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Post by Ross Mann on Apr 15, 2012 13:36:30 GMT
Why did the Australians edit so much? How come what was OK to show in a tea-time slot in the UK was not OK to show in a tea-time slot in Australia? I often wondered about why some things were thought of as frightening, for example just have a look at some of the clips that were recovered by Damian Shanahan and co. It amuses me that a clip that was excised from The War Machines (the guy getting shot by a fire extinguisher in a phone booth) was eventually recovered from an edition of Blue Peter! a show exclusively aimed at kids!!! But on the other hand did episodes of Dr Who get viewed by an "independent" classification board in the UK in the sixties prior to transmission? Or did the producers perhaps inform the controllers of what could possibly cause concern?
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Post by Martin Dunne on Apr 15, 2012 13:47:48 GMT
There's a couple of reasons for that. As import films they were under the brief of the Department of Customs. Until 1970 they were not accountable to anyone but the Minister, who would have let them cut out every instance of the letter X if they felt it was appropriate. In 1956 they caught conductor Eugene Goossens smuggling photographs of occult themes (including nudity) and sticks of incense into the country, and threatened him with the charge of scandalous conduct. He pled guilty to multiple pornography charges and was ruined. This fifedom came to an end when Don Chipp was made Minister for Customs. He forced the censors to publish a quarterly report on what films they had censored (or refused classification for) and more importantly why. This had a large effect on both the Department and distributors, who presented movies which had been refused for decades, notably in the genre of horror. Surprisingly, they don't much like discussing such matters today.
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Post by Jon Preddle on Apr 15, 2012 18:51:07 GMT
Why did the Australians edit so much? How come what was OK to show in a tea-time slot in the UK was not OK to show in a tea-time slot in Australia? In New Zealand, where censorship of films and tv was just as bad, the remit was, anything violent that could be easily copied (eg kick fighting, use of flick-knives, slapping of women); horror (especially that would affect young and nervous children); anti-social behaviour (a good case in point being jokes about the Queen, which often affected The Goodies and the satire shows that pre-dated Monty Python.) In DW's case, with its 5.30pm timeslot, violence and horror were the two main issues. The Ice Warriors was "rejected" on the basis that the ice warriors themselves were too scary for young children, and yet they passed all the Cybermen stories without a problem. Very much a case of double-standards! All that changed by the mid-1970s when the chef censor Doug McIntosh died, and his replacement was far more liberal and cleared many films that had previously been banned by his predecessor.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Apr 15, 2012 20:06:25 GMT
For completeness then, did they return 'The Time Meddler' along with the other two S2 serials? Yes, they did. Thanks :-) So the list of Hartnells returned in '75 would then be: The Space Museum The Chase The Time Meddler Galaxy 4 The Myth Makers The Ark The Smugglers The Tenth Planet
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Post by Jon Preddle on Apr 15, 2012 20:27:09 GMT
So the list of Hartnells returned in '75 would then be: {list snipped} Yep.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Apr 15, 2012 20:54:19 GMT
So the list of Hartnells returned in '75 would then be: {list snipped} Yep. Thanks :-) As I said, the way the article is worded does give the impression that they returned far more :-(
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Post by Jon Preddle on Apr 15, 2012 22:02:13 GMT
Thanks :-) As I said, the way the article is worded does give the impression that they returned far more :-( Okay; I've changed it to clarify.
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Post by Alex Taylor on Apr 15, 2012 22:24:32 GMT
Okay; I've changed it to clarify. Well...it's better, but why not just list the eight titles and remove all ambiguity? :-)
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Post by Jon Preddle on Apr 15, 2012 22:58:38 GMT
Okay; I've changed it to clarify. Well...it's better, but why not just list the eight titles and remove all ambiguity? :-) There are reasons - ones which I won't go into here....
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Post by tatianaromanova on Apr 16, 2012 7:15:02 GMT
With the banning of Mortal Kombat, it seems as though the Aussie censors are still controlled by Ned Flanders.
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Post by Martin Dunne on Apr 17, 2012 10:51:02 GMT
That's a slightly different issue, although they share in common the fact that it's ridiculously easy to start a moral panic over something which could be taken to be for children. Then it was primarily a federal issue, although the state literature boards would also ban books producing a chilling effect dissuading publishers from bothering to ship to other states. In the 1960s the Queensland literature board banned Lady Chatterley's Lover, so my parents found a roaring trade in this book amongst interstate truck drivers, driven by word of mouth, from their small suburban deli in another state.
Today their is no federal R18+ video game classification. The ACT is proposing bringing in one for their teeny little region (an administritive oddity which exists to service Canberra) along with their XXX pornography, legal fireworks and conservative federal politicians who hold unrated video viewing nights for "research".
The state Attorneys-General must agree unanimously to bring in a new classification. However the hold out is South Australia. Former Attorney-General Michael Atkinson was ideologically opposed to anything above R15+ for video games, his replacement John Rau has said he is in favour but has also indicated he may change his mind.
To go back on track, my favourite example of censorship of Who was whether to allow a scene in Reign of Terror; the Doctor looks at a bottle while talking to the jailer, suggesting he is thinking of hitting him over the head with it. After some difference of opinion, this is ultimalty allowed. Good thing too. Although there is also the case of the guy who was raided and had his Famous Monsters of Movieland magazines confiscated.
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