove someone from offensive material if they notice them being adversely affected by it.

Whenever the members of the classification board read about themselves in the paper, it's never good news. The headline, "Everyone happy with difficult classification decision" has so far failed to materialise. The vast majority of the thousands of decisions they make each year go through without controversy. But a few cause a furore.

If you wanted to see Ken Park in the cinema a couple of years ago, you couldn't. The film by Larry Clark - the American director who regularly deals with young sexuality, drug use and violence - was refused classification. Film critic Margaret Pomeranz, who is president of the lobby group Watch on Censorship, famously helped organise an illegal screening of Ken Park in July 2003 in defiance of the ban. Police closed it down.

Pomeranz believes that Australian society is becoming more vulnerable to ultra-conservative influences and discounts the argument that the board is simply representing the broad view of the Australian public. "I think their job is to advise and to give people information about the type of material they might expect to see. When that board gets to the point of considering whether to refuse classification to a film because a majority of people in this country would not want to see it, then who cares what the majority of Australians think? I don't give a damn. There are minorities who want to see the films that every other sophisticated country in

the world has the right to see and they ought to be taking into account the rights of those people."

Bill Muehlenberg isn't too happy with the board, either. But he and Pomeranz wouldn't exactly get on at a dinner party. Muehlenberg is the national vice-president of the conservative watchdog group the Australian Family Association. He argues that the current process doesn't work for three reasons. "Firstly, there's the guidelines themselves, which don't accurately reflect the community at large and have allowed some horrendous films to get through. Secondly, the [2003] revision of the guidelines assessing films in terms of impact is very subjective and arbitrary. Lastly, if you're watching gory or sleazy or violent films day in, day out, as these people do, it seems to me you simply get desensitised and used to the high levels of these things."

So, the Classification Board cops it from both ends of the spectrum. "I think it proves there's a vigorous discussion and that the Australian community is interested in classification issues," says classifier Lynn Townsend, who used to work as a consultant and researcher dealing with women's issues. "If people weren't jumping up and down on both sides - or worse, if they were just jumping up and down on one side - then that would not be a good thing."

To test whether the board is in touch with what's happening in the community, every few years they carry out assessment panels, where focus groups in different areas (last year it was Canberra, Alice Springs and Melbourne) view films and play computer games, then discuss them and make their own classification decisions. Clark says that he hasn't noticed Australian society becoming notably more conservative or more permissive since he was appointed to the board in 2000. "If there's been any change, I'd say that people are becoming increasingly concerned about violence and slightly more tolerant around language and sex," he says.

If the board is meant to represent mainstream Australia, does that mean it has to change as Australia's attitudes change? The answers may lie with an alien, a radar station and a white rapper. In 1982, E.T. was released with a G rating. When it was re-released for the movie's 20th anniversary in 2002, the rating became PG, even though director Steven Spielberg had retouched one scene, replacing police officers' guns with walkie-talkies. The classifiers felt that some of the issues surrounding death and grief warranted upping the rating slightly. Meanwhile, both 8 Mile and The Dish were rated M. The former was Eminem's acting debut and it featured "f---" (or variations on the word) 200 times in 110 minutes; the latter was a comedy about Australian stargazers and their role in the 1969 moon landing and it featured just one utterance of the "f" word. Please explain.

"In 8 Mile, the use of the word 'f---' is part of the characters' argot," says Des Clark. "It was totally naturalistic and the impact was greatly reduced because of that. The Dish had one use of 'f---' and it was used loudly and angrily. Now, The Dish would have been a PG film if it wasn't for that one usage but that's M-level language as soon as it happens."

One last thing. It's called the Office of Film and Literature Classification. In all my time at the board's Surry Hills offices, I saw shelves and shelves of film canisters, video and DVD cases. But literature? I didn't see one book, only more porn magazines than the fevered brain of an adolescent boy could imagine. Rodney Smith smiles. "We're warned before we start this job that we won't be reading Charles Dickens."

MEET THE CLASSIFIERS

JEREMY FENTON (from left)

Age: 35

Favourite films: Vertigo, Rear Window,

It's A Wonderful Life, Anatomy Of A Murder,

Fight Club, The Fabulous Baker Boys.

PAUL HUNT

Age: 38

Favourite films: Apocalypse Now, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Star Wars, Ben Hur, Gallipoli.

ALEXANDRA GREENE

Age: 28

Favourite films: Labyrinth, Rain Man, The Shining, The Bad Seed, Dumb And Dumber.

WENDY BANFIELD

Age: 42

Favourite films: It's A Wonderful Life, Star Wars, Amelie, In The Bedroom, Dark Blue World.

MARIE-LOUISE CARROLL

Age: 34

Favourite films: The Big Blue, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Barefoot In The Park,

Roman Holiday, Heartburn.

RODNEY SMITH

Age: 35

Favourite films: Deliverance, Dead Man, Blade Runner, Picnic At Hanging Rock.

DES CLARK

Age: 59

Favourite films: Mystic River and the films of Werner Herzog, Federico Fellini and

Peter Greenaway.

LYNN TOWNSEND

Age: 61

Favourite films: House Of Flying Daggers, Lost In Translation, Ray, Downfall, The Colour Purple.

ROBERT SANDERSON (not pictured)

Age: 31

Favourite films: Jerry Maguire, Two Hands, Kill Bill, the Terminator series.

© 2005 Sun Herald

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