Monday, January 31, 2005
If you're really worried, Mr Censor....
I know the year is young, but the 2005 award for hypocritical statement of the year must have already been claimed by our chief censor, Bill Hastings.
Hastings is outraged with parents who let their children watch or play anything with an R18 rating. He says the increasing number of parents buying R18 video games for their children is an insult to his work, and they are breaking the law.
This, from the man who is overseeing the most rapid deterioration in public morality ever seen in this country. (For "overseeing" read "aiding and abetting".) Hastings' office is allowing increasingly violent, degrading material into New Zealand under the guise of artistic licence, or because it cannot be "proved" that it is injurious to the public.
Many films like Baise-Moi, Visitor Q, Irreversible, Anatomy of Hell and Twenty-Nine Palms, with gratuitous and explicit depictions of sexual violence and degrading perversions (necrophilia, sodomy and incest) have been cleared in recent years by the Chief Censor without cuts, for viewing in public cinemas and/or in university media courses by those 18 years of age and older. More R18 sexually-explicit/ultra-violent films and videos have been cleared for home video/DVD viewing and theatre viewing under the leadership of Mr Hastings than by any other Chief Censor.
Mr Hastings should know better than anyone that R18 material will filter down to younger ages, in exactly the same way that the lowered drinking age made alcohol more accessible to younger kids. If he is genuinely concerned for children, then he would do well to call a halt to the flood of filth that he is allowing to pour into this country.
I know the year is young, but the 2005 award for hypocritical statement of the year must have already been claimed by our chief censor, Bill Hastings.
Hastings is outraged with parents who let their children watch or play anything with an R18 rating. He says the increasing number of parents buying R18 video games for their children is an insult to his work, and they are breaking the law.
This, from the man who is overseeing the most rapid deterioration in public morality ever seen in this country. (For "overseeing" read "aiding and abetting".) Hastings' office is allowing increasingly violent, degrading material into New Zealand under the guise of artistic licence, or because it cannot be "proved" that it is injurious to the public.
Many films like Baise-Moi, Visitor Q, Irreversible, Anatomy of Hell and Twenty-Nine Palms, with gratuitous and explicit depictions of sexual violence and degrading perversions (necrophilia, sodomy and incest) have been cleared in recent years by the Chief Censor without cuts, for viewing in public cinemas and/or in university media courses by those 18 years of age and older. More R18 sexually-explicit/ultra-violent films and videos have been cleared for home video/DVD viewing and theatre viewing under the leadership of Mr Hastings than by any other Chief Censor.
Mr Hastings should know better than anyone that R18 material will filter down to younger ages, in exactly the same way that the lowered drinking age made alcohol more accessible to younger kids. If he is genuinely concerned for children, then he would do well to call a halt to the flood of filth that he is allowing to pour into this country.
